M.

Anyway, Georgetown put it’s usual classy right foot forward and, this time, organized a neat moment of recognition for Bill Livingstone. This note isn’t about Bill’s many [many] accomplishments. It’s about a well-placed good intention. The Georgetown games folk are thoroughly dialled in and, again, they stepped up and recognized a moment to do the right thing.

In part, courtesy of a rendition of the famous pipe-bandified Boys of the Lough “Mason’s Apron”, the closing ceremonies saw Bill recognized by band members past and present. The whole thing turned out to be a lovely gesture organized by Sue McCarroll and the Georgetown games committee.

The whole experience got me to thinking: aren’t we really shitty at recognizing – I mean, really, recognizing by thanking people. Especially in our sometimes “mental” competitive world of bagpipes.

Bill deserves his big, bold tune of thanks in the sun – but so, too, do a good many others.

Time to get the lead out.

M.

Making great music is a different story, but good music, to make good music? That’s a horse of a different colour.

Creating good music requires competence, concentration and – the biggest element of all?

Enthusiasm.

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson has it right. I’d go one step extra and say nothing even good was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Without enthusiasm, intent interest with emotion, we have nothing except blah, flat, hum-drum nothingness.

I think we all could do with less of that.

Enthusiasm is everything in bagpipes – in pipes – in drums – in everything.

M.

My timing wasn’t great in looking to get the job done: a recital here, a concert there; on the cusp of the hardcore bagpipe performing season, April is not the best month to be without pipes. Whatever. I forged ahead and shipped the pipes overseas by Fedex and their super-expensive-jig-time-delivery route. Kenny assured a speedy turnaround – the norm for McCallum, by the way. We didn’t bank on the customs equation and unfortunately my “horns”, as Scott MacAulay might’ve said, were tied up in London for about a week – ugh!

Long-story-short: for about a month I didn’t play many tunes on the big pipes. I did, of course, finally get my customs-delayed pipes and have to say I’m thrilled with hallmark outstanding McCallum attention and workmanship. But this is not the point of my note today. It’s about practice.

Right. Here’s the thing. With only a week and a half on the pipes I trotted out to the Livingstone Invitational contest – and sucked. Really not great. Not even good. Since receiving my revitalized pipes I had pulled together at home what I thought were solid “living room performances”. But bring on judges and a room full of critical/”nurturing” ears, well, it’s just not the same thing.

Practice is everything. To make it look easy, to be able to deliver something interesting in an environment of stress and distraction (like a competition), well, that just takes practice – and lots of it.

This past week I was working with a young pupil on his pibroch. He was playing really nicely. Hands creating engaging rhythm and technique – and music, too – but, oh, for the blooters . Note mistake here, note error there. Blooters don’t cut it in bagpipe competitions – let alone score-tracking pibroch events. I coudn’t prevent him from making note errors but I could find out a few facts – like how much he practiced.

I found that this promising – and quite excellent – young piper played though each of his two competitive pibroch tunes once every daily practice sess. NOT ENOUGH!

Until a piper get to a place where s/he has a comprehensive understanding of pibroch structure and form, one run-through on the horns is just not enough to burn the score on the personal hard drive. My prescription for this piper was to double his effort: he had to play each tune twice on the pipes – every day. And, if still falling to error-making, extra chanter work was in order.

My pupil wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of more practice (“what about other stuff, my marches, strathspeys and reels and all that!?”).

Suck it up, I say. The old line is so true: if it was easy everyone would do it.

Lauryn Hill nailed it when she said, “you don’t know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It’s all in the practice”.

S/he who can play bagpipes well must surely be the poster child for the hard practice brigade.

M.

M.

Anyway, my bit was a comparative look at pipe band ensemble. I checked out competitive orchestras – yes, they do compete – American high school concert bands and British brass bands. I learned a lot in my seeking out of information related to other competitive musical worlds. For instance, I can now tell you with great certainty that it’s scarily, freakishly and jaw-droppingly amazing how close the British brass band world mirrors that of the pipe band. Maybe a blab for another day.

But one of the biggest surprises, or “a-ha moment” is related to music copyright [here's me grabbing the chance to poke fun at corporate jargon: for those not exposed to the lingo, an "a-ha moment" is what people in corporate meeting rooms everywhere, it seems, say when they learn something new].

I’ve always imagined myself pretty savvy when it comes to copyright. I’ve a pretty good understanding of my rights as a composer, a publisher and what needs to be done when I make a record. But I’d never thought much about the licensing of music when it came to the subject of live piping, or pipe band performance. We so easily bend to the path of least resistance – the way it’s always been done. Sometimes, anyway!

Other competitive musical worlds – like those mentioned here – slavishly follow the laws of copyright to the letter. All scores must be provided in advance of a contest. Proof of publisher’s permission to both reproduce scores (those scores provided to adjudicators) and perform non-public domain compositions live, must be given to event organizers. This requirement is provided plainly in the rules of entry – not talking fine print here – it is baseline info provided up-front on entry forms. Penalty points are assigned musical combos that fail to follow copyright rules.

When it comes to copyright generally and performance licensing specifically, the piping world and, especially, the pipe band world, well, like a stop sign in Italy, it’s viewed only as a suggestion.

What exactly am I talking about? Well, consider this from SOCAN, Canada’s performing rights organization (and there’s an agency for anyone in the world looking to be aligned with one). These agencies exist to help protect the intellectual rights of composers and help get them what they’re due. They collect licence fees, as set by their national or organizational copyright board, from anyone playing or broadcasting live or recorded music.

In Canada, according to the Copyright Act, any public performance of copyright-protected musical works requires a licence. The Copyright Act is law. So, when a song – or tune – gets played in public, music creators (not just the performers) are entitled to collect their licence fees. This is the way of things in most countries; certainly so in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, France, Italy – and the United Kingdom. The list does go on.

Not unlike high school concert bands competing in the United States, pipe bands pretty much everywhere, need to have publisher’s permission, or a publisher’s license, to perform a musical piece. All those ditties we play at pipe band contests the world over – the ones that are not seriously oldie-goldies, like Scotland the Brave, need a license.

Like it or not, without a license, we’re breaking the law.

And that is the truth.

M.

But his stuff, unlike, say, Cathy-Ann MacPhee’s, is not what I listen to; it’s not music that tends to make my day – or night – better. And we all know music has that magical power…if directed to the right ears.

But just because someone hasn’t dialled in to your music, well, that doesn’t make it any less great.

Jimi Hendrix is said to have revolutionized how the electric guitar is played. He coaxed musical sounds from the instrument never heard before. He was a great innovator; the first to use “feedback” as a part of guitar performance. Some say he was the inventor of the rock solo. I can’t say but do know all signs out there, out there in the world, point to musical greatness.

So I look to Jimi for some solid advice [funny he should have the stereotypical Glaswegian name: old joke - tram driver to one-legged fare: "How ye gettin' oan Jimmy"...tip of the hat to Peter Aumonier for that one].

Jimi Hendrix gave us great advice; advice that applies to pipers (or any musical instrument, or almost anything, really).

In 1968 he told Guitar Player magazine:

“You have to stick with it. Sometimes, you are going to be so frustrated you want to give up the guitar — you’ll hate the guitar. But all of this is just a part of learning, because if you stick with it, you’re going to be rewarded.”

Really simple stuff. But simple advice, especially from a great, tends to resonate. It does with me.

Patience has it’s own reward – and so does any attempt to master the Great Highland Bagpipe.

And another piece of advice that bolts on nicely to this? A bit I’ve always remembered from Bill Livingstone courtesy of John MacFadyen: “if it was easy everyone would do it.”

Stick with it.

M.

I thought this strange. I thought this person had the whole thing backwards.

Of course, the number one responsibility of any team member, and for a moment let’s think of a pipe band as a team (though this rule of membership responsibility applies to any team, anywhere), is to raise the team higher.

When we’re on a team our number one objective is to do all we can to make that team better; to help make the team become the best it can be and realize its potential.

The team is not in place to act as the cushion in your brogues, a kilted personal trainer, a sort of sweat-inducing ab master. “Make me better pipe band”, should never be any member’s motivating words.

It doesn’t matter what level of experience a team, a pipe band, is at in its development. If every member seeks to do everything within their ability to improve themselves, and improve the team, then not only will they fulfill their number one responsibility, they will also – surprise – see great advances in their own ability. It’s one of the great spin-off effects of working to make the team the best it can be.

Pipe band membership is about us all doing what we can to help realize band potential: be present, be engaged, draw on your stengths to support those around you, seek out all available resources to help you do your best so you can be your best, contribute thoughtful and considered ideas in a timely way but be prepared to support the greater good of the group – and listen.

Again, when we work to elevate the band, we all end up heading in the same direction.

It ain’t the other way ’round.

M.

I’m no philosopher (a tip of the hat to my friend, James “Jamie” Hunter) but it does seem right that there’s meaning to be had from the surreal. I think now to some of my own surreal moments of 2010 – and since this is a bagpipey blog I’ll stick to those of that kind. I’ll spare you detail around the personal meaning and hope the surreal is mostly self-evident.

My surreal list here in appropriately random order:

• A wicked be-kilted ride on The Scrambler on Dunoon pier following a long day at Cowal games. With Jenny Hazzard on the wrong side of the centrifugal scramble and a rollicking last place tucked in our collective sporrans it remains a strangely sweet memory.

• Still at Cowal, the Toronto Police Pipe Band’s march up to the line and Pipe Major Ian K MacDonald’s shouting out in his best “Wild Bill Hickok”, a seriously good-intentioned, “Yee-haaaah!”.

• Walking down the High Street in Edinburgh and literally bumping in to Allan MacDonald as he made his way in to Geoffrey the Tailor’s to buy a new sark for his show at the Northern Meeting. Remember, the surreal isn’t about the big moment.

• Bill Livingstone stepping down as Pipe Major of the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band. And, yes, the surreal moment can be a big moment.

• The band’s el Mocambo show. The whole experience was sort of surreal but for me tuning up in one of the freezing backrooms and spotting a poster for Elvis Costello’s 1978 show sticks out.

• Ok. Not a piping moment but worthy of this list: blooming daffodils in January in Dublin.

Here’s to more dream-like, fantastical and surprising moments – all out of context from the norm in our workaday lives.

Cheers,

M.

Anyway, I say you can either play in a band – or not. A band is a fragile thing. A band is a crazy little ecosystem. An ecosystem: a system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment. Yep. That’s a pipe band. When it comes to a healthy pipe band and a membership that’s firing away on all cylinders I say it’s chronically crappy attendees that are the global warming to the pipe band “ice cap”.

In the reality that is the pipe band world of the 21st century there will always be valued members of the pipe band “ecosystem” that have been granted by membership sporadic attendance status due to distance, or, some seriously extenuating situation. These are exceptions to the rule. [A funny thing, from my experience: these exceptions would be "core members" should they reside closer to the pipe band home.]

Anyway, in the end, it’s really simple: you can do it – or you can’t.

As I trudge forward, gain a bit of what I hope is wisdom, it seems to me, more and more, that the true definition of a good pipe band differs very little from that sometimes said of a good friendship: one feels better after having spent time with a good friend. So true of a good pipe band, regardless of experience level.

If you avoid pipe band practices – or anything – or anyone – for that matter … time to make a change. If it really is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Making good music with like-minded people is a very special thing.

One to be treasured – not avoided.

M.