Competitions

New Music Anniversary Competition

The Lowland and Border Pipers Society announces a new competition

The competition is open to all. It offers a first prize of £250 with second and third prizes of £150 and £100.

GUIDELINES

Entries are invited for new music for the Lowland or Border bagpipe. No particular tune-type is specified but compositions are expected to be in the Lowland and Border idiom. Entrants seeking clarification are directed towards the numerous sources of music published by the LBPS and others and to various articles published in the journal of the Society, Common Stock, as well as to relevant information available in various areas of the Society website and elsewhere.

However, this is a composition for new music, not simply regurgitations of archaic sources. As such, the precise defining of the ‘idiom’ is part of the composer’s task, although it should be apparent to the judges how any entry fits within a living tradition.

Each entry must be accompanied by a message identifying the composer. The composition itself must be on a SEPARATE A4 sheet or in an attached file. This sheet or file must contain a title, and if appropriate a brief description of its background but nothing by which the composer could be identified. Any entry not conforming to this requirement, or whose composer is made known to the judges by any other means, will not be judged.

The composition must not have appeared anywhere in the public domain before the announcement of the winners [November 1^st 2013]

Entries should be submitted before 5pm on Wednesday July 31^st

by email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

or by post

Jeannie Campbell

Flat 2/3

69 Kirkland Street

Glasgow

G20 6SU

Copyright

Copyright of all entries remains with the composer. However, by entering you are granting the LBPS the right to broadcast, perform or publish your entry.

Formats

Entries should be submitted both as written notation and as recorded sound, with the following specifications.

Notation

            Entries may be submitted on A4 paper or in digital format, the only proviso being that they can be easily read and interpreted by the judges. Computer-generated music should ideally be in pdf format, though image formats [scans of hand-written entries] will be accepted. Simple ABC files will NOT be accepted; if you write your entry in abc please use an abc editor that can export to pdf.

Soundfiles

Entries must be accompanied by a sound recording of a performance of the entry. This must be a real piper [not a ‘virtual’ one] playing, though it need not be the composer. MIDI or other electronically-generated soundfiles are not acceptable.

Any of the standard soundfile formats is acceptable and may be submitted by email [up to 5MB] or by post on CD. Data storage devices such as cards, memory sticks etc are not acceptable. The CD, which should be in data format, not an audio CD, must arrive together with the written notation but must contain no information that would identify the entrant. If the written notation is provided in digital form it can be on the same CD, provided it also contains no identifying information. A printed letter identifying the entrant must accompany any postal entry.

Cassette recordings will be accepted, provided the cassette itself does not identify the entrant.

Judging

Judging will be by a selected panel of judges headed by Hamish Moore and Iain MacInnes and their decision is final.

Winners will be notified by phone or email and the winning entries will be performed at an Anniversary Concert to be held in Edinburgh on November 1st.