Competition Questions -Reply
CAM MACRAE (CMACRAE@vermontlaw.edu)
Tue, 01 Oct 1996 10:01:12 -0400
My advice would be not to play an arrangement done by the judge if
you can help it. I've learned that it's hard enough to play my own
arrangement of a tune recorded by a judge. For me, the stress of
playing the judge's arrangement would just make the competition more
difficult than it has to be.
Last month at the New Hampshire Highland Games I planned to play
my arrangement "Braighe Lochiel." I didn't know that the judges Laurie
Riley and Michael MacBeany had recorded that tune until the day before
the competition, when they used a section of their arrangement (very
different from mine) to illustrate a point during a workshop. I spent the
next 24 hours worrying about whether or not to play "my" tune.
Eventually I realized that as many tunes as there are out there, it is still
unreasonable and unecessary to expect that none of them will have
been recorded by the judge. And the judges know that. So I played
"Braighe Lochiel. " But it would have been a whole lot easier if I had that
conversation with myself weeks earlier.
And to return to what I said at the beginning. Playing a tune recorded
by Laurie and Michael was hard enough, but If it had been Laurie and
Michael's arrangement that I was playing, my hands would have been
shaking too hard to even find the strings.
Cam MacRae
>>> <calliope@mail.utexas.edu> 09/30/96 01:42pm >>>
In a desperate attempt to change the subject, let me posit these
questions
to those of you who participate in competitions, either as competitors or
judges (or as competitors and judges, presumably not in the same
event!):
If competitors are not required to use their own arrangements, would it
be
a good, bad or neutral thing to use an arrangement done by the judge?
I've
been told, no, don't do that, and then by a judge, yes, I like to hear what
other folks do with my arrangements. Also, is there any kind of
competition where a non-traditional arrangement would be inappropriate
*if
it's not expressly stated in the rules that the arrangements should
conform
to "tradition"* (whatever that might be). I'm curious to know what people
on this list think about it...
That is, if there's anyone left on the list...
calliope@mail.utexas.edu
"Our words must seem to be inevitable." -- William Butler Yeats