The Lowland and Border Pipers Society have an interesting method of judging their annual competitions. Each performer is marked out of 100.The whole musical competition atmosphere creates a bunch of players who sound like robots. I can't stand listening to those GHP competition recordings, they're dull as cold oatmeal, because they all sound the same.
50 marks are awarded by a judge looking at technique, tuning and so on. The other 50 are given by 5 members of the audience selected at random (marks out of 10 each) based entirely on the musical experience/ entertainment value /whatever you want to call it. Most of the audience are known to each other and the performers, and it makes for a really good atmosphere.
I believe the timekeeper used to be armed with a water-pistol, but that has been discontinued on safety grounds.
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Richard Evans
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