Rumours on the Internets
June 30, 2008 on 8:32 pm by mike | In Stories, Whinges | No Comments You don’t have to be very old to remember the world before the Internet. I think my first foray was around 1996 using a workplace account (for business purposes only, of course). I imagine there’ll be loads of people in their late 20s who remember, even a little, a pre-Internet world.
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Variations on a Theme of Good Intentions
June 17, 2008 on 1:52 pm by mike | In Music, Whinges, Pipe Bands | 7 Comments Last Saturday at the Georgetown games the band I play in, The Toronto Police Pipe Band, participated in the grade one pipe band contest. The event was a “medley” event and we played a piece of music I built called, “Variations on a Theme of Good Intentions“. What an experience. We had all anticipated playing this “medley” and the crowd reaction was spine-tingling. I have never in my long piping career experienced spontaneous, mid-performance cheers from a crowd at a pipe band contest. I’m not sure about the other players but it was all I could do to hold concentration. Believe me, these are the kinds of “challenges” we want to be faced with when competing! Forget the results for a moment, reaction like this is a performer’s triumph. It is what this is all about, or should be.
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Pipe Band Circles are So Square
April 16, 2008 on 9:19 pm by mike | In Music, Whinges, Pipe Bands | 4 Comments I’ve been going on for ages now about the standard competitive pipe band performance configuration, “the circle“. This arrangement makes no sense to me. Yeah, everyone can see the hands of the person leading the band, and that helps unison and timing of rhythmic transitions, but what about the many and varied down sides, the good reasons not to perform in a circle?
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A Huge Part of Pipe Band Ensemble
March 23, 2008 on 9:49 pm by mike | In Music, Whinges, Pipe Bands | 2 Comments There seems to be a fair bit of upset these days about a ruling that came to be as a result of a vote at the recent Annual General Meeting of the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association. Apparently members in attendance voted to remove the “best bass section” prize from the list of those awarded at major pipe band championships. The upset appears to be coming mainly from bass and tenor drummers caught off-guard by the rule change. Like most meetings of this kind attendance was reportedly sparse and a poor representation of general membership. What transpired is a good reminder for next year’s meeting: turn up if you want a voice. I have to admit, to be fair, that not turning up at an AGM never stopped me from crabbing about what I viewed was an ill-conceived rule or policy change.
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Pipe Band Medleys
June 11, 2007 on 8:13 pm by mike | In Whinges, Pipe Bands | 6 CommentsThere might be some serious practical limitations when it comes to creating original and engaging competitive pipe band shows these days but I still have to think we’re being too timid in reaching for the hazy boundary and physical limits of pipe band instrumentation (meaning the bagpipe and the usual competitive instruments of percussion). Continue reading Pipe Band Medleys…
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