Category: Comment

The KOSBs, Willie Bryson and a Mysterious Name Change of One of His Tunes

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I am fortunate to have in my possession an army piper’s manuscript book. It is dated August 1941 and it belonged to Corporal W.E. Grieve, 6th Battalion of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. It contains many competition tunes well beyond regimental basic requirements. As I was searching for tunes relating to WW2, one four-parted 6/8 march, Crossing the Odon, by the well-known Willie Bryson (pictured), caught my eye immediately. The River…

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Black Watch Regimental Museum in Perth is of Considerable Interest to All Pipers

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Many years ago I did an article for the Piping Times detailing the must-see piping monuments and venues dotted around Scotland. They included the Angus MacKay Cairn on the Nith, the College of Piping, the Bobs of Balmoral Cairn on Deeside and Calum Piobair’s monument in Badenoch. To that list you may now like to add the Black Watch Museum, Perth. Among the many hundreds of items on display are…

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Pipe Major’s Wheel of Fortune Results

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Cameron Drummond of Edinburgh was the winner of the popular Pipe Major’s Wheel of Fortune competition, which was held at Danderhall Miners’ Club in Midlothian on Saturday 29 April 2023. The event, which is hosted by the City of Edinburgh Pipe Band, requires pipers to play a medley of tunes which is determined by spinning the golden chanter on the Wheel of Fortune.   The Wheel features 12 tune categories…

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Editor’s Notebook: New BBC Piping Show/ Charles Dunbar/ Captain John Dinner/ Electronic Pipes for Sale/ Moray Boost

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I must say I was impressed with the crisp, no-nonsense delivery of the BBC’s new piping presenter Micheal Steele – maybe not so much with the show. Micheal, from his Gaelic pronunciation, is clearly a speaker of the old tongue and that bilingualism will work well when he re-works things for the Gaelic medium ‘Crunluath’ programme. The new show, entitled ‘Piping Sounds’, is more or less what the critics predicted…

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Argyllshire Gathering and Northern Meeting Pipers and Judges

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The two leading solo piping competitions in the world, the Argyllshire Gathering, Oban, and the Northern Meeting, Inverness, will be held on August 23/24, and August 31/ Sept 1 respectively. Places for competitors are limited to under 30 and are allocated on a track record basis by a joint committee of promoters, competing pipers’ representatives and judges’ representatives. Competitors for the senior events are not listed. The Senior Piobaireachd and…

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