Great Lakes, grade 2 medley (from inside the OUTHOUSE!) Alma 2024

On Saturday May 25, 2024, I competed in my very first-ever solo piping contest at the Alma Highland Festival and Games in grade 2 this year. 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. My dad drove me there, and he was with me the whole time.
I recorded the entire event using my awesome Sound Professionals in-ear microphones to give an accurate "audioselfie". I love using these, primarily because dad won't have to keep worrying about my recorder and so I can just let it run hands-free, but also, I love that it gives the listener the exact perspective of what I heard and how I heard it. THe microphones are small enough physically to allow the puffy rubber earplugs to also be inserted in my ear.
After I was all completely finished with my solo events, my dad and I just relaxed and hung out where the pipe bands were going to compete against each other. Because the band of which I'm a piper, Greater Midwest, didn't compete, I didn't have to play my pipes for the rest of the day.
In this competition, there were 10 grade 5 bands, only two grade 4 bands, and three grade 2 bands. There were no grade 3 bands, nor were there any grade 1 bands competing here. Sad but true. Fortunately, the rest of the audio should speak for itself, even with what Chris the announcer says on the microphone behind me, so there's no real point of saying more in the description. LOL.
This is the Great Lakes pipe band. The only real different thing I need to point out about this recording was the unfortunately fact that, because I needed to use the bathroom SUPER BADLY after Midlothian played, we ended up having to miss most of the Great Lakes medley! And worst of all, since they were the band that would've won this contest, and the fact that we missed them... as I like to say, it was DAMRAU!!!!!!! Anyway, since they obviously don't have bathrooms they have nasty outhouses that everyone hates. The worst part was that this outhouse didn't have a way to wash your hands, so my hands were TOTALLY 100 PERCENT DIRTY! until we got back in the car! The other problem is, since the outhouse is enclosed, hearing the band from inside the outhouse will sound super tinny, but that's the only thing we could do in a big hurry like that.
#bagpipes #competition #contest #highlandfestival #highlandgames #bagpiper #bagpipers #piper

[@BirlyJoe]

Sounded great 😂

[@michaelkazmierskidunn7189]

Thanks! I didn't play in that band, but I was there to listen. I'm in the Greater Midwest Pipe Band myself. Don't know how well you might know us compared to Great Lakes but we're also a grade 2 band.