“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.

At last night’s band practice the piper next to her turned and said, “I only soaked my reed for an hour, and, is it ever good!”.

Soaking a reed for any length of time will make it anything but good (for a non-piper reading this you’ll now understand the “LOL”). Water is the reed’s enemy. It brings instability and dullness to pitch. Water generally ruins a reed; it shortens its productive life. Tip of the day: soak a reed for an hour if you seek crappy sound.

Yes, reeds require moisture to produce bright, vibrant, engaging sounds. That moisture should only ever come from breath. Play a new reed in the pipe for 20 minutes and you’ll find that natural moisture postively transforms the sound produced by a reed. Living in a dry centrally-heated house I can empathize with a piper`s temptation to throw some water a dry reed`s way. But never soak it. Save that for your feet – or your head after a late night.

And a final funny from the same band practice; it sort of speaks to perspective and the importance of attending band practices so the whole team knows what you can and will contribute. In my friend`s words: “…the (new-ish) bass drummer asked me if I wanted a music stand for our ‘Scotland the Brave’ set. I think I need to attend more practices…”

Off to Glasgow (and Dublin) this evening. Celtic Connections calls.

M.

M.

It strikes me that pipe bands are no different.

A pipe band will attract people who are interested in joining the group because of really basic things: the band’s ability to win a competition, its social makeup and, finally, its musical aspirations. And for most people looking to join a band, I suggest that is the order of importance.

Like political parties, bands rise and fall in popularity, shift their approaches, their ethos and their leadership. The winningest parties represent the will and the perspective of the populist centre. Consistently champion pipe bands are much the same. Strong leadership, a general approach interesting to broad groups of people and sound decision-making (unfettered by any hint of the extreme) are the earmarks of successful political parties – and pipe bands. I suggest “successful” in the context of political parties is forming government and for pipe bands it’s winning.

This past August in Lorient I met up with Mark Saul, the famous Australian composer. Many fine pints aside, we talked a lot. Like me, he’s hugely supportive of any band’s efforts to “do its thing” – we both have a bias for that “thing” when it’s adventurous. We also talked about the risks in moving forward with “adventurous” when that approach isn’t of interest by the mainstream. Political parties never get elected when they take the adventurous, non-mainstream approach – think the Green Party, Canada’s socialist New Democratic Party or Britain’s Liberal Democrats.

Like many pipe band enthusiasts a lot of pipe band judges are not keen on extremes on the musical spectrum. If “adventurous” approaches make winning harder what’s the long-term viability of “adventurous”?

I wonder. It’s a risky business and one that most pipe band leaders tend to avoid.

Mind you, I can tell you I joined one pipe band fringe group many years ago and ended up a member of a World Pipe Band Championship team.

If it happened once, surely it can happen twice.

Here’s to the fringe – parties and pipe bands!

M.

Facebook, MySpace and all the other online “time-wasters”, surely take up more and more of our prime living, breathing, thinking time. I use the internet a lot. It’s an important tool for my work, my job. I probably use it more on-the-job than off. I’m fairly sure I’m near the top of my demographics’ internet usage stats.

No matter how we spend our time, especially our “free”, non-work, non-family time, we know that it’s finite – there’s only so much of the stuff to go around. I wonder if the internet, while a fantastic medium to connect people, may be having a negative impact on the quality of other “free time” pursuits; think pipes, drums.

Really, think about it: if someone is frantically clicking away on Facebook, regaling their friends with weather updates, their moods and the pork chop in the pan for supper, then you’d have to think that for the average user, more Facebook — for example — means less attention to other things, like music-making – and thinking about music-making. From my experience, when it comes to creating music it is the thinking part that is more important than the making part.

Just a thought.

A little book I’ve always enjoyed is Angus Macpherson’s autobiography, “A Highlander Looks Back”. In a cultural context, a bagpipe context, he writes of another time and place: the nineteenth century Scottish Highlands. I wonder if his time was more conducive to great music-making than ours:

“As a very willing pupil by the peat fire at Badenoch, I was initiated into the mysteries of piobaireachd, my tutor being my father, a product of the MacCrimmon school of Skye. In this modest school of learning, I have seen men who after a hard day’s work, walk ten or twenty miles for their ceol mor lessons, no matter what the weather, and in the small hours of the morning, after Highland hospitality and the environment of the good old-fashioned ceilidh, they would tread their homeward way with their minds steeped in that which conveys to the Highlander something which nothing else can.”

Not so much time in those days for Facebooking, “Mike is happy that the grass is cut”.

M.

Regardless: the crowd on the field was hugely positive. I think moving forward pipe bands will find that matters more and more.

For anyone interested the name was inspired from the score sheet musings of the ensemble adjudicator at last year’s world’s qualifier: he scrawled, “not playing in the Scottish idiom“.

I think, like some of you, that the percussion accompaniment really makes the thing work. And, surprise, regardless of what bubbleicious1989 thinks, I really think the thing works. Drum Sergeant, Doug Stronach, bassist Reagan Jones and the whole percussionista group constructed inspired and appropriate scoring making great use of space.

Most pipe band people like their musical space jam-packed with clearly audible sound; lots and lots of notes – everywhere. Without “content” as I hear drummers call all them notes, there is no viable accompaniment. Like silence between two new acquaintances, rests or, open space (or “open real estate” as the drumming adjudicator wrote at last week’s contest), is generally uncomfortable for pipe bands. I hope that perspective changes.

One of the most common and ill-informed comments heard around is, “I can’t judge it if I can’t hear it” — usually said in reference to percussion rests in performance. Someone said, “silence is the best of all musical states”. Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, I know silence in performance is not easy. Perfectly placed silence, or rest, is surely one of the most important and difficult elements in music. It takes a seriously deft hand to pick the right points in time to halt sound and accent melody with rest. A thought to be explored another day.

It’s becoming increasing clear to me that had we submitted “Idiomatica” as a group of named melodies – perhaps “sections” would be a less presumptive word since so many felt it amelodic – the performance would have been perceived very differently and less audacious.

Idiomatica is a medley freely assembled in the style of the band’s choosing. Like any other band in the contest, it is one group’s expression of a medley. A medley of melodies, one that starts off in one planned place and ends in another.

In orchestrating medleys, we can rest and be thankful.

M.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

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.

“Ensemble” is a common topic of conversation in the Toronto Police Pipe Band – like most bands. Rhythm, sound, composition, technique, balance, dynamics all words we use in the context of creating a pleasing ensemble of pipe band voices. I’d think of ensemble as rhythm, sound and tune/composition coming together but prefer Doug Stronach’s descriptors: rhythm, melody and harmony.

So consider pipe band ensemble: the confluence of rhythm, melody and harmony. By the way, I tried to keep this as jargon-free as possible – there’s room for improvement on that front.

Click here for a pdf version of the image below

Food for thought.

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.