2010 Seaside Highland Games, Ventura, California

California has a wealth of pipers and bands to choose from, a competition schedule that runs 12 months a year, and a wealth of pipers and bands to compete with, along with a wealth of everything else (except actual money). For these reasons, California bands are very good bands full of tiptop pipers and drummers.
Despite these odds, last year the Salt Lake Scots scraped up enough money to send the band to Ventura to compete against these bands. As you might expect, we did not place. Or even show.
What we DID do was take the score sheets back to Utah and study them and apply them to our playing. We listened to top bands like SFU (Simon Fraser University), and we got people like Bob Worrall in to tell us how we could improve. We worked those sets ad nauseatum. The better pipers were aching for a chance to play the harder, Grade III, tunes that they used to play to warm up in Grade III practice. We scraped up some more money and went back to Ventura this year.
Pretty much the same bands were competing this year as competed last year, the best being UCR (University of California Riverside), the LA Scots, and Westminster, but also including our brother band, White Peaks from down Payson way. It was nice to have familiar White Peaks faces around corners and in hallways.
Saturday was the Timed Medley competition. This is a selection of tunes that have to contain certain types of tunes (march-strathspey-reel-slow aire-jig), and the whole set has to last a certain amount of time: not too short, not too long. If you get nervous and play the set too fast, you are under time and get disqualified. If you get nervous and play the set too slow, you go over time and get disqualified.
Our tendency is to play faster and faster, like a locomotive with no brakes heading downhill towards the washed-out bridge.
About an hour before our turn, we played bits of tunes and strike-ins and did some last minute tuning. The PM listened to who made the stupid mistakes still, and at T-minus-20 minutes he called a break and spoke to those people. The only comment directed towards me was, "How're ya feelin'?" I raised a thumb in response. When we circled back up again, we were 3 pipers shorter. We tried the Achilles tunes again and they were perfect.
Marching up to the line always strikes me the same way walking up to the guillotine struck the French nobility. If I allow, I can get lead butterflies in my stomach and overcooked noodle arms and legs. I tell myself that I've played this set well a million times before. I also tell myself that I am not that other person, the person who collapses under pressure, who can't do anything well, who gives up at the least friction. I used to be that person. I used to psyche myself out of doing things well.
Sometimes I still am that person, but I don't have to be. I can choose to be the piper whose brain doesn't have to remember the tune because my fingers remember it perfectly. I can choose to be the piper who focuses on the tiny errors from last time and corrects them as I play this time. I can choose to be the piper for whom the world outside the circle DOES NOT EXIST! No judges, no audience, and above all, no snarling Other-Band pipers praying I'll do something wrong. There's just me and some friends playing the set perfectly the first time through for practice like we've done a million times before. There's just the tunes in my head, the tapping foot, the beating drums, and the moving fingers. Nothing scary in that.
Next thing I knew, the set was over.
We circled up just out of range of the audience and discussed what went wrong. Well, something happened at the beginning of the slow aire, perhaps a timing issue, but we corrected it and went on. Nobody could think of much else. Everybody kicked back until Massed Bands at 5:00, when all 200 pipers and nearly as many drummers got together to wait for extended lengths of time to learn who'd won Saturday's competition.
I wasn't hoping for much. I had heard the other bands and they were all excellent. If we were really lucky, we might get 3rd. But they called out third place and it wasn't us. I gave up hope. Second place was announced. OK, OK, I thought, let's just get this over with so I can go back to the hotel and go to bed. First place.

Salt Lake Scots!!!

Oh! My! Gosh!

It was not a dream because the rest of the Scots cheered. We really did get first place for the Timed Medley (the more difficult of the two sets we performed). We beat out all the bands that beat us out last year! I didn't care what happened after that: my summer was made.
Sunday we competed with our Quick March Medley, a collection of 4 marches of various kinds. We've been playing this set for at least 6 years. I don't know about the rest of them, but I can play it in my sleep, and often do.
Nobody was cut at the last minute. We marched up to the line with the same leaden butterflies hovering threateningly over my head. I used them to keep me focused on how the tunes were supposed to be played. I used my fingers to remember the notes. Before I knew it, the set was over and we had marched out. Again we circled up, but all that was mentioned was a wrong note or possibly two, nothing significant. Again we broke until Massed Bands, which again involved interminable standing around and waiting. And again, we didn't get third. Or second.

First Place: Salt Lake Scots!

And because we'd won both days' competition, we got the aggregate trophy, too! Said aggregate trophy is a traveling plastic cup on a stick on a plinth, rather beat up from all the traveling it has done over the years. It's not shiny. It's not engraved with our band or anything. But. We get to keep it for a year because We Were the Best! The moment in time shines bright enough for 10 trophies!
We packed up and went home. Dennis was even nice to me and gave me a ride back to the hotel to wait for my Dear Family.
I'm still have difficulty believing. We swept the Seaside Games!

A Funny Lesson

Once upon a time, work days and lesson or band days were all different days. Once.
Then I got a promotion to Crew Support LEAD (acting lead--until Erin S. gets back from maternity leave on or about the end of August) where I have weekends off, but work evenings Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Makes it very hard to go to band practice and lessons.

But, by the skin of my teeth, I was able to get time off this evening's lesson. This involved dashing madly from Work to the Celtic Center, checking that Small Son was on his way from home, and ducking into the group room. There was actually quite a crowd there: Sande, Trevor, Kevin, John and I.

It appears there is an easier version of our jig, Piper's Wedding, that Jason invented just for the band because we weren't getting the strikes in the ending of each part. So we went over that, no problem. Well, OK, some tuning problems with certain people's chanter, but we won't mention any names. It sure sounds better now, though. Then the banter started.

I think that Jason gets a little burnt out, teaching lesson after lesson with no break inbetween. So habitually in our lesson, the last of the day, we spend an amount of time on banter. This can include subjects ranging from piping to wrestling to movies to parents . . . well, anything really.
Tonight's banter began with a discussion of the judges' comments on our performance at Payson Highland Games last weekend. I'm sorry, but I don't remember all the comments word for word, but I do remember that a lot of fun was made about people marching . . . Kevin was the butt of several jokes, due to his inability to step in time to the music. He took it in good stride, though . . . . heheheheh!
Jason recalled a newspaper photo he'd seen of the band from the Fourth of July. We were not in step. It seems that when we botched Green Hills at the Park City Fourth of July Parade, and Jason stopped us mid-tune and restarted us, we restarted the tune as we stepped out on our right foot instead of the left as we should have. Some people skipped to get back in step, and some people did not. Apparently some enterprising photographer took a picture of us at that moment in time. Our Chief Drummer Dude, BJ, must have noticed that we were not all in step, from his vantage point on the last row, because after the tune was finished and we had marched a few steps in (relative) silence, he called out, "Left! Left! Left, right, left!"

Then Jason hatched an hilarious plan (if he remembers). Next band practice, once we get tuned and warmed up and are collected with the drummers, Jason will call out a tune--say Green Hills--and the pipers will strike up and play, by prior agreement, say, Scotland The Brave, while the drummers start drumming Green Hills. A lot of laughing and not a lot of chantering was happening as we imagined BJ's face as he attempts to figure out what is going on.
I would LOVE to see that.

Well, we finally got down to business, and ran through Josh's Monstrosity Part 3. It went well. Some more banter. Then Jason called out Part 4. I was playing Part 4. But everybody else was playing . . . I don't know WHAT they were all playing. We stopped. I verified that we WERE playing Part 4. Right? Yes, Part 4. We started again, and again random parts of the tune were played simultaneously. Again we stopped, laughed about it, and then Jason said, oh my gosh he was playing Part 2! We all laughed and laughed. We must have all been very tired to have laughed so much about such a silly thing.

When pipes were got out, I was . . . nearly in tune already! Yessssssssss! We tried Piper's Wedding again and it went much better. BJ came in with his drum pad. I was so tempted to laugh again, thinking about band practice, but I did not. He wanted to try his drumming accompaniment to the new version of Piper's Wedding. Jason also wanted to try the new harmony to be played at the simplified place to see how it would all sound. Five melody pipers against one harmony piper and one drum pad was not giving BJ a very good idea of the final sound, so I was asked to play melody while Jason played harmony and BJ drummed on his pad. It sounded very cool. Much cooler than I would have expected.
I was proud to have been chosen to play in a trio.

Then I ran back to work, where I still am, until 0400 Friday morning. Still trying to get time off for band practice. Still unsure how exactly that is done.

I'd hate to miss that prank, though.

The A Team

Band last night was uneventful. We mostly played the sets through beautifully the first time. The talk of the circle was that apparently Jason had got a cell phone. Mr. Anti-Technology. Somebody quipped: Next thing you know he'll be sending out his own emails. (Ian sends out all the emails: 'Jason says this, Jason says that'.)

Tonight was group lesson, but it was only Trevor and John and me. We PC'd through Josh's Monstrosity and Captain Colin Campbell. Then we did some tuning and repairing of tape and drones and tried Josh's on pipes from memory.
Last week, if you recall--if I even told you--I totally messed up this tune trying it on pipes. The really tricky parts of this tune is that it switches time signatures about 12 times over the length of the tune, and some rather awkward strikes. During this last week, on a couple of the cooler days, I practiced it on pipes and it got . . .mmm . . . a little better. So tonight I got through parts I and II no problem. Playing part III by itself was also no problem. It was when we tried I, II and III in sequence that I fell apart. Just couldn't get the bridge from II to III. All the parts start on E, and I couldn't remember if part III went up from E or down from E. I guessed 'up' and guessed wrong. That's what I'll be working on this week: I, II, III in sequence.
After the lesson Jason brought up Small Son's frustration with his strike-ins, so I went over the situation and what I suspected the problem was. I had explained all this to Sean just before the lesson and he had given me a new reed for SS to try. (I was going to give him my other Kinnaird tenor drone reed, but I couldn't find it when I got home.) We discussed the bag and the drone and chanter reeds, and some possibly solutions. All three of us are hopefull that SS's problem can be solved.
Then I gathered my courage and asked a question that I have been wondering about for awhile. I asked for brutal honesty in the answer. I sat down in preparation. The question was: am I a dependable piper. That is to say, I can be counted on to show up for practices and gigs on time, and to play the tunes well.
There was no hesitation in the answer: Yes. Absolutely. It has been quite a while that Jason has considered me to be one of the pipers he wants to have present at a gig or performance; the 'A' Team, if you want to call it that. I have improved greatly over the last 6 months, and as soon as I learn Josh's, I can participate in some small group medleys. My tone is good. Fingering, focus . . . I can't remember what all else he said, but it was all good. Much more than I expected.

I have achieved a lofty goal. I am content.

I had a gatorade and a salted nut roll to celebrate.


P.S. Jason actually got an iPhone. He made a recording of the group playing Josh's on it.
You heard it here first.

The Fourth of July . . . and the Third . . .

This year, due to certain cutbacks in our sponsors' budgets, we did two parades again, but the Sandy one was the evening of the third and it was a mild day, and the Park City Parade was on the fourth in the morning, and it was milder.

No heat stroke happened.

Still not a good experience.

Sandy
3 July 2010 1700h Tune-up
1800h Step-off

We all started tuning ourselves since Jason hadn't arrived within 5 minutes of the assigned tune-up time of 1700h. I think he was 15 minutes late or something. We had some tuning issues, myself included, but we got them worked out just minutes before step-off. I say "we", but you know I mean "PM". Aaron and Ian helped. Being late seems to make Jason angry. But he wasn't too late so he wasn't too angry. We still joked around, in between focusing. The parade went very well. My whole family, including some Extendeds, were there, too. It was nice to have somebody personal to play for.

Halfway through the parade, BJ who was calling out the sets, lost his voice. It was so funny to hear his voice cracking from the last row, jumping up the octave as if he was 14.

About 3/4 of the way around, I was about spent. Even skipped the last half of the Mill set. Just couldn't do it. Then a little kid started throwing pop-rocks at our feet and I threatened him with beheading if he did it again. He was instantly cowed. I, on the other hand, felt MUCH better, and was able to finish the parade with energy.
No sore lip, either.

Park City
04 July 2010 1000h Tune-up
1100h Step-off
The band had been assigned the #15 slot, per our request to be as far forward as possible, and had been advised to arrive at 0915h. This arrival time was scoffed at by all; we did not want to stand around for 2 hours tuning and wearing out our lips. But shortly after I got there (1010h), a parade lady wearing Not Much At All told us they had moved us up to #4 so we could pace the parade at 4 mph. After delivering this tidbit, she dashed away in her halter dress and high-heeled sandals. Sandy and I started warming up; presently Jack found us. Nick arrived and started the tuning process, but he couldn't get my chanter to tune correctly, no matter what he did. I suspect, looking back, this was because I had dampened my sponge* the day before (per instructions) in preparation for a hot day and then it wasn't--this day either. If my (and possibly other people's) sponge is damp on a chilly day, the chanter won't stay tuned. More and more people arrived and got busy tuning.

Time passed.

The more time passed, the more people looked stressed and anxious, peering down the hill periodically. We all knew that the later Jason was, the more angry he was. Not necessarily at us, just at the situation in general. This was the latest he had ever been. Traffic jams and blocked streets exploded all around us.

At about 1035h when everybody (except me) was pretty much as tuned as Nick and Tyler could get them, he appeared.

I don't really know what to say about the next half hour. To say the least, it was very stressful. I kept hookah-ing my pipes to keep them warm (did I mention it was chilly?), and got light-headed and had to lean on Jack's shoulder, with Karen and Sandy and BJ clustered around offering first aid and support if necessary, until I could see again. Jason's hands shook as he tuned, and he didn't say much except to demand who had accepted that we be moved to #4, or to tell somebody their D was flat. Waves of anger and frustration radiated off him. Corresponding waves of stress radiated off the rest of us. There were no smiles, no jokes.
The electric cart lady buzzed down at 1105h to nag us: we were supposed to already be up at the top of the hill, the parade was starting! More arguing ensued--not worth repeating--and we silently strode up the hill.

Floats were indeed moving out, and the USAF did its flyover as we circled up again at the top of the hill and got drones one more time. The block that we formed . . . um . . . four pipers in each of the first two rows, and me alone in the last row. I didn't say a thing, even though usually with 9 pipers, we have 2 rows of 4 and Jason as Odd Piper Out, directing on the right. Half the time I shared my row with Dennis on bass drum.

If Pete had been there to bet on which tune we started with, he would have won again this year. We did the Mill Set, Minstrel Boy/Wearin' O' the Green, Green Hills/Battle's O'er, Highland Cathedral, and Scotland the Brave Twice Through over and over down the parade route.
Just after the jog, we got to Green Hills. BJ called it out, and we struck up. But for the life of me I could not remember how it started, even though I had just played it perfectly 10 minutes before. Seems I wasn't the only one. After two measures of Something Terrible, something happened that almost never happens: we were cut off in mid-performance! With flames shooting out of his nose and ears, Jason started us again, in front of the whole parade.

It was embarassing.

At parade's end, according to custom, we circled up and reviewed how it all went. There was no excuse for that Green Hills start, we were curtly told. Some other errors were pointed out to us, PM handshakes all around (which I nearly missed because I was trying to get my tuner back from Nick at the same time) and we were dismissed. I did not stick around to see the rest of the parade, as I had to be in church in an hour to conduct Relief Society, with my mother-in-law in attendance. I skeedaddled.


*Inside the bag is a moisture control system with 4 chambers. Three of the chambers have kitty litter to absorb moisture; the fourth has a sea sponge that can be dampened to add moisture.

Carrying the Wrong Tune

Last week practice, as per usual, people were facing walls and trees, warming and tuning their pipes. Me, too. I ran through my march and slow aire, then the circle was called. PM went around fine-tuning. As he tuned the person next to me, he commented on my playing during the warm-up: What was that you were playing? It sounded . . . nice.

What was wrong with me? Playing nice? We like variety, but puh-lease!

Then Saturday the band had a gig for the Tooele (that's Two-ILL-ah) Arts Fair, west of Salt Lake about 45 minutes. Warm up and tune up happened, and as we only had an hour, we verbally planned out the program we would play, to see who would do what. PM asked if anybody had solos they could be called on to do. I volunteered my slow aire, but doubted I would be called.

We marched around the fair on the grass and nobody fell into any holes or got strangled on wires, oddly enough. We circled up in front of the beer tent where it was cool and shady and a ready-to-welcome-anybody crowd was assembled, glasses in hand. The two competition sets were run through (I even played the timed medley--including the jig--and did well), the 9/8s, a few small groups, then PM turned to me and asked if I would play my solo. I stepped forward and struck in and played.

But . . . hey! There's no birl in my slow aire! It's sounded like it went with the rest of the tune, but didn't sound like My Slow Aire. I carried on, because what else could I do with everybody standing around watching? Got to the end of the first part, and . . . no second part came to mind. My fingers also failed me and did not automatically start the second part. Mentally I knew it started with E or something, but . . . . nothing was there. So at the end of the 'first part', I cut off. Shrugged. Puzzled.

The point of having people play solos is to give the other pipers a break, so the longer the tune is that you play, the longer the break is that the others have. That goal was not achieved with the (short) (VERY short) tune that came out of my chanter. My slow aire can be as long as 4 minutes if you stretch it out. If I had played it.

After about an hour of puzzling, I figured out that I had played Cearcl a Couinn (spelled wrong even in Gaelic), a (short) . . . (VERY short) slow aire we were going to put into the Grade IV medley. I learned it, and then it didn't get put in. There it still was, lying dormant, waiting to embarass me. I'm sure even now, 5 days later, it still stops periodically and falls over laughing just to remember the time it knocked me off my High Horse.

Pied Piper of . . . Cows?

You never know when the most commonplace things will go wonky on you.

This last week I went to a reunion of my husband's family. It was held in a beautiful lodge just outside Yellowstone Park, in a cabiny area surrounded by pastureland and a barbed-wire fence. I was asked to bring my pipes as we were also celebrating my parents-in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary, along with a couple of birthdays. After the first day--our Day in the Park where it snowed all day--the weather was beautiful, so I took my pipes for a little walk to a remote-er part of the area to get a bit of practice in.

I found a wooded corner of the area. Across the barbed-wire fence was a typically huge pasture with about 200 head of black cows scattered over it, about 4 cows per acre, standing around individually chewing their cud, as cows are wont to do. I'm no expert on cow breeds. All I can tell you is that they were pitch black and rather large. Cows are pretty commonplace in Idaho, and I am not generally afraid of them. They don't DO anything. So I paid them no attention and got down to work

As per instructions, I plugged my drones and started getting my chanter in tune, with the tuner balanced on a dead log. Naturally this dead log had me facing away from the pasture. As I ran through an practice tune, in some distant part of my mind were the bird songs, the wind, the sunshine, the gentle lowing of the cows . . . It was a really beautiful day. Perfect for sending some slow aires or marches winging over the countryside.

As the tune came to an end, I noticed that the general tone of cow noise had gone from Calm to Anxious and Upset. Slowly, I turned around.

Making a bee-line (if the cows will pardon the expression) towards me at a trot were about two-thirds of the cows in that pasture! They were all maw-ing anxiously, twitching their ears and stomping and staring at me as if I had done something terribly wrong--broken the Cattle Code, perhaps, or pretended to be Chased By Wolves or something. They lined up in a Black Cow Mass about 20 feet away, but kept inching forward.

I suddenly realized that the only thing separating me from their hundreds of sharp hooves and horns were 4 tiny strands of wire.

More cows continued to arrive, nudging the previous ones forward.

I slowly picked up my pipe case and started moving away from them. No fast moves. You never know what a herd of Emotionally Unbalanced Cows will do. I achieved the dirt road and stood staring at them. What the heck had I done? Was the farmer/rancher also a piper from the Henry's Fork Pipe Band who used his piping to call them in to dinner? Were they looking for hay, and were they now Upset that I Hadn't Given Them Any?

Now that almost 100 yards separated us and an unused cabin porch was handy, I was a bit braver. "What is your problem?" I asked, rather loudly.

In answer, they turned tail and galloped straight away. I would almost say 'stampeded'.

I wonder what frame of mind they were in when they went in for dinner that night. Did I play the Visiting Uncle and get them All Riled Up before bed?

You never can tell with cows.

You never can tell with piping.

2010 Salt Lake Highland Games

It was pretty much a no-show for the Salt Lake Scots this year.

Friday night our Chief Drummer Dude, BJ, found out his little 2-year-old nephew was seriously mauled by a police dog the father had adopted. The little guy was in surgery to save his life. BJ was too upset to do anything besides pace the hospital waiting room and worry. Understandable.

Next in line for the lead drumming job is Erin, who seemed to have a lot of extraneous responsibilities during these Games, and was not dressed in her kilt. She said she just could not do the complicated rythms that a lead drummer would be required to do, and to do it for a competition was unthinkable. She declined. So we withdrew from the competition. Which was really too bad because some people were only going to compete with the band, and some people gave up a lot of stuff to compete, and even the Bishop and his family came out to hear us play.

The Salt Lake Scots were sparse on the ground. And what was there was Grade IV.
Aaron was not there because he had a family reunion.
Tyler was not there because he was vomiting blood in the hospital.
Ben was there but did not compete because he had just had his gall bladder removed and was hissing through the incisions when he piped.
Andrew was not there, but I don't know why.
Karen was not there because she had to attend a wedding that a family member had discourteously scheduled for the same day as the Games.
Dave was not there . . . probably a hockey conflict.

So instead of competing, we had band practice.

The other information is about solo competitions. It was not raining when I competed in the Grade IV Slow March and 2/4 March competitions (over 40s). I got what I usually get in the Slow March: 4th (or 5th if Dave is competing). Lee, who is a very spitty piper, spit on the judge and got first. Pete took first in the 2/4 march (without spitting). I GOT THIRD! That means I got a medal. My first.

I think I'll wear it for the rest of my life.