Evening massed bands / awards ceremony in the rain - Georgetown 2024

On Saturday June 8, my dad and I traveled (the day before) to Georgetown, Ontario, Canada, for a pipe band competition. I'm a piper in the Greater Midwest pipe band in grade 2, and we practice in the Battle Creek area of Michigan. For the nonpipers listening to this, there are at least 5 different grades in piping. Grade 5 is where you start, and then it goes progressively down from there to grade 1, which is the highest grade. After grade 1 is professional.
After all the bands have competed, they have the Massed Bands and awards presentations at the end of the whole festival, including piping and drumming awards, etc. Today wasn't the best massed bands in my personal experience. For one, because there was already a ridiculously huge crowd which is almost guaranteed to ruin almost every piping recording I make, we unfortunately ended up sitting at the very end of the field on the very left side, so hearing the bands was pretty difficult. Add to that the other people in front and back of us completely blocking the sound with their physical bodies occupying the seats, and it really turned out to be quite the Damrau recording to be honest. ANother thing that made Massed Bands not that cool was the fact that it was raining, so we had to wear our Inverness capes,.
First the Massed Bands march in in three groups, with wave 1 the tune is "Mahri's Wedding", group 2 playing "Bonnie Dundee", then group 3 playing "Wings", which is honestly the simplest, sissiest tune I've EVER heard (literally if you gave my sister a practice chanter she'd be able to play it pretty well!). Once all bands are assembled, they play "Glenduerel Highlanders" together while countermarching (so the drummers will get closer and the pipers on the opposite side now, which I tend to refer to as 'the BOO moment' 'cause I'm not a frickin' drummer!), then they march back playing "Brown Haired Maiden". Finally they play "Amazing Grace" led by the entire Ontario Youth Pipe Band. After "Amazing Grace" this band plays a few sets, and eventually after a few awards, the grade 1 band at this contest, the 78th Fraser Highlanders, play an interesting set which finished off a medley they premiered on their "live in Ireland" CD in 1987: "Mist-covered Mountains", followed by the "Little Cascade". I turned up the volume during the "QUICK MARCH!!!!" commands so that they can be heard as clearly as the drum rolls before the tune.
Next is the awards presentation announced by Andrew Giles, the relatively recent president of the Pipers and Pipe Band Society of Ontario.
Finally, after the awards ceremony, as is a popular custom at Highland Festivals, the winning pipe bands for the day march off, starting with the grade 1 first place in this case (78th Fraser Highlanders), then the grade 2 first place, then the grade 3 first place, grade 4 first place and finally the grade 5 first place.
After all the winners have marched out, the rest of the bands conclude with that ridiculously popular tune, "Scotland the Brave", and of course while they didn't win they're still never to be called "losers"!
For this recording I was wearing my super awesome in-ear microphones to get a really accurate "audioselfie", so that you can hear what's going on exactly as I heard it. Ever since maybe 2 weeks prior, I discovered a way to wear them with two windscreens on either side (the mic is on one side only), so that one windscreen (in your ear) will act as an earplug when it comes to playing Highland pipes, and the other side (the mic side with its own windscreen) is actually exposed, so it won't be muffled and you won't hear anything literally inside your head because it's not actually inside your ear (the other side with no mic is the part that would be in your ear at that point). So I wore wear them the new way during this competition.
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