End of the season reflections

I recently completed my last competion of the year, and it's time to look back.  This was my second year in grade 2, and it had some high points and low points. 

I won't recap all of my solo competitions from the year; you can peruse the gory details yourself on the solo recap page.  There were high points and low points, and I came away with a fair amount of hardware, including my first AGLs in grade 2.

After two years, I've decided to leave the Graham Highlanders.  This is for several reasons, mostly the distance to the band, but also because I want to really focus on my solo competitions for at least a year.  As to future band involvement, I'm sure I'll be back with a band soon, but I have no thoughts as to which band or when.

Speaking of solo competitions, I've decided that 2009 will be my big push to get up to grade 1, and there's a lot of work I need to do for that.  I'll be hitting the exercises hard over the winter and trying to learn a bunch of new tunes for next year's competitions.  

There is a new development as well.  Although I won Piper of the Day at the Maine Highland Games, I will likely not be returning to defend my title.  That's because I'll be organizing and running the solo piping and drumming competitions there.  I'm taking over from Ross Faneuf, who has run the solos since about 1999.  I have some ideas for things I'd like to do, including an increase of the number of grade 1 and 2 pipers.  If you play solos in any grade, August is a great time to be in Maine!

As to instrumentation, I'm still playing my 1940's Hendersons, and I plan to continue that.  They have done very well by me, and I've been generally very pleased with the performance of my Kron Medallist chanter, especially once I fitted it with a Higgins reed.  I've also come to be the owner of an early model MacLellan chanter, which I've played a little but needs a nice reed.  I have a feeling that the right reed will make that chanter nothing short of spectacular, and I'll be working on finding a match for it.

As to the noncompetitive piping, I'm going to try to cut back.  By this I mean gigs like weddings and funerals.  The extra money is nice, but it takes a big chunk of my time (usually weekends) and dealing with the "This is where I want you to stand and this is what I want you to play" gets old.  I played a lot of gigs in August and September, and I've realized there's a limit to the amount bagpipes I can talk with people who know nothing about pipes.

That's all the piping stuff on my mind for now.  Have a good one!