As was reported in Piping Press yesterday, the National Piping Centre’s CLASP competitions for amateur pipers is attracting entries from all over the world, writes Joe Moore. There is a real fellowship between participants and a sense of belonging. This was demonstrated when, to mark the recent Burns Night celebrations, we held an online get together. ‘CLASPies and Friends’, is our Facebook group for pipers and their ‘groupies’ and our…

Here are the results from The CLASP January Online Video Submission Competition 2021. We had a large entry across all three grades and from pipers worldwide. This competition marks one year of remote events for The CLASP and we are already preparing for the next scheduled event, which will also run as an online competition throughout March 2021. The entries are now open via the CLASP website and full details for this event…

It is always worthwhile reading Alistair Aitken’s well thought out articles, more so as the contagion continues. Ontario’s beleaguered woes wear on with Maxville and the North American Championships cancelled again. But maybe the RSPBA can pull it off at the Green, with sufficient willing horses coping with the reduction in preparation time. But pipe bands can be viral also, and we miss the infection of enthusiasm and the spreading…

We should temper our reading of this week’s story on the introduction of school’s piping instructors almost 50 years ago with the unpleasant fact that not all appointments were a success. I could name three or four tutors from back then who were just not up to the job. Many children suffered from the negligence and incompetence of these poor teachers. Worse, public employee union tape meant they could not…

Pierre Blanchet is a Breton pipe-maker. He started playing the pipes at the age of 11 in 1958 in the Saint Nazaire area in the south of Brittany. He was given a set of pipes made by Dorig Le Voyer with only one tenor drone and gradually began to make progress as a player. Listening to other players, everything was done by ear with no staff notation, just a system…