There seems to be a certain hesitation, a reticence expressed by some judges regarding their ability to judge settings with which they are not familiar. It is understandable: it seems common sense that if you don’t know a piece or a style very well, you aren’t really in a position to judge it. You might let certain things go that you “shouldn’t”; you might not accept things that you “should”.
It is a difficult position to be in.
And yet, my daughter is a drummer. A competitive side drummer. And over the course of the years, I’ve noticed something: It is a habit of drummers and drum corps to frequently compose new scores to accompany the pipe music. This seems to happen all the time. Scores rarely last very long. Even ones that are in use, are often edited and adjusted before being memorized.
When a competitor steps in front of a drumming judge, therefore, there is nothing a judge can assume about a score that is about to be performed for her or him. In most cases, the score can be completely unfamiliar, totally unknown.
And yet, the judges do their job. They listen to expression, they listen to interpretation, they listen to integration and style and technique.
And they make their decisions.
I suppose one could argue that there are differences, but I’m not sure if they are really all that significant. Good musicianship is something good musicians recognize.
I believe it is fully within the ability of our judges, all of them, to know a good performance when they hear one.










As a drummer from years back, I was always fascinated by how a drummer can be judged on their creativity that is so discouraged by piping judges. Perhaps it’s because we play TO the pipes, and are granted much leeway on our contribution. I have noticed in the 40 years since I first took up the snare, that judges uncomfortable with a drumming style will declare on a competitor’s score sheet that the drum score is not in the “Scottish idiom”. Those judges have no idea how much they deserve to be throttled for saying so. They might as well be saying “Play my style or else”. That’s especially egregious when the judge is also shopping for students. Pipers are, sadly, familiar with this.
brilliantly said.
Partly this is psychology - liking what we know, nervous about what we don’t. And partly, I reckon, it comes down to staff notation and publication: drum scores are not published in the same way as pibroch. There isn’t a common book.
True, but that is changing. Almost all drum clinics now get the wide range of students playing an Alex Duthart arrangement. Either his famous 1960s drum salute or a score from one of his two books first published in the 1980s. My own style was not rooted in reading music (now repaired), and this was common for drummers prior to the time Duthart’s books became widely available.
My particular style, which seems odd to younger players and judges, was first formed on the west coast of America by the students of George Pryde, who was the lead drummer of Shotts and Dykehead in the early 1950s when the entire drum corps was lured away to British Columbia to play for the Powell River PB, a band sponsored by a paper mill. This sort of thing happened again when the Kirkwoods and their corps were snatched from Shotts to go to Ontario in the late 1950s. It was only then that Duthart took over the Shotts drum corps and refined the signature sound that was radical for the time but has now become regarded as the correct “Scottish idiom”.
Sorry to prattle on about drumming, but the similarities of “accepted” schools of thought to the detriment of other styles of playing are striking.
I actually have the Powell River album with the first ever published drum salute recording on it.
Duthart was monstrously influential. Huge. So, yes: I recognize there is an assumed style that most drummers are taught.
Nevertheless, I find it fascinating how capable drumming judges are at determining quality performance without knowing the specific score being played. And yet, somehow, piping judges are presumed incapable of doing so. Sometimes they even presume themselves incapable.
It may go back to that profoundly stupid competition result of Bill Livingstone and the “tape recorder” incident. I don’t know.
“Bill Livingstone and the “tape recorder” incident” - what is that?
Read about it here.
Yes, the Piper’s Persuasion interview with Bill describes how nasty it became. Richardson seemingly “catching” him missing notes in the urlar only after a recording was produced-even though recordings were prohibited. The loss of a gold medal was the result. It was a case of “what you play means more than how you play it”. I agree this happens less in drumming judging than piping. Too bad that rewards for creativity in drumming are not comparable in piping. The music suffers for it.