Category: History

Argyllshire Gathering Entries Open/ Set Tune Addition/ Florida Pipe & Drum Academy

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The Argyllshire Gathering Piping Competitions take place in Oban, Argyll, on Wednesday 26 August and Thursday 27 August 2026. Entries are now open here. The website reads: ‘The Competition features two days of piping excellence, with over 200 pipers from across the globe competing in this, the world’s foremost solo piping competition.’ Pipers are encouraged to enter now but their eligibility and acceptance will only be decided early in the new…

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Consideration of Upper Limits on Numbers Following the Demise of two Grade 1 Bands

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Recently, two first grade pipe bands ceased operations, unable to attract enough competent pipers and drummers to compete confidently at the top level. This reduction highlights a growing issue: the remaining top bands have become so large that they absorb much of the available talent, leaving fewer skilled players to sustain other Grade 1 or 2 bands. By Allan Hamilton Historically, a greater number of strong bands existed precisely because…

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Editor’s Notebook: Bands Under Threat/ Big Rab Show/ Angus MacKay/ Talk Piobaireachd

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The well-documented concerns of the audience at last summer’s Worlds is not the only matter which seems to have been passed over by the RSPBA Board of Directors at their October meeting. What about the demise of two of our Grade 1 pipe bands, Johnstone and Closkelt? Did this merit any air time at all? There is a line in the minutes which tells us that one enlightened director did…

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History: A Look at two Piping Books from the 19th Century

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Thanks to the kind offices of Niall Macdonald, great-grand son of the late Neil Angus of that ilk, I have been loaned copies of two interesting, early piping books. I always enjoy a browse through this material. It lets us see how the music, and the writing of it, has developed, and it shows how the early scribes endeavoured to put an oral tradition down on paper. The first is…

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Weekend Contest Results: SPA Juv./ SunBelt, Florida/ Silver Chanter, Australia

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Scottish Pipers’ Association Juvenile (8th Nov.), got underway just shortly after the advertised start time of 8.30am, writes Logan Tannock. It was a slightly shaky start to the day, trying to identify competitors and get them settled into the correct tuning rooms. However, things quickly settled down, and apart from having to deal with the unavoidable clashes that happen at an event with so many competitions, things ran smoothly and…

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