“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important”, said Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. That’s true in transforming a performance from excellent to great. And true, too, for improving stage presence. In solo piping, “stagecraft”, as Scott MacAulay used to call it (the first person I ever heard use that term in a bagpipe context) is one of those things pipers usually figure out long after the “A” and nearer the “Z” end of their performing life.

A few random thoughts:

• When performing, if not marching or moving to a slow tune, face the audience
• On entry to the performing area, especially if the room is of a different temperature from that of the final tuning area, do not instantly reach for the slides and adjust your drones: play 8-16 bars of something engaging (not jarring) to the audience and then tune – no jigs and reels at tune-up
• Never tune with your back to the audience
• Aim to tune your instrument with a collection of notes that have some sort of (pleasing-ish) melody; try and develop something you can rely on for each tune-up and stick to it for every performance. These notes will become your tune-up security blanket
• Do whatever you have to do to get your instrument in tune. If this means stopping the bass and a middle tenor and tuning one drone at a time than do it. Unless the whole contest plays with an out-of-tune instrument you will be wasting your time trying to make music on wailing pipes (and getting rewarded)
• If you make a mistake don’t blink an eye. It’s all about a “poker face” – just like the song. Most judges will give a competitor the benefit of the doubt – if there is any doubt
• If you’re lucky enough to have one, acknowledge the audience on entry to the competition area – and when you’ve completed your show. Not necessarily a deep Japanese bow, a respectful nod.

Oh, and on entering the competition area, acknowledge the judge guy. A nod will do here, too. S/he’s got to listen to your pipe stylings, too. Sometimes that’s a fun thing – and sometimes it’s not. Recognize that truth with some sort of nominal recognition.

And remember, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

M.

Happily, my shift didn’t start until the afternoon of January 2, 2000, so I was good to go and enjoy the passing of the millennium as I pleased. And my choice happens to kick off my list of memorable musical moments of the “noughts”: 2000 through to two days from now:

And my list in rough chronological order (note: these spring first to mind and I wouldn’t be surprised, if I tried again, the list might be slightly different):

10. New Year’s Eve 1999. James and Jan MacDonald host one of Vancouver’s most famous Hogmanay doos. The hoi polloi of Vancouver’s piping and drumming community all find their way to the MacDonalds. This special year I managed to snag an invite and subsequently flew five hours west to be part of the fun. What hosts. What fun. A remarkable midnight marchpast of our throw-together pipe band with members including Pete Aumonier, Jack Lee and Angus MacPherson will never be forgotten. Good people; good times. [by the way, for fans of the movie "Whisky Galore", James MacDonald is the wee baby in the carriage in the scene where his dad, Neil Angus, plays at the réiteach].

9. Recording Shambolica! and Jane Siberry, July 2001. I was awfully lucky to engage a pile of talented people to work with me on Shambolica! and one of my all-time favourites was among that group. There’s something about Jane Siberry’s voice that moves me. She’s a national treasure – or, more rightly, an international treasure. She jammed her eclectic backside in Bryan Greenwood’s studio’s sound booth and for six straight hours made amazing music. Her work on “Nut Brown Maiden” is electric.

8. Bruce Gandy’s Gold Medal-winning performance, Northern Meeting, Inverness, September 2003. Bruce and me go back a long way and while we’ve always been intense competitors (especially with each other) I was thrilled to be there for his winning tune. One of those performances that fires on all cylindars and can’t help but win. “The Rout of Glenfruin” was the tune, for the record – a tune that should be played more, I think.

7. Colin MacLellan’s Clasp tune, “End of the Little Bridge”, at the Northern Meeting, Inverness, September 2003/4 [Colin, nor I, sure of the date]. What a tune. This tune was edge-of-your seat stuff. Tempo, rhythm, drama, all falling together in one rare and fabulous explosion of pibroch playing. People who hate pibroch should’ve heard this tune.

6. Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band tuning up for the World Pipe Band Championship, Glasgow, 2007. FMM are the poster people for precision and musical intention. Listening to them prepare for their world-winning performance: an indelible memory.

5. A week in Glasgow with the 78th Frasers (Halifax Citadel) Pipe Band, 2007. As a traveller to Glasgow for piping and pipe band events the 2007 trip with the Halifax Frasers, a great band I “guested” with, will be hard to forget. I can’t speak for any other time but in August 2007 this band had magnetic and percolating pipe band chemistry. What a great time. Win or lose, this was a great adventure with great people – one that sustained the whole week’s visit.

4. Toronto Police Pipe Band playing off the field at the North American Pipe Band Championships in Maxville, Ontario, August 2008. The park had been beset by hurricane-like rain and the usual (fantastic) performance spot had been moved to a farmer’s field – or what felt like a farmer’s field. The crowds were right up yer backside and well in to their rain-delayed cups. This was the year of “Variations on a Theme of Good Intentions” and marching off with Padrig Sicard’s Breton march will never be forgotten.

3. Ruth Sutherland’s singing of, “Tuireadh Mhic Criomain”, at Scott MacAulay’s memorial gathering, November 2008.

2. The Toronto Police Pipe Band’s playing of “His Father’s Lament for Donald MacKenzie” in the car park of Lycée Des Métiers Marie Le Franc in Lorient, France, August 2009. A strange moment. No one around. Our band manager, Jack Wield, ex-Edinburgh Police Pipe Band, thought the same. He said, “My God, that was beautiful”. Goose-bumpy.

1. OK. This isn’t in order. And, its not a bagpipe-y sort of thing. But a bit of a confessional: One of the most memorable musical moments for me may not’ve been in the bagpipey world. Here is k d lang:

All the best!

M.

The raga is an interesting art form. A melodic, heavily improvised, exploration of a simple theme, the raga might be compared, to a fair (yet limited) extent with pibroch. I’ll leave it to you to delve in to the raga and make your own comparison but I will suggest, the level of performance sophistication and musicianship required to deliver a raga exceeds what’s needed to deliver a postively impactful pibroch.

Right now, I don’t want to dwell on the music. It’s Ravi Shankar I want to talk about. I mean, eighty-nine! He’ll be ninety in April! Sure he may’ve been helped to his place by his (strikingly beautiful) daughter, Anoushka, but once seated, he displayed calm, controlled, musicianship. His ability to move his aged hands up and down the lengthy expanse of the sitar – and at sometimes impressive tempos – is other worldly. What magnificent music. This old master made some seriously great energy happen.

Relative to the overall number of Highland bagpipers in the world, it seems to me there’re few who actively perform past age fifty or so. Outside of pipe bands it’s a real rarity. In fact, come to think of it, outside of non-competing pipe bands it’s still a rarity.

Maybe with more performance venues, places other than solo competitions for instance, we might see piping “Ravis” appear. To now we’ve been pretty good fostering a youth movement in the piping game.

I see Ravi Shankar making remarkably beautiful, masterful music on the cusp of his tenth decade. We need to think about nurturing a piping master’s movement, one that has nothing to do with prunes – or competitions.

M.

One of the great figures of the north of Scotland at the time, and the whole of Britain, for that matter, was Brigadier Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat: War hero, soldier, politician, sportsman, one of Britain’s largest landholders, a Lord of the Realm – and lover of bagpipes.

Winston Churchill, in a letter to Joseph Stalin, described Lord Lovat as, “the handsomest man who ever cut a throat”. It was Lovat, the war hero, who led his commandos ashore on D-Day – “The Longest Day” – to the sound of Piper Bill Millin’s bagpipes.

At “Inverness” (the competing piper’s synonym for the Northern Meeting) during the year of my recollection Lord Lovat was in attendance on the second day, the day of the Clasp event, the big event for former winners of the Gold Medal. Bill Livingstone competed in the event and was introduced to Lovat. They struck up a good conversation, probably the only kind both could carry. It should be noted Lovat was 25th Chief of the Clan Fraser and Bill, Pipe Major of the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, a group sponsored by a group of Canadian historic commemorators of the seminal, “Battle of the Plains of Abraham” where the 78th Fraser Highlanders, and Lovat’s forbears, figured prominently. Anyway, the conversation of the Fraser piper and the Fraser Chief proved satisfying enough to warrant an invitation to tea the next day at Beaufort Castle — Lord Lovat’s home on his Beauly estate outside of Inverness. And guess the name of the gooseberry travelling with Bill and his wife Lillian?

Yes, indeedy, it was me. No shame. Tea with Lord Lovat at his castle – bring it on!

So it was to be. The three of us loaded up the rented Ford Fiesta and made our way from our Kenneth Street, Inverness, B&B to the castle for a spot of tea with His Lordship.

And here’s your cliche of the day: I recall the whole meeting like it was yesterday. After winding down the long tree-lined drive of the estate we arrived. We parked and nervously made our way up to the castle’s big door (I’d wager even Bill, the experienced lawyer that he was, would concede nervousness). And knocked (and, with apologies to Mel Brooks, “what knockers!”). Expecting no less than Jeeves to answer the door we were greeted by a kindly Highland woman dressed in a cleaning smock, “Yes?”, she said. “We’ve an appointment to see His Lordship,” Bill replied. “Yes, come this way”. And in we were. I recall Bill saying ‘His Lordship’ because I clearly recollect us dissecting the visit and laughing together at the line. I mean, outside of a movie set, how many times in your life would you find yourself saying, “We’ve an appointment to see His Lordship”? We thought it hilarious.

We were seated in big comfy over-stuffed chairs in a bright sitting room. Within minutes Lovat entered the room and warmly welcomed us all. I recall a big presence: well over six feet in height, a healthy, ruddy complexion and an impressive shock of thick white hair. Shortly after sitting tea was brought in on what I recall to be an especially ornate-looking tray. “Would you pour the tea, Lillian?”, Lovat asked Bill’s wife, and, of course, she did. But I think Lillian may’ve felt a bit like Hyacinth Bucket’s accident prone neighbour, Elizabeth (see the BBC show: “Keeping Up Appearances“), in dutifully filling the Limoges cups. Happily, no breakages.

So there we had it. Tea with Lord Lovat. A lovely meeting with a bona fide 20th century hero and undeniably warm, friendly person. We discussed his estate, the challenges in keeping it, bagpipes, bagpipe politics, and, I distinctly recall, his opinion on the prospects of a Canadian band winning the World Pipe Band Championship (he thought likely). Lovat had a lot of Canadian connections and he was genuinely pleased to see the result two years later, when the 78th became the first non-Scots band to win the championship.

Lovat saw us out to our car. As we made our way down the tree-lined drive we looked back and saw Lord Lovat slowly walking down the middle of the road back to his home. The three of us all regretted not having a camera, thinking this a great image of the man. “What a great band album cover”, we thought.

Lord Lovat died in 1995.

Anyway, there you have it, a look at of one of my great and good memories.

M.

Stepping up to the role of pipe band/piping/drumming judge is a service. In fact, it’s an obligation. For people with piping and drumming credentials – meaning proven in-the-trenches-experience – it is a service. The competition system is currently at the core of pipe band and solo piping excellence and depends on the good service of engaged – and qualified – adjudicators.

But, man, it ain’t easy.

I was hard at it (doing my best) judging a contest in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, last Saturday and, following the contest, someone came up to me and said, “I could guess your result, in the grade X, I saw you smile when ______ band played “Fleshmarket Close” [a tune I made]“).

Holy #%$@. I smiled, apparently! Arrest me. That comment reminded me or, “sowed home”, as the late, great, Scott MacAulay might’ve said, that no matter what action, decision or, it seems, facial expression, a judge makes, an outside assessment of perceived ulterior motivation will almost always be made. This truth makes the role even less attractive.

But let’s remember one of the core realities of our competitive game: judges are always perceived to have bias – even if that bias is for a style or particular performance approach.

I suggest that it’s that “good” bias for which we hire judges. We want them to draw on their proven experience, their understanding of what makes up a performance of merit, their ability to know the difference between good and excellent musical interpretation. We look for that and we look for them to deliver an even-handed assessment.

Simply put: We hire judges for their musical perspective and their considered musical judgement. We don’t hire judges for their poker faces.

Afterall, maybe a smile increases a judge’s face value?

M.

We pipers and our tunes compositions: it’s all about people, places, battles. Religion? Not so much.

M.

There was a time I slavishly spelled pibroch the Gaelic way – lots of letters. I was (and am) keen on things Gaelic; I wanted to say, I think, I was a member of what J. Reid Maxwell called the “Piobaireachd Club”, and was on the inside Gaelic track – one heavily covered in peat no doubt. Poncy MacPoncypants.

It really doesn’t make good sense that we insert Gaelic spelling of pibroch in English text, English prose, does it? Among other things, it really doesn’t do much to promote the music to outsiders. We all know what happens when we come across a funny word we can’t recognize or pronounce. We almost always skim over it and quickly move on to something more comfortable, something easier to take in. To a reader of a report of one of our Big Music contests the peeobaireached took 13 minutes to play…

I note that Gaelic speakers I know, when writing in English, almost always spell pibroch the Anglicised way. That, too, is a political statement I think. Anyway …

I always enjoy talking to my français-speaking friends; their français is always a pleasure to hear. That sentence is a bit silly, isn’t it. What English-speaking person refers to French as “français” when speaking English? They say French. French is the English equivalient of français, of course.

Now take the word Gaelic. You often hear an Anglophone say Gaelic the Gàidhlig way as in, “She speaks lovely Gallic”, or, “He has the Gallic”, with the “a” sound short. To me that’s the equivalent of ordering fries française at McDonalds. My granny, who I’ve written about before, always said, “Gaylic” when speaking English, with the “a” sound long. That makes sense to me.

That I’m even writing about such trivialities speaks volumes about the parochial nature of things related to the Great Highland Bagpipe.

The tip today just might be to never question your granny’s wisdom.

M.

To now, when it came to effective, self-assured performance, I had always made a connection with pressed pleats, immaculate turnout, fine stitching. No more.

In truth, it’s no pleats, no stitching, and lots of bare skin. It’s the supremely confident who can – and do – perform in their underpants.

Can you imagine: Glenfinnan Games field after the third day of pouring rain … mud, water, (and midges) everywhere and you in your fine 16 ounce grade “MacLeod of Lewis” kilt and 100% natural fiber Barathea jacket, your treasured wool hose hand-knitted by your recently infirm granny, leather brogues newly re-soled…all set to play your tune for Iain MacFadyen and John MacDougall: “Sorry gents”, says you to the judges, “I’ve still got the jigs and MSR so if you don’t mind I’ll play my ‘Viscount of Dundee’ in my pants”. There’s our piping equivalent of “doing a Stenson”.

Bands, too, would save big money on kit maintenance. “Right,” might say Rab Mathieson, “That’s the rain on, off with your kilts, we’ll be doing a Stenson for the Donald Cameron set”.

Skål, Henrik!

M.

Like “duuuuuuuh”, I say. From my earliest memories around bagpipes there’s been booze amongst the haze. I remember as a 15 year-old being put to work behind the bar at a late late (late) night party hosted by the 48th Highlanders for select Scottish bands in Toronto for the Scottish World Festival Tattoo. I remember this particular party for Willie Morrison (South Uist) and his other-worldly piping, especially his rendition of his jig, “Cameronian Rant”. He was the first to adapt the strathspey to jig time – and what a player, a left-handed player, too. I wouldn’t have been drinking orange juice, I’d guess, at that time. But I was a bad kid. And I was at a gathering of “Celtic” music-makers.

I’m reminded of that CBC documentary today. I happened across a snippet from the Globe & Mail:

“It is a hidden, taboo subject, widely known about within the music world but barely discussed,” Charlotte Higgins reports in The Guardian. “… inappropriate use of alcohol in Britain’s great orchestras is, according to musicians, endemic – ranging from drinking a pint before a concert to steady the nerves, to full-blown inebriation on stage.” A delegate to the recent annual conference of the Association of British Orchestras recalled an incident in which a percussionist actually fell off the back of a high stage when drunk.

Performance anxiety is offered as one of the main reasons musicians use alcohol. “Group culture is part of another. Anecdotally, it is often said that brass players – often overwhelmingly male orchestral sections – drink the most.”

So maybe it’s not just “Celtic” musicians, their music-making and alcohol that add up to a special boozey link. Maybe it’s a music thing, period.

A musician’s a musician for a’ that?

M.

I’ll save the lessons learned for another day maybe. Suffice it to say I made a lot of very expensive production mistakes.  We never learn from doing things right so, all-in-all, I have no complaints.

The fantastic string arrangement comes from Owen Pallet.  Owen was very involved in Shambolica!  I was lucky to engage him before he hit it big writing string arrangements for Arcade Fire among others. Bryan Greenwood brought his pop sensibility to the production – though you won’t hear evidence of that in the “Tam O’Shanter Suite”.

The piece was originally written for The Peel Regional Police Pipe Band, during the time I lead the band.  PRP did perform the piece – but never in competition.

I think I’d compete with this today – though it sounds a wee bit staid now when compared to some of the stuff people have the nerve to put out!

Imagine: a pipe band moves up to the line, with a flat-bed truck of orchestral musicans in tow, playing together as a real ensemble.  Sweet! (er, suite!)

M.