DRUMMER CAFE

Before I begin I thought I'd share a little of my history to help this make sense.   I began playing drums at age 10 and played through my first year of college before putting down the sticks for about 7 years.  I didn't have enough talented friends to form a garage band while in Jr High and High School so when pitched the idea of playing in a bagpipe band in 8th grade, I somewhat hesitantly agreed.  I played in that band for about 3 years before deciding being a teenager was more important.  But 7 years after putting the sticks down I decided I needed to drum again.  However, I had no drum set to play, nor any musician friends so forming a band was out of the question.  What's a guy to do?  I didn't go to Church at that time so I was left with revisiting the pipe band world.  (I later started going to Church and I've played in our band every Sunday for the last 10 years now.) 

OK, now to pipe band specifically:  My earliest experiences with pipe band was with no written scores or complex rhythms.  We just aped what the lead drummer did and that was that.  However, that is not the usual way.  Most modern bands are designed to compete so written scores are a must.  Pipebands compete in a grade system ranging from grade 1, the highest level, to grade 4 the lowest level.   The musical effect and execution of the music is key and more difficult tunes as well as idioms are present in the higher grades. 

Scottish music is interesting.  The bagpipe does NOT have a volume control.  It’s on or off!  Therefore, the drum corps has to provide the dynamics and the lift to the music.  Scottish pipeband music consists of the following types of songs: 

1)  Marches which are self explanatory, except that they should have a sense of swing to it.  (There’s actually sub-genres of marches that I won’t get into.)
 2) A Stratshpey is a song to be danced to that has an idiom of 4 beats per measure where beat 1 is Heavy, beat 2 is light, beat three is medium, and beat 4 is light.  Played correctly, the tune should have “lift”.  It’s moderate tempo and the drums are critical to pulling it off. 
3) A Reel is another dance tune that generally is in 2/2 time and has a nice drive, but not too heavy. 
4) a Jig is another dance that is normally in 6/8 time and has significant drive, but always with the triplet feel of 6/8 time. 
5)  Slow Air.  Slow tune with lots of feeling.  Sparse drum parts. 
6)  Hornpipe – driving tune and usually quite complex. 

Scottish drumming styles.  Scottish rudimentary drumming has a few distinct differences than American drum corps.  The style and technique should always be very loose and fluid.  Extreme finger control is required when advancing to higher levels.  We’re encouraged to use a lot of arm motion while playing as opposed to how I remember playing drum corps which was very rigid and all wrist.  The rolls are buzzed and there’s a “tap” roll rudiment that blew my mind when I first saw it.  Open work is done with single strokes mixed with the occasional double bounce for effect.  There’s also crushed flams where the grace note stays on the head.  The most advanced corps’ chops can probably hang with top DCI corps albeit with different playing styles. 

The rest of the drum corps consists of a single bass drum and a “tenor corps” consisting of  players carrying a single tone drum rather than “quads or quints” etc.  The tenor players “flourish” with their mallets that are attached to their fingers with string.  In recent years, this has turned into quite a spectacle.  Large bands may have 8 tenors with very elaborate routines.  See the youtube video below. 

Competing.  Almost all major metro areas have an annual highland games, which includes pipeband competitions.  My band goes to our local games in Arizona and the 3 biggest games in California each year.  Finally, we go to Scotland to compete in the World Championships every 2 years.  It really takes THAT long to fully prepare a group to go (not to mention save the money for the trip!) 

Just a note about my band.  We have a grade 3 competition unit and a grade 4 unit to feed the grade 3 band.  Both bands do well in competition each year.  In fact, the grade 4 unit took 7th in the World in 2007 and it’s bass/tenor corp. won 1st place!  I’m the lead drummer for the grade 4 band after playing in the grade 3 band for many years.  Our webpage is www.mcpb.org. 


So if you’re looking for a unique drumming outlet that will challenge you, keep you busy, and give you a chance to compete at a national or even World class level, then find your local pipeband!  I especially urge any aged out DCI players, or those who played in marching band in high school to check this out.   If you need help finding a band, try http://www.bobdunsire.com/bagpipeweb/index.html or PM me. 


Here are three videos:  This is the House of Edgar Schotts & Dykehead Caledonia Pipeband (grade 1)  from central Scotland.  They are multi World Champion winners and the Drum Corps often wins best drum corp.  The lead drummer, Jim Kilpatrick has won the snare title 16 times before he gave up competing so others can win.  See the 2nd video of him. 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/RMA_PcO5GSE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/RMA_PcO5GSE</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/2RzQMT1lt1E" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/2RzQMT1lt1E</a>


Here's that band in a competition:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/kpOFNUbWOKk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/kpOFNUbWOKk</a>



Here's me with Mr. Kilpatrick.  A  super nice guy! 




Here's my snare line moments before we competed and took 7th in the World in Grade 4 in August 2007. 

Hi Larry,

I remember you saying that the last time pipeband came up a few years ago. 

Yes, there is definitely an adjustment period going from DCI to Pipeband, but drummers with that experience are light years ahead of those who don't have that experience when it comes to getting up-to-speed IMHO. 

A few other thoughts: 

1.  Doing pipeband is a nice compliment to my musical expression.  Pipeband is very technical and precise.  It takes months to get scores down and even longer for a corps to perfect them.  It's almost the polar opposite of playing in my Church band, where I don't use any written scores and most tunes we can perform after only 1 or 2 rehearsals.  In pipeband, we've done concerts where I'll bring my kit and jam along to a jig along with electric guitars added to the mix.  It can be quite fun! 

2.  I've found that the pipband community is a big family.  Most bands that I know have members stick around for decades.  And like the drum community as we know it here at the DC, pipeband drummers are just as cool as you can see from my photo with Jim Kilpatrick above. 

3.  Some argue that competition has no place in music (except for competing for a slice of the world's entertainment revenue) but I find it to be refreshing and challenging.  Yes, there are some subjectives, but overall the method works and the bands that execute the best and perform the music the most musically come out on top.  It's quite a feeling to compete at a world championship and I doubt I could explain that feeling without dragging you through the two year long preparation process. 

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you have a better appreciation for those guys in kilts marching through your town.