I posted a link in the YouTube thread but wanted to start a bigger discussion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umuYhfpTLXk
The piece of music in this video has been the hot topic in pipe bands all summer.
It took a few listens to get my head around it but now I’m a big fan. Getting to hear it played live while standing a few yards away from the composer cemented it for me. This is a modern GHB classic.
What do you non-competing-pipers think?
I rather liked it myself and I’m not a GHP player at all.
Hi Bill! Nice to meet you !
Ok the video:
first let me say all the positive things:
Impecccable!
Innovative!
Impressive!
Avant-Garde!
whoa: just a minute: we cant have avant garde in a sanctioned contest!
Where are the Bombardes?
Where is the Flag corps?
Why are there no mallets, Timps, cymbals + gongs in the kitchen?
Really: there’s not a note out of place, it shows pretty much the limit of what a GHB band can do: it’ s virtuousic, slick, and trad all at once,
But isnt it just one step closer to being a Bagad, or part of DCI?
Why not just have bagad contests, or a pipe corp in a DCI band?
So, I’m oficially a noncomittal 50-50 on it.
BTW: The walk-off is a DIRECT quotation of Kevrenn Alre’s Lorient set, (2005?)
I love it! WOO!
I don’t really get the DCI objection, ChasR. All I see is an exceedingly good pipe band standing in a circle, playing some unusually complex music, with a very slick entrance and exit. It doesn’t remind me of DCI at all: The visual element is minimal and well within what most people would probably consider traditional–nifty entrance and exit, twirling drumsticks. These guys would never be considered visually flashy enough to make it in DCI competition (which is a good thing IMO).
The music is amazing. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard harmony that complex, tight, and in tune from a pipe band. 
Tom
Awesome performance no doubt, but it sounded like a series of well played exercises. It lacked recognizable melodies. I prefer the pipe band to more traditional. I will be surprised if the rest of the pipe band world follows suit with this format. Toronto Police are an amazingly good pipe band.
I thought the same thing but was so compelled by the energy of the performance I listened to it a few more times. There is a melody there and a very clear theme. Once you know the theme it sounds a lot more cohesive.
I think it was far overdue for the medley structure to get deconstructed like this. Not that more traditional medleys lack musicianship. Getting the right sequence of rhythms, keys and key changes to make a medley takes skill.
The subsequent medley performance that day has a more traditional structure but is also a very good medley. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdurbdYya-k&feature=related
I see where some argue that the Toronto Police medley is maybe not appropriate for competition, that it’s maybe more of a concert piece. There is validity to the argument that the medley should have a more concrete structure, like the MSR, but reflect the wider scope of traditional music and allow room for creativity in harmonies and breaks.
Here’s hoping that Toronto Police make through the qualifier so that this medley can get a wider listen. If they play this medley they may risk a DQ from the RSPBA.
Anyways, the sole fact that this medley gets players talking about music and not politics makes it even more valuable.
After further review, I’m still liking this piece. As someone completely removed from the pipe band tradition, I think I perceive the music as a more like a suite with various movements rather than a strict medley of tunes. I won’t say more since my skills at musical analysis are usually limited to ‘it’s a good tune… got a nice beat… I’d dance to it’.
Hi ChasR! Good meeting you as well! Jean Pierre Rasle had me re-thinking my position on no more new pipes.
As a non-band, GHB Practice chanter learner, no pipes yet, piper, I think it’s good to see bands getting away from the box so-to-speak. Musically, it’s certainly clearly more than just a series of exercises. I think ‘The Red Fox’ is not much more than a series of exercises. This has something more.
On the down side - it drags on and gets tedious (as exercises do- touche you say 
)
I just hope this sort of thing doesn’t become faddish among pipe-bands in the way River Dance has - cliched and tired.
Here’s one that I really like -
I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It just sounds like the usual break that you get in a standard medley but longer. Nice harmonies and stuff but I don’t think it’s ground breaking.
Reminds me of steam train, hell bound train etc.
I’m stickin to the 12-step programme! I’m powerless!
I have nothing against DCI, But I hear some overlap here in compositional/arrangment technique with what the pipe band has produced.
There’s bridges, segues, hints of other tunes, that bind the whole thing together into one statement. DCI (and Bagadou) do this well.
Precisely why its contorversial. In DCI,for example, you’ll get a snippet of ‘Dixie’ then a bridge, then first 8 bars of Swannee’, some development, drum solo, link, then segue into reprise and ‘theme from Rocky’ , finale.
here one gets a 'sense ’ of 6/8/ march, hint of Jig, etc, etc; as opposed to the 6/8, slowair/ Hp/jig usual fare. It’s ‘throughcomposed’, more of a pastiche of genre than a ‘theme/development/recap’ sonata-form, or ABACBA rondo, or even variation forms.
agree 110%. So sick of the ‘we-did-better-than-they-the-judges-are-getting-paid-off’ griping which always follows.
The next-placed band down has probably already hired an arranger to top them. Wish you were right, but Sorry, it’s already the next thing.
My own personal taste talking here, but I despise tunes like that.
All flash, no content. So much work to learn and so little reward. Give me a red-eyed-headbangin-foam-at-the-mouth rendition of "Hey, John Cope’ anyday. 
I get more “Journey To Skye” than any of the “train” compositions. It’s more free form and interplays with the drum corps more than the others.
It still doesn’t, nor would I want it to, replace the feeling of a good band cracking through some jigs or reels or even gasp a March/Strathspey/Reel. The latter has been much abused with few bands playing them with strong phrasing or lift.
But having delved into traditional music more, what really bores me about most pipe band medleys is just having strings of tunes slapped together. Even if they flow nicely and have interesting key changes it makes the tunes feel disposable. It’s bad enough when I’ve forgotten the tunes when the band cuts off let alone before the next tune comes along.
What I like about traditional playing is the time spent with a tune. I like giving it a couple repetitions where, even if you don’t slip in any turns or variations, you give the tune a bit of space. Some tunes need that for their character to come out.
This Toronto Police medley is on the other side of the spectrum. It takes repeat listens just to grasp the theme and for the hooks to sink in. Luckily for the band they have the tone and unison to beat the other bands with easily digestible medleys.
It sounds like someone in the pipe band world has been listening to what Rare Air were doing on the “folk” scene in Toronto quarter of a century ago…
I would be interested to see the judging sheets on this to see how it was received. Playing devil’s advocate and being pedantic, a composition of varying and interesting rhythms is still a single piece and does not constitute a medley.
Ian
(I liked it…)
Exactly, Ian, I thought of Na Caberfeidh/Rare Air also.
While the tone of the pipes and the quality of execution are admirable, my ear was longing for a melody to latch onto.
I began thinking about the elements of music- melody, harmony, rythm, and thought “this is what pipe band music is like if you take out the aspect of melody.”
It’s been done before, and successfully by most accounts, in other styles: the early Rap music, that threw out melody and harmony and simply had text chanted in a monotone over a powerful rythm.
Or in traditional pipe music which has no harmony (save for the interaction of the drones with the chanter which is not really harmony per se).
Anyhow a little of that went a long way with me… it’s interesting and daring, but I wouldn’t want to see pipe band music go down that path.
Reminds me of the transitions between tunes in many pipe bands’ medleys, which have been getting longer and more elaborate, sometimes to the point where my ear is screaming “just get on with it and play the bloody tune!”
Very well said!
I hate HATE HATE it when orchestras or bands play a “medley of Christmas favourites” or a “medley of patriotic favourites” or some such.
They are painful to listen to, the breaking up of nice melodies into unmusical fragments which are then interspersed with hokey segues or other cretinous devices.
For every such “arrangement” that is musical and pleasing there are a thousand that are horrible, it seems.
Woe to the pipe band world if this is its goal in the future.
Now about “Steam Train to Mallaig”, I like it. There’s a clear melody at the beginning which is restated later underneath all the arpeggios. To me it never really feels amorphous.
About the Worlds (World Pipe Band Championships to the uninitiated, which were held last Saturday in Glasgow), Toronto Police didn’t come anywhere near qualifying, so we won’t be seeing this piece on the Worlds DVD.
For those that don’t know, pipe bands around the world are graded, grade one being the best bands.
The grade one finals at the Worlds consist of 14 competing bands, 8 of which are “pre-qualified” by means of a complex and incomprehensible formula. The remaining 6 slots are determined by a “qualifying heat” in the morning. (Except some years like this year when 9 bands prequalified which only left 5 slots to be fought over…don’t ask…)
Anyhow the Worlds qualifying heat results were:
In a nomal year Al Cal would have qualified, being 6th in the qualifier.
For those who haven’t seen and heard the Worlds I highly suggest a trip, or if that’s not feasible get the DVDs which are great.
This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone who has been listening to competition piping in the Americas for the last couple of decades. Top grade pipe bands have been playing new compositions and Irish music for at least 10 years. Not much traditional Scottish pipe music at all. And with the new technology in reeds, bags, and pipes themselves, harmonies have become the logical next step.
I heard SL 78th Frasers do a piece very like this in Kansas City this winter so this huge leap in creativity and technique is well on it’s way.
Scottish style Greatpipe music is heard less and less everywhere but in Scotland and from folk musicians who have specialized in playing the old Scottish tunes.
Maybe not solely down that path. I wouldn’t want to give up the traditional music, the jigs, reels, strathspeys, marches etc. But the way the the whole theme develops and uses harmonies and the drum corps to build in tension and excitement is definitely a path that pipe bands should explore more deeply than they have.
I agree with you. There are some attrocious and overwrought transitions. Just starting on the next beat is often just as effective if not more.
And that was my initial reaction to this medley, that it was like a 6 minute bridge. But the melody is there it’s just not the linear, single voice kind we’re used to. Believe me, it gets better and almost addictive after repeated listens.
I agree. Because of the envelope constantly being pushed I was not shocked by this medley. This one is just very far ahead of the trend.
Although I’m not sure how directly equipment plays a role. Sure it provides the means for better tone but I think it’s the trend towards innovation and pushing the limits of what the 9 notes can do in an ensemble that has made these compositions conceivable.
The music you speak of has never really been heard everywhere by people not already interested in the tradition. And as you’ll have heard in the current World Champions medley, there are strong elements of that music given that it features classics like The Atholl Highlanders, Braes of Lochiel and Mrs MacLeod of Raasay. New arrangements of classic tunes is one of the current trends in pipe bands.