This is unreated to the other one, so I thought I'd start a new thread.

Piper George, and in fact most pipers I know, go to a lot of competitions. They play for judges and get graded and ranked against other pipers. Bands go to competitions and get graded. Not ALL bands go to competitions, but most/many bands are a "Grade One Pipe Band" or a "Grade Four Pipe Band".

That is so totally foreign to me. I haven't been "graded" since solo and ensemble festival in my junior year in high school. My high school band went to some festivals and got judged, but that was...um....a LONG time ago. The notion of music as "competition" is........I dunno. I can't quite wrap my head around it.. Certainly there is competition in music, you must win an audition to get the plum job in the orchestra, for example. there are international music competitions, the Tschaikovsky competition is one famous one. But I don't go to clarinet conventions and play selections from a set of 500 tunes, which all clarinetists must know, to get graded and judged on my clarinet playing.

To me it feels as if THE MUSIC and PIPING are two very different things. Music is music, just like it is for any musician, but PIPING is a competition.

Comments?