Solo Piping Festival 2017

Last weekend was the Auckland Solo Piping Festival in which I entered C grade 2/4 March and C grade Strathspey and Reel.

I decided to use my new band reed that I got from Kerry on Wednesday.  This reed sounded really good, was easy to control, and didn’t squeak anywhere.  I asked Michel to help tune me up the night before, and this made the Pipes sound really nice.

Michel also gave me some advice which was to add more low G on my Grips and Tauraluaths.

I had a strategy for warming up which was to warm up several times during the day to also help with the tunes. I was relaxed and ready.

The audience was bigger than expected and in this environment was a bit daunting as alot of people were watching.  I think this did effect my performance as both were a bit faster that I thought they were after looking at the video after.

The March was ok, but I couldn’t get some of the technique.  I think this was due to the fact I had sweaty hands from gripping the stock to tightly.

The Strathspey was good, considering it was a bit faster than anticipated, it did seem like some of the expression was a bit early, but the pace did not speed up as I would expect it would in this case.  I think the expression was good for the first competition of the season.

The reel was a bit fast and I did suffer in the 3rd part with a bit of rushing in the Tachums, I will need to work on this when the tune is at speed.  I did mess up the last line in the last part quite badly, this was unexpected and sort of ruined the tune.

With all this said I still got First in both events and most points overall.  There was only one other person as Dan Chia put a nail through his thumb and Thomas Bennet did not show up.

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