Compete in solo bagpiping at Highlands Ranch

Well, I won the piobaireachd contest, which was great! I played well against a tough competitor. I didn’t win the MSR or the HJ, though. I’m disappointed that I didn’t win because I played well, but I guess my competitor had the edge. Overall I’m satisfied with my performances. There are a few things I’d do differently, but that gives me something to work for if and when I decide to compete again.

It’s 2 days until my piobaireachd contest. I’ve prepared fairly well, but I think I could have done better. I don’t have a good recording of one of my tunes so I’m not that confident with my interpretation of it. I’ll be really plugging piobaireachd tonight and tomorrow night.

The light music contest is on Sunday and, believe it or not, I’m playing those tunes better than I ever have. Maybe it’s still not good enough to win, but I’m pretty satisfied. I’m making it through without note mistakes and with it sounding more musical. I just have to have confidence, focus, and try to enjoy the music.

I agreed to play the bagpipes for a production of Brigadoon. Little did I realize they wanted me to learn new tunes for this. So some of my time has been taken up with this extra commitment. However, I’m still practicing my contest tunes. My piobaireachd is rustier than I’d like it to be so here is my schedule for this week:

Wednesday: Brigadoon rehearsal, use warm-up time to play piobs.

Thursday: Work on breaks in light music and play 4th parts of both Jigs and Willie Cummings reel. If time permits, practice Donald McLellan with a metronome.

Friday: Before lesson, play all piobaireachds and light music through.

I recorded my light music and made some notes on a few things to fix for each tune. I’m slogging through the fixing now and it’s taking much more time to fix even one thing than I originally thought. As soon as I have fixed the problems listed I will re-record and make a new list of things to fix.

I’m playing piobaireachd at every practice session. It’s still kinda rusty, but is improving.

I will be keeping track of my practicing and my lessons here. I may even draw up a schedule.

My goals for my next lesson on July 13 is to establish a comfortable (not too fast or too slow) tempo for all my light music tunes and ween myself off the metronome.

I will record myself and determine the ballpark speed each tune is comfortable at.

I will also be playing the MSRs and HJs a lot, working on breaks.

For piobaireachd, I will be playing the 3 tunes on a regular basis, getting them shined up again. I will keep track of weaker areas of specific piobaireachd and focus on strengthening them.

I had retired from solos, but now with my band on hiatus I have decided to compete at Highlands Ranch in piobaireachd and light music.

The contest is the second weekend in August, so as of today I have 6 1/2 weeks. I’ve been preparing since the beginning of June, so I’m almost on track. I just need to be disciplined in my preparation.