World Pipe Band Championships now!

[OC Richard]

Heads-up, the Grade One Qualifiers of the Worlds Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow start in five minutes (if the information I was given is correct).

Here:

http://www.theworlds.co.uk/ontheday/...rlds-2014.aspx

This year's format is different, with the Grade One Qualifiers today and everything else tomorrow.

[SFCRick]

Thanks Richard

[OC Richard]

I watched the first half: they streamed the MSR of the first group.

Now they're on break.

At 2:20pm Glasgow time (6:20am here) they will stream the Medley from the second group.

The second group is more interesting to me due to it having nearly all the North American bands

Triumph St
SFU
Toronto Police
Peel Regional Police (those four Canadian bands back-to-back)
LA Scots
Stuart Highlanders (the two USA bands)

[creagdhubh]

Go SFU!!!

[pbutts]

The archived streams are available here:

http://new.livestream.com/innerear/w...pebandchamps14

The twelve bands moving on to the finals tomorrow are:


78th Fraser Highlanders (Canada)
Canterbury Caledonian (New Zealand)
Cullybackey (Northern Ireland)
Dowco-Triumph Street (Canada)
Field Marshal Montgomery (Northern Ireland)
Greater Glasgow Police (Scotland)
Inveraray & District (Scotland)
Peoples Ford – Boghall & Bathgate Caledonia (Scotland)
ScottishPower (Scotland)
Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia (Scotland)
Simon Fraser University (Canada)
St. Laurence O’Toole (Ireland)


- See more at: http://www.pipesdrums.com/article/qu....DTTSfquD.dpuf

All of the North American bands did admirably....

[OC Richard]

I was really hoping our local lads & lasses, the LA Scots, would get through but no...

A strong showing from Canadian bands (SFU, Triumph St, 78th Frasers) so North America is well represented, though neither USA band went through.

The combined limitations of hearing rather fuzzy sound over the internet and my own lack of perception/discrimination meant that most of the bands sounded nearly universally good to me. The obvious 'big boys' of course have a sound that sets them apart. Once again I found myself enjoying Glasgow Police's medley more than most.

[Tim Little]

Thanks for sharing, Richard.
I had similar hopes for our locals, Stuart Highlanders of Wilmington, MA, competing for the first time ever as a Grade 1 band, I believe.
I'm sorry I missed the live stream.

[Ron Abbott]

I ended up missing most of it and will now have to go back and watch it knowing the results in advance.......I got to go shopping with my wife instead


I'm glad that they showed the juvenile grade this year because that is a fantastic grade and contains the pipers of the future. Bands like George Watsons, George Heriots and Dollar Academy have done so well over the years. In my day it was Craigmount, Craigmount and Craigmount....

Have to say that I rarely listen to the medleys any longer as I don't think of the music as 'bagpipe music'.

In fact, I absolutely detest the breaks between tune after tune, the hornpipes and jigs which sound more like something appropriate for an Amsterdam barrel organ than a set of bagpipes and the roundedness of the playing. Not to mention harmony after harmony, tune after tune.

Give me MSRs any day. Although, could they not just choose some tunes other than Highland Wedding, Susan Macleod, Athol Cummers, The Sheepwife, Mrs. MacPherson etc. etc. just for once?

[Lodrorigdzin]

I liked the grade 2 finals too, sometimes more than grade 1.

Bagad Brieg from Bretagne were outstanding, I thought.

[OC Richard]

Have to say that I rarely listen to the medleys any longer as I don't think of the music as 'bagpipe music'.

In fact, I absolutely detest the breaks between tune after tune, the hornpipes and jigs which sound more like something appropriate for an Amsterdam barrel organ than a set of bagpipes and the roundedness of the playing. Not to mention harmony after harmony, tune after tune.

Give me MSRs any day. Although, could they not just choose some tunes other than Highland Wedding, Susan Macleod, Athol Cummers, The Sheepwife, Mrs. MacPherson etc. etc. just for once?

I fully agree! I got up at 3am to watch the MSRs both on Friday and Saturday and only caught a few of the Medleys.

I will say that, at least in the Medleys I saw, the number of those gimmicky transitions you speak of has been greatly reduced. Another gimmick which (finally!) seems to run its course is the switching, in the middle of an ordinary tune which has four-pulse phrases, to three-pulse phrases (the so-called "waltz" variants). It was kinda cool the first thousand times I heard it, but after that I just wanted to scream.

Yes Bob Worrall himself bemoans the repetition in the MSRs every year, with band after band playing the same oldies but goodies. Good for Inveraray to play a rarely-heard March!

Bob has repeatedly called for the RSPBA to call an outright ban on the ten or so most-played Marches, Strathspeys, and Reels in order to force the bands out of their box and play more interesting and obscure tunes. He also has called for tunes to have no more than four parts... he's not a fan of the thirty-part tunes the top bands always play.

Did you catch Power's piobaireachd? It was amazing.