Category: Pipe Bands

John MacKenzie’s Book Now Available in Digital Edition

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Fifty plus years after it was first offered to the public, the P/M John MacKenzie collection of bagpipe music is now once more available as a digital download. John composed tunes all of his life, but it was in 1973, a time when new publications were infrequent to say the least, that he produced his ‘Collection of Bagpipe Music’. It was very well received, containing as it did outstanding music…

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Gourock Games: First Blood to Shotts/ Leinster: SLOT ‘Outstanding’

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A warm bright start at the first central belt contest of the pipe band season at Gourock. However storms moved in from the coast bringing torrential rain and the cancellation of the massed bands and march past. As the photograph shows, this was a sensible decision given the extreme weather. Winners in Grade 1 were Shotts and Dykehead who placed second from both piping judges (B Donaldson and J Wilson),…

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Editor’s Notebook: Bands Get Ready/ RSPS Results/ Tune Search/ NPC Logo/ Norway Query

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Up at Oban last weekend fellow judge Robert Barnes was telling me his Methil band are struggling to make the first Major at Forres in a month’s time. They’ve lost their drum corps. This is a story we’ve all heard before – and all over the country. There is a real need for some structured teaching programme for drummers (and pipers) that helps a band like Barney’s. Maybe it is…

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History: Famous Composer John Balloch

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My great grandfather was John Balloch [above], the composer of such popular tunes at the 25th KOSB’s Farewell to Meerut and Auchmountain’s Bonnie Glen. His son Donald, my grandfather, was also a piper. Auchmountain’s Bonnie Glen is a well known beauty spot near Greenock where P/M Balloch settled before WW1. There may be other unattributed tunes of his in the Royal Scots Collection by James Robertson. By Stuart Herron His…

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Jimmy Anderson 1946-2024

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Jimmy Anderson, who has died aged 77, was a World Pipe Band Championship winning piper with Muirhead and Sons and the man who half a century ago led the introduction of bagpipes into folk groups. His successes at the Worlds came in the legendary Muirheads band of the 1960s, and he was the proud owner of three plaques commemorating wins in 1967, ’68 and ’69. With brothers Peter and Tommy,…

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