What is different about the drumming in pipe band than drumming in other types of music?
Drum music today spans a wide variety of marching band, rock band, jazz band, drum and bugle corps, and other types. Pipe band drumming is playing in unison a large number of tunes that range from simple to very complex. The settings chosen by each band reflect the abilities of the drummers in that band. By constant effort, each drum line in each band is able to perform increasingly complex settings. The drum settings are written to accompany, support and embellish the pipe music without obscuring the pipe music. The assistance of a professional mentor, as for example in our case, Andy White, percussion performer, percussion judge, and instructor, as a key element of improvement. While a given pipe tune is played by the pipes almost identically band to band, each different band often plays quite different drum settings for the same tune. This lends interest to audiences and for the drummers. In keeping with our efforts to emulate the Black Watch, many of our drum settings are similar t
