Katharine wrote:
I don't like brass bands with pipes...the pipes don't need anything added...I think it ruins the sound.
As a piper, I appreciate solo Highland pipes, the Highland Pipes & Drums competition genre, and the Pipes & Brass genre.
Each is a unique style which has its own strengths and weaknesses.
For example, sometimes I'll hear a Pipes & Drums band play something and inside I'm screaming to hear the drones move off their continuous Bb and move to the chord I want so much to hear! It's tremendously satisfying and transformative when the brass realizes the chords implicit in the melodies.
On the other hand, there's a magical moment when a military Pipes & Drums is playing along with a Military Band (brass and woodwinds) and the Military Band marches off while both units are playing, and you can hear the steady diminution of the brass & woodwinds while the pipes remain at the same volume; indeed the pipes are left sounding better minus the Military Band!
Part of that is that the tunes they're playing aren't very musical, and the supporting chords aren't doing much to transform the tunes.
Katharine wrote:
I played the flute part on whistle, which fell into the upper-half of the second octave, including many third-octave Ds...
I almost certainly would have used a different whistle to bring the part into the more pleasant part of a whistle's range.
Katharine wrote:
I see plenty of people at a Highland games who look like they're going to Ren Faire...
For sure that's one thing that's changed since I began attending Highland Games in the mid-1970s, at least here in the Western United States.
For many years the Highland Games here were not so unlike the ones in Scotland, with Pipe Bands and Highland Dancing and Scottish athletics and not much else.
Then the Ren Faire people started attending in ever-greater numbers, until it got to the point at our local Games where, in effect, there's a Ren Faire held on the same grounds as the Highland Games.
So, at our local Games now the people you see walking around are from both worlds.
I see you're in Michigan. I've not been to any Highland Games in that state. The closest I've been to are the Highland Games in Wellington Ohio that I attended last summer, and oddly enough I don't remember seeing the Ren Faire people there (but I was there for the Pipe Bands!)