ENGLISH PIPE BAND CHAMPIONSHIPS 2006

GRADE IV

1 Luton & District
2
Wolverhampton
3 Grampian Corby
4
Welsh Piping Society
5
Essex Caledonian
6
Nottinghamshire Police
7
RAF Waddington
8
City of Manchester Fire Service
9
West Midlands Fire Service
10
Bolton Scottish
11
Ashbourne & District
12
Greater Manchester Celtic P&D
13
Beverley & District
14
N.E. Lincolnshire P&D

The good sound from Corby last week continued today... at least through the MAP qualifying performance, although the drone sound in the qualifier wasn't as good as it should have been.

Some problems were experienced in getting the reeds settled down again for the Grade IV contest proper and, to be truthful, the pipes weren't as well set as they had been earlier in the day. We spent quite a bit of time trying to hunt down and cure rogue 'F's and 'D's. Thought we'd just about got it sorted when we were in the final tuning area waiting to go on, but it wasn't to be.....

The actual performance was quite good - good start and intro, good finish, reasonable playing and a reasonable sound throughout although the variability of the 'F's and 'D's under blowing didn't take too long before they started showing up again. That, coupled with a piping slip on entering the last tune saw us leave the arena disappointed with our own performance.

Having said that, one of the piping judges had us in 1st place and so did the ensemble judge, so perhaps we were being a little too hard on ourselves.

The other piping judge and the drumming judge both placed us 5th, hence we missed out on the top spot overall.

Ah well, new reeds going in this week to give them time to settle down before our next contest - Cowal!