Up and at it with some shopping and more piping events planned.
After coffee and a light breakfast, we headed off to North Stratton’s Band practice at Glasgow Green at 11:00 am. It’s a hot one today with highs reaching 25ºC so shorts are in order!!
We walked down to the Clyde and strolled the walkway to Glasgow Green. An easy 13 minute walk. On the way we chatted with members of a drum major group called The Force that will perform today at the Piping live stage. Nice folks!
We also chatted with a police officer in the dog squad. They were out doing some investigating and had a Britney Spaniel sniffing around the area. Very nice chap.
Some lovely architecture along the way…
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| Metropolitan Cathedral of St Andrew |
We arrived at the park a bit early but after a few minutes both the SFU and North Stratton bands started showing up. They all moved to different areas of the park and started to warm up. We just followed the yellow drums :-) With the warmer dryer weather, lots of bands will play over the grass today to get a feel for the competition day. Moisture control is key here.
Practice is broken into two groups with the drum section playing together, going through their various sets. Meanwhile the pipe section starts to warm up their pipes with individual playing. The tuners (guys with iPhone apps with frequency scales) go around and tune the drones for each player. The exact frequency is targeted so in the end it sounds like one single sound. They go around checking constantly.
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| Drum section warming up in the shade. |
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| Pipe section warming up. |
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| The band has three of these tuners going around checking while they play. |
There are also several key pipers that will take players aside or play beside them to ensure the chanters are matched well through the note range. Small adjustments are made by moving tape around the note holes to obtain a uniform sound. Once the Pipe Major is happy with the overall sound he will run through numerous sets with the drum core.
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| Full band. |
And that is a practice session… taking about an hour and a half. They will return at 15:30 for another one.
We headed to Marks & Spencers and grabbed some food items for lunch today and breakfast tomorrow. Some wine and crisps rounded out the purchase.
Back at our hotel room we unpacked the goods and had a light lunch. Kelly headed off to the shops and I went up to find a particular bottle of scotch. I stopped at the Good Spirits Company and left with a nice single malt Caol Ila for us.
My next stop was the Piping Live Festival at the Piping Center. It was busy with a piping demonstration underway leading into heat 2 of "Piping Idol" where younger pipers battle it out for top spot. Excellent playing by all.
Kelly found her way up to the festival and joined me after doing some shopping. We watched the Drum Major group called The Force, details here and enjoyed the young kids tossing their maces around. Very well done.
A cool drink and then we enjoyed the Beinn Lee Band hammering out a bunch of great tunes. They played for a full hour and it was very good.... really got the crowd into it.
Headed back towards home and stopped for food along the way. Maki & Ramen caught Kelly’s eye so in we went. Fast service and it was very good. Funny thing... after we ate, we spotted lots of other great spots to eat... funny how that works.
Back at the flat, we finished up the blog and did some planning for tomorrow... it should be a busy day! Talk session at Piping Live, lunch, Kelvingrove for an FM practice, dinner and then the Shotts concert in the evening.
Steps: 10,033
Weather was a hot 27ºC with light winds and no rain.
