By Allan J. MacKenzie
Prizes have been awarded on Saturday November 22, 2025 to the winners of the Mallaig, Ardnamurchan and District (MAaD) Pipe Band’s Annual Tune Composing contest. The tune composition competition, in honour of the generosity and support of the Mallaig Harbour Authority, has produced a number of great new tunes. The MAaD Pipe Band intends to use some of them in their medleys and sets.
The contest rules were really quite simple: The tune submissions were to be entitled The Mallaig Harbour Authority March. It quickly gained the shorter version and is now known as The MHA-rch. Further, marches of any time signature were accepted. True to form, most submissions were in the standard 4/4 time, but there were 2/4, 3 /4 and 6/8 tunes also contending. In a special twist this year, the contest was opened up to musicians of any instrument within the MAaD Pipe Band’s catchment area of West Lochaber. However, it had to be a melody that would suit the pipe idiom with its A-mixolydian (flattened 7th) scale.
This year, there was an incredibly healthy entry of 16 new and unique tune creations. Also, multiple entries were permitted. Submissions were judged anonymously by the accomplished traditional and competitive piper, Pipe Major Duncan Nicholson of the Police Scotland and Federation Pipe Band. Duncan is formerly of Mallaig and Fort William but has very strong Barra roots. He has played in several traditional bands including Tannahill Weavers, Skippinish, The Fergie MacDonald Band and Skerryvore.
Three prizes were awarded. First prize with his two-parted 4/4 march was presented to Dougie Beck of Mallaig. Along with the prestige of winning, Dougie was given £150. Second prize went to Kenneth I. MacKenzie of Glasgow/Ardnamurchan for his four-parted 2/4 March. He received £100, and third prize went to Allan J. MacKenzie of Morar and £50 for a small 6/8 march.
The recording below is Pipe Major Duncan Nicholson playing the winning tune entitled The Mallaig Harbour Authority March, and from this point forward known as The MHA-rch. Recordings of the second and third placed tunes are at the foot of the page.
The awards were presented at a ceilidh in the West Highland Hotel on Saturday afternoon, November 22, 2025. Members from the Mallaig Harbour Authority Offices were in attendance, as were the members of the MAaD Pipe Band. The pipers and drummers displayed their versatility on a few other instruments in true West Highland Ceilidh fashion. A framed copy of the winning tune was presented to Jacqueline McDonell, Chief Executive Officer of the Mallaig Harbour Authority. Jacqueline assured everyone that it will be given pride of place within the Mallaig Harbour Authority offices.
Contest organisers were very pleased to have recordings of these winning tunes, played on the piob mor by our adjudicator Duncan, for their first-time presentation. These renditions got their first public airing on the day – in advance of the announcement of the winners. Attendees were asked to think about how they would rate the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The general consensus was that the crowd easily agreed with Duncan’s determination.
Contest winner Dougie was asked a few questions about his creation and how it came about.
Does composing come easily to you? “Not particularly!” said Dougie. “I’ve written some truly awful tunes over the years, and I think that my mistake has been to be too rushed to get dots down on the page. It’s too easy to treat tune writing as an exercise in filling up 8 bars without thinking about the content or the end goal.”
How do you go about creating a tune? “Once you’ve got a motif or a theme – even just a few notes which define the rhythm and mood of a tune – everything falls into place itself, to some extent,” Dougie added. “The trick is to not go down the road of absolute predictability – yes, the listener needs familiarity in terms of style and genre, otherwise a tune won’t work, but if you can challenge what’s expected a little, it makes a tune much more interesting. Having said that, some of the best tunes, in my opinion, work because it’s almost as if there’s no other way that they could resolve themselves. Think about Freeland Barbour’s great 4/4 March MacPhail of Bunesssan: it’s impossible to imagine that first line ending differently.”
Why did you choose a 4/4? Dougie replied: “4/4 marches aren’t as time limited or space limited as say, 3/4s, 6/8s or ‘light’ 2/4s. You’ve got a lot of headroom in a 4/4 to play about with a motif, change focus in register from bottom hand to top hand and develop, or challenge, the rhythm. Take Ròsan an Leth-bhaile (A.K.A. The Wee Highland Laddie): there’s a lot going on in there – the tune shifts registers, with each section sitting in a different tessitura, giving the melody a sense of evolution rather than simply a progression.”
The MAaD Pipe Band has been running these composing competitions for a couple of years now. What was the impact of this tune contest? “It was an incredibly worthwhile initiative,” remarked Dougie. “The tune submissions came from right across The Rough Bounds, or had roots here. To get 16 new tunes from an area with a population of about 4,000 people is pretty amazing I think – it obviously captured people’s imagination. It would be easy to overanalyse things, but maybe we should take notice of the level of support the prize-giving ceilidh in the West Highland Hotel received – the place was jumping. Maybe this kind of event is what people want? Ultimately, it gave us the chance to thank the Mallaig Harbour Authority for their generosity to ourselves and to the community as a whole – that in itself was justification enough to run the event. I think that you, Allan, did great service in masterminding the whole thing – thank you!”
The MAaD Pipe Band intends to run another tune composing competition next autumn. We’ll look for a new sponsor and perhaps it will be for a Strathspey, a reel or even a slow aire, so sharpen your pencils!
The second placed tune below was composed by Kenneth I. MacKenzie and is played Pipe Major Duncan Nicholson.
The third placed tune below was composed by Allan J. MacKenzie and is played Pipe Major Duncan Nicholson.