http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66AQVac1Z6A

I will make one not-so-provocative pronouncement of my own: “CDs are (almost) dead”.

Thanks for your comments! M.

I think your argument about the MSR doing nothing to attract new non-pipers to the games (also pipers, as you point out) is valid. However, is competition the best venue to draw in new listeners? As pipers it often seems as if our only performance venue is on the other side of a judges table. Perhaps it is a necessary evil.
True “art for art’s sake” cannot be accomplished if one is following games regulations and hoping to win a contest. Then again, all art has some non-artistic motives behind it (not necessarily a bad thing.) Many non-pipers I know do not understand why band players perform with their backs to the audience (exception being Shotts this past year – a cheap party trick in my opinion, but kudos to them for pushing the boundaries in competition.)

That many of the top Grade 1 bands rarely put on full-length concerts is shameful. A band should not have to wait a year and a half to garner up enough interest or new repertoire for a new concert. However, with basically all pipe bands being “non-professional” groups, it is extremely hard to find the time and resources required for more frequent public performances or CD recordings. If bands and pipers really want to draw in new audiences, they need to look beyond the competition circle. MSRs and intensely regulated/judged medley competitions are good to keep bands accountable, but not as the primary performance venue.

Bottom line: competitions are better training for athletes than musicians. Draw in new listeners with full-length concerts and CDs.

You’ll know that harmony is a controversial subject and not science. It’s music theory not music science. I would suggest any of us would be ill-advised to make pronouncements about what’s “right” and what is “not”.

Your statement that “most world musics are devoid of harmony” is startling. While I am nothing of an expert on world music – or music for that matter – I don’t accept that, doesn’t feel right. You have prompted me to make some phone calls to some good contacts – John Beckwith for one. I wanna see what he says on this.

What is “overdone” for you may not be for me or the next guy. Who’s to say? It’s art. I think it would be fair to say something like, “to my taste that is too much harmony” or, “too much of that effect”, something like that. What’s not right for you may be seriously moving music to the ears of a piping Bartok.

To my point: if anyone wants to get more people to pipe band competitions the pipe band MSR ain’t gonna do it.

Glad you liked the Good Intentions thing -and “not a medley of tunes” – who knew!

M.

You state that the MSR supports a maximum of two key changes? Quite the contrary. For example, if a band played Highland Wedding, Atholl Cummers, and MacAllister’s Dirk, there would be 8 key changes, 2 more than Variations on a Theme of Good Intentions (which I loved, btw). There are plenty of other examples of this (Ewe wi’ the Crookit’ Horn, and Charlie’s Welcome would offer similiar results). Often a pipe band’s MSR can have more key changes than their medley. Also, though there are fewer tempo changes, the rhythms within the MSR tunes tend to be more varied than within a typical medley tune (round hornpipe, reel, jig, etc.) I would point to tunes such as Highland Wedding (eight notes in part 5 – a very nice contrast), or the Islay Ball (played by the reinging world champions, featuring even or “real” triplets, and 6 different beat-long rhythmic patterns – more than any medley tune of which I can think), or The Little Cascade (with the round fourth part, a la SFU’s MSR at the 1997 Worlds) – all much more rhythmically varied within the tune than your typical non-pointed medley tune.

As far as the lack of harmony, that is only an essential musical element in Western music, most world musics being devoid of harmony. However, that is not to say that MSR tunes don’t have implied harmonies which one hears very clearly (arpeggios, etc.) Harmonies can in fact be nauseating when overdone (nine notes, and a single timbre can quickly turn into indistinguishable muck). Finally, medley harmonies, even when done right (for example, don’t harmonize a C# with an A in an A minor tune! – heard done to often, even by Grade 1 bands!), are rarely anything cutting-edge. When bands deviate from the third-up/third-down formula, they usually block out simple triadic patterns (ever heard a Major 7th chord in a pipe band? Or even some juicy major and minor seconds held for more than a split second??? …crickets…) Harmony in pipe bands is certainly not avant-garde. I say all this to say that a lack of two or three-part harmony in a MSR is not grounds to have it thrown-out as an inferior musical experience.

I’m being called out the door right now, which is good because I could go on and on In conclusion, keep the pipe-band MSR, it still offers much, but continue to push the boundaries in the “medley” event (though the term medley or selection will probably become completely obsolete – for example, your “Variations” is not a medley of tunes…) because it unfortunately is not really an “anything goes” event like you suggest. Much like programming at a orchestra concert where Beethoven is next to Berg, the musical experience of pipe band competitions is improved when MSR is next to medley.

M.