Pitcher Family Pipes and Drums - pipesanddrums

Teagan and I are registered this year and will probably be solo competing again.  Should be a fun year.

Yes, it has been quite a while since I've updated this.

 

Mindy dropped from the band.  She was told that unless she attended every practice she would not be allowed to compete ... so she left the band.  That left the grade IV band without a tenor drummer - except that --- the drum sergeant's mother would come up from St. George for our competitions.  Interesting, she wasn't coming out to all of our practices, but she got to compete; go figure!

 

I have started a blog on which I post my personal opinions and since this is mainly our family piping experience, I'll stick to that.

 

We have been accepted to participate in the Nauvoo pageant this summer and have been gearing up for that.  We found a used drum harness for my son and purchased a new tenor drum and leg brace for my wife.  I made her a sling (which she really likes).  We have set our reservations and will be showing up in Nauvoo in mid July to do our best to contribute to the pageant.

 

My wife has come out to a few band practices, and we'll just have to see how things go.

Yesterday was the Barclay Memorial Competition held at the Hidden Valley Presbyterian church in Draper.  Teagan and I didn't compete in solo competition, but we did participate with the band in Quick March Medley and Timed Medley.

We had to leave right after the competition, but we did get an email yesterday evening with the results.  Here is the quote from the email:

Congrats to Grade 4!!!!!!!!! In the QMM we tied for 1st place in points with Galloway and were second in the ensemble so we took 2nd place.....in the Timed Medley we took 1st in Piping, 1st in Drumming, 1st in Ensemble, which means 1st overall! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Well, you can imagine we are pretty happy about it.

Our family has wanted to go to Nauvoo as part of the Bagpipes of Nauvoo and participate in the pagent for several years now.  We have finally been able to get the time and money to participate in this event this coming summer and have completed our application.

 

We're all very excited about the possibility of going to Nauvoo.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Teagan and I went up to Jackson Wyoming without Mindy.  She's still planning a wedding, so she decided to stay home.

 

We had a short but enjoyable time there.  The band played in both the Quick March Medley and the Timed Medley.  I don't know how we did because we didn't have enough pipers to compete for placement, but I felt we sounded good and performed well.

 

A friend of ours who was in the drum line when Teagan started was there with the Ben Lomond High School band.  She has graduated and is at Weber State, but she was helping out the school band.  Teagan was very glad to see her and I think it made the trip a bit more enjoyable for him.

 

For the closing massed bands I swapped places with Sandy and played the bass drum.  It's a very ackward instrument to play - I'd never march in a parade with it.

 I've had a couple of performances in the last few days. 

On Friday I piped at the Riverton Park for an American Cancer Society event called the Relay for Life.  You can read more about it on my Grandpa Piper blog.  It was a fun evening.

Tonight I performed over at the care center near us.  It is a home for persons who have fairly severe mental handicaps.  I was asked to take up about 45 minutes.  It was a bit of a challenge, but I was able to do it alternating between my big pipes and small pipes.

I played the mill set (easy) and a couple of parade sets.  I talked about the pipes and the band.  I played a few tunes on the small pipes and then talked some more.  I finished off with Danny Boy, Amazing Grace and Scotland the Brave.  I went about 40 minutes, but I felt good about it.

Teagan and I got invited to march in the Draper Days Parade.  Lee Mashburn is a piping student at the Celtic Center and wanted the bagpipes in the parade for his church (he's the pastor).  The band had decided not to do it and so he was just getting a few pipers and drummers together.

 

There wound up being four pipers (Lee, Sandy, John and myself) and Teagan was the lone drummer (he wasn't too thrilled about that).  We stuck to a few tunes we knew well and other than problems maintaining rank and some strike ins and cut offs, we did okay.

 

The weather wasn't too hot and the parade was about a mile and a half long.  It was my first and probably last attempt at pipe major - it's a tough job.  I was a least able to get us all fairly in tune with each other.  I think that was John and Lee's first parade piping, so with an inexperienced PM and two new pipers I thought we actually did pretty well.

 

Photos of this event can be seen in the Parades section.

 Another Independence Day has come and gone.  We got up a bit earlier today and went to Centerville for the breakfast.  We met Mindy's sister there and Teagan, Val and Mindy enjoyed a breakfast before the parade (I'm not much for breakfast).  We then went to the start of the parade and got tuned up.  We had about 14 pipers, 4 snares, a tenor and two bass drums.

Centerville is a fun parade and runs straight up Main Street for about two miles.  It was a bit overcast today which made the parade fairly pleasant.  My ribs are still sore, but I made it.  Teagan fell on his bike yesterday and had a few scrapes so he wasn't in top form either.

After Centerville we went up to Park City.  We had buses to take us to the top, but it didn't work out quite the way we wanted and we wound up walking up anyway.  The parade itself is my favorite.  The crowds really get into the parade and the street is narrow so the sound is loud.  I like it like that.

Mindy got some good video, so I've added it to the Parade section of this site along with a few photographs.

This is my third year marching in the West Bountiful Parade.  In fact, it is the first parade I every played in.

 

I always enjoy the parades.  The one's I've been in have all been fairly short parades (I would guess less than a mile long).  West Bountiful goes about four or five blocks, makes a turn, goes another couple of blocks, makes another turn and then goes about another two blocks and ends in a Church.

 

It's a morning parade but can still get pretty hot.  I was wearing some new sunglasses in this parade and they kept slipping down my nose as I played.  I would have to push them back up after we played a set.  The last set we played was the Smith's set which has Scotland the Brave at the end.  Because we were close to the finish our pipe major had us keep laying it.  By the time we finished my sunglasses were perched on the very tip of my nose.  Had we gone another round I would have had to stop playing to push them back or let them fall to the ground.

 

We have three parades on the fourth.  Teagan and I will do two of the three this year.

I checked the WUSPBA (Western United States Pipe Band Association) Website and found the official results for the JT Dunnie Pipe Band (this is the name of the Salt Lake Scots Grade IV band).

 

Quick March Medley: 4th place (1st - City of Denver Pipe Band; 2nd - White Peaks Centennial Pipe Band; 3rd - Colorado Isle of Mull Pipe Band)

 

Medley: 4th place (1st - City of Denver Pipe Band; 2nd - Henry's Fork Pipes and Drums; 3rd - Galloway Highlanders)

 

I was surprised to see that the Grade III band didn't compete in the MSR.  They lost to Wasatch and District Pipe Band in the Medley.

Well the first band competition of the year is over and it was a learning experience.

 

The band placed fourth in the Quick March Medley and struggled in the Timed Medley (I'm not sure where we ended up on that one).  Teagan and I left right after the final performance for a hockey party, so we didn't get to see the results.

 

Here is the quote from Peter Barney's email regarding the results.

"In the Quick March Medley we finished tied for 3rd place and at that point it goes to ensemble points in which we lost by one point!.........and we could have done better.....so we can be ready for Payson. 

The Utah Scottish Festival is this weekend at Thanksgiving Point (an excellent venue).  We will be competing with the band, but not solo.  Teagan is a bit burned out on solos and since I was late registering and would be charged a hefty late fee, I decided to relax this year and just compete with the band.  No stress, but I will miss competing.

This site is a place for us to post some of the photographs of our involvement with the pipes and drums.  We'll try to keep it updated with the latest and greatest and throw in some stuff from the past as well.

12 year old Scottish Snare Drummer

TJ performs on the Scottish Snare Drum at the 7th grade talent show. He's the youngest drummer in the Salt Lake Scots Pipe and Drum Band.

Granpiper 6/8 competition 07

This is the tune Donald MacLean of Lewis played in a 6/8 March Grade IV competition. 1st place - 7 competitors

Granpiper 2/4 competition 07

This is the tune Captain Norman Orr Ewing played in a Grade IV 2/4 March competition. 2nd place - 10 competitors

TJ on the snare at SoJo Middle School