How we Work
Expectations and Responsibilities
NYPBS is you. We’ve assembled an all-star team of talented, intelligent, creative individuals and this year’s ensemble and performance will be determined by you.
You’re here because we know you’re up to the challenge of learning the material independently between rehearsals, looking after your own instrument and equipment, treating everyone with respect and helping us create a kind inclusive environment and challenging your comfort zone and performing as part of a large ensemble.
Every player is responsible for the quality of our performance, on the individual level this means putting in the right preparation, reaching out when you need help and giving rehearsals and performances your applied concentration and time.
Who’s who
Of course we’re not expecting you to do any of this alone, there’s an amazing team around you to support each other through this ambitious project.
Participants: As you’ll have noticed during Auditions you’re in the finest of company. The amount of knowledge and experience we’ve assembled within our Pipe and Drum corps is incredibly exciting and it means there’s virtually no question or problem we can’t solve together.
Section Leaders (SLs): Each section of the band has a designated leader appointed. They’re responsible for taking a lead from inside the band as a player. They’ll help ensure your sections' motivation, focus, instruments, understanding of the parts and performance at rehearsals and events are on point.
Trainee Tutors (TTs): We have 5 fantastic TTs working with us who are here to support SLs & Participants and develop their own experience as Tutors. They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience and have the added benefit of not playing in the band which means they can bring a healthy dose of perspective working hand in hand with SLs and participants. They’re great people to ask about anything to do with maintaining your instrument, music theory, the music we’re working on, technique, what it’s like to compete at the top level or study music.
Tutors: Every year we connect our ensembles with mentors from the very top of Scotland’s music scene. This includes working with some of them as accompanists and collaborators. We’re really excited to have Grant Cassidy leading our Drumming team this year!
NPC Staff: The NYPBS is a project delivered by The National Piping Centre and is led by Steven Blake and David Shedden. David runs our rehearsals and is the perfect person to ask about things like, what we should have learned by next rehearsal or where the next rehearsal is. Steven is responsible for the whole NYPBS programme and is the perfect person to talk to about questions over protocols and procedures, your development goals, any issues you’re having or things you’re worried about.
David and Steven work with Ailis Sutherland as the Youth & Communities team at NPC. As we go throughout the year we intend to get more of NPC’s excellent tutors to get involved with NYPBS.
Attendance
Although this project runs across a number of months we have very limited contact time together so it’s really important that everyone is reliable with their attendance so we can maximise this. Missing one rehearsal here isn't like missing ‘one week of band’ it’s more like missing 2 months of band relatively!
If you do run into an issue with the dates, or you’re sick or stuck in Iceland because of a volcano, please let us know as soon as you can by emailing us at nypb@thepipingcentre.co.uk
Communication
We communicate via email and we’ll write to you via the email contacts you provided us with in your application forms.
As we are writing to a lot of you at a time, we can sometimes end up in your junk mail so please add us to your email accounts as approved senders. To help with this on our end, we use Mailchimp which should let us know if any emails bounce back.
We are a tiny team but will respond to emails as promptly as we can. If we get a lot of emails at once about a topic affecting everyone, we may write to everyone in response.
We take your privacy seriously and anything you discuss with us directly will be in the strictest confidence.
We are happy to answer any questions you might have about the programme so please do get in with anything you need!
We ask all of our participants to:
read and respond to emails promptly;
inform us of any attendance issues as soon as possible by emailing nypb@thepipingcentre.co.uk;
Send correspondence via email to the above address. Please do not send texts, Facebook or WhatsApp messages to tutors.
We also have a private Facebook Members Page, which you can request access. This can be a useful notice board for internal messaging but in no way replaces our primary mode of contact, which is email.
Rehearsal Schedules
Please arrive at rehearsals between 0930-0945 to set-up for rehearsals starting at 1000 sharp!
Lunch runs from 1300-1400 and we’ll finish up by 1630.