Two notable pipe band devotees have been honoured in HM The Queen’s New Year’s Honours List. John Kelly reports: Mervyn Herron (above) from Northern Ireland said he is ‘over the moon’ after being awarded an MBE for services to the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association (RSPBA) Northern Ireland.  The 67-year-old first joined the ranks back in the early 1980s and devoted over 30 years to the organisation before his retirement…

We are grateful for these two comprehensive responses to the request for tunes associated with the Highland Light Infantry regiment of the British Army. They followed a request for assistance from Andrew Reid the piper for the regiment’s veterans association. The picture above shows the regiment pipe band parading in Cairo, Egypt, in 1946. Reader David Livingstone: For what it’s worth, my 1932 potted history of line regiments lists HLI…

Welcome back! I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had an enjoyable and fulfilling time. I can say, festivities excepted, that the judges for the John Cruickshank VC composing competition have been hard at work. P/Ms Ian McLellan, Stuart Liddell, Richard Parkes and myself have narrowed the 42 entries down to three finalists and will be spending the next couple of days identifying the best tune for the £1,000 first prize….

Bruce Beavis in Chicago: ‘I’m the P/Sgt for a start-up Grade 5 band and I was thinking about tuning practice chanters.   ‘I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the general topic of musicianship in bagpiping and wonder what your thoughts are.  ‘It seems odd to me that we treat the bagpipe like a musical instrument but spend most of our time practicing on a practice chanter that has…