Freestyle music...it does make a difference.
 

Dear Friends,
I guess I just feel like spouting philosophy today. This is just a little bit about choosing music, or better stated, how not to choose music for your freestyle competitive flights.

As the competitor, you job is to please the judges (and the spectators too, but now I'm writing about your numerical scores), no more, no less. The more the judges are pleased, the better your score shall be. Makes sense, right?

Of course, in the perfect world, judge would ingonore the music and only judge your flying. Unfortunately, those seven people sitting behind you are human beings, and there will always be at least a tiny bit of subjectiveness, however unintentional, to their judging.

So, my recommendation is to choose music that not only provides a good tempo and rhythm for your style of flying, but also is pleasing to the judges and the public in general. There are some fine flights captured on video that have such a poor selection of music that I will turn off the sound in order to gain any entertainment value at all from the flight.

Some of the modern mixes of music and speeches are so outrageously out of place (trying to bend the score with a Bush speech or Apollo 11 transmitions) and transparent that the music becomes more of an irritation than an enhancement.

An irritated judge is more likely to become more subjective in the scoring than a judge who's ears and soul are soothed by the wise blending of flight and music.

I remember one flight (an informal local contest where the music had not been pre-screened) I watched in Germany where a young man had chosen an Amercan rap song so filled with ethnic obsenities that the chief judge actually left the flight line, yanked the tape out of the cassette player, and the crowd applauded him.

With that said, I wish to state that this is my opinion and experience from my musician days where the selection of music was just as important as the ability to play, and I feel that the same holds true in other art forms, whether figure skating or flying (I often compare these two endeavors for their similarity in grace, precision, and artistry).

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
Mark Novack

Re: Freestyle music...it does make a difference.
 

Yes, it is not only how you say something, but what you say.

You can be perfect in your execution but if what it says is not appropriate for the intended audience, then you have wasted your time.