I think I've just wasted nearly 30 years of playing and entering competitions. All of the judges, to my knowledge, judged my playing on the closed method as well as other things. Even Forster Charlton metioned to me that I ran my notes together, many years ago, so he was a believer in the closed method. It seems to me that the true sound of the pipes will be lost because people wont spend the time to play closed fingering and the associated tunes with variations. Playing a succesion of detached notes is a wonderful sound, when playing the variations to a tune; they become something hypnotic, almost dronal.
I should have taked up the Irish pipes! Adrian -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
