current dec 12 online

ISSN 1352-3848
December 2012
VOLUME 29 NO.2
THE JOURNAL OF THE LOWLAND AND BORDER PIPERS’ SOCIETY
Finale of the 2012 Collogue
Royal Scottish Pipers Society Rooms, Edinburgh
IN THIS ISSUE
From the Archive (4); Annual Collogue (6); Will Lamb on playing bouzouki
with pipes (7); Mike Katz on playing pipes with singers (12); The Aspen Tree
and the Border Pipes (16); Three Tunes from the Bowie MS. (24); Cauld Wind
in the Massif Central (28); 25 Years of the Vermont Piping School (33); Johnny
Lad (38; Expanding the Smallpipe II- The Double Chanter (42);
Event Reports (49); Reviews (53); LBPS Events and Notices (58)
1
President Iain MacInnes
Chairman: Hamish Moore
Treasurer Iain Wells
Secretary
Judy Barker
Minute Sec. Jeannie Campbell
Membership Pete Stewart
THE JOURNAL OF THE LOWLAND AND BORDER PIPERS’ SOCIETY
EDITORIAL
N
ext April will see the 30th anniversary of the inaugural meeting
of the Lowland and Border Pipers Society. On the 31st of March, 1983 Mike
Rowan sent out a letter to ‘fellow pipers’ announcing the meeting [see page
4). And the rest, as they say, is history.
And those fellow pipers certainly were
aware that it was indeed history they
were making, since they went to the
trouble of storing just about every item
of paper that the process of establishing
and running the society generated.
Regular readers of this editorial will
possibly notice that I often make reference to the results of those early efforts
in preserving these documents. So
much of what we do from day to day
slips into the abyss of the past that it is
all too easy to miss that what we are
doing is making history, and sometimes
it is history that will reverberate into the
editor@lbps.net
future. Who could have predicted the
transformations that have occurred in
Scottish piping since that day in 1983?
Plans are afoot, as I have mentioned
before, to mark the occasion of the
anniversary with various events, two of
which are described in later pages here
[p. 56]. Your editor will be delighted to
hear of any other suggestions you may
have for other events.
We have also seen during these thirty
years some remarkable developments
in the telling of the story of piping in
Lowland Scotland. One aspect of this
that has been significantly missing is the
European context. There are interesting parallels on the continent that might
reveal clues to the development of the
bellows bagpipe, and we are pleased to
include the aptly named Franco Zampogna’s description of a French example. Detailed study of the history of
The views expressed in Common Stock are those of the contributors and not necessarily those either of the
Editor or of the Lowland & Border Pipers’ Society. The contents of Common Stock are protected by copyright.
None of them may be reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner. The copyright in the
individual contributions belongs to their authors and the copyright in each edition of the magazine as a whole
belongs to the Society. ]
2
smallpipes in eastern Europe, where
many examples can be found, is another area likely to yield valuable insights.
What work has been done remains unpublished in Scotland, but would surely
add greatly to our understanding of the
tradition and its spread across cultures,
if that is indeed what has occurred. Any
reader with an interest in pursuing this
topic is reminded that the Society is
prepared to receive applications for
such projects for the development
grants it offers. Details are available
from the website or from the Secretary.
he proceedings of this year’s annual collogue are recorded elsewhere in this issue. I cannot help noting
that, though the society was founded by
pipers enthusiastic about a new musical
expression and a new instrument to
express it with, 30 years on we’re still
being asked to say what that music is.
This is an issue which we hope to focus
on in our next issue.
However, I wonder whether an experienced Highland piper would not have
a similar problem explaining what highland music is? At least the highland
piper can say ‘it’s the music of the
highlands, played on a bagpipe’, and
point to endless recorded examples to
demonstrate a well-established genre of
music. A lowland piper can only say ‘it’s
not the music of the highlands, rarely
played, and on a different bagpipe’ and
point to the very, very few recorded
examples, examples which display a
variety of techniques from which it
would be difficult to discern an estab-
T
lished genre, even if such a thing were
considered meaningful..
Lowland pipers now have, thanks in
the main to the efforts of enthusiasts
like Gordon Mooney and Matt Seattle
and the publications of the LBPS, a
considerable repertoire available. However, notated music is only a guide; it
does not contain the spirit of the music
itself; the one thing we can say about
the music in these sources is that it is
not ‘highland’ music – that is, it is a
genre with its own history and contextand, as David Taylor pointed out, it
does not reveal itself to a piper who
applies to it the recent history and context of highland piping.
Reliance on notation is necessary in a
broken tradition, but far from sufficient; how it should be played remains
in the hands and the imagination of the
piper. It was the opportunity for creative music-making that first excited the
founder members of the society; as
Andy Hunter said in 1989 [CS vol 4 no 1
p17], ‘It was the equivalent of Hugh
MacDiarmid’s re-discovery of the Lowlands language, offering a whole new
tongue to the range of Scottish culture’.
This opportunity remains as vital today;
Lowland and Border music is that tradition of music that was played by pipers
and fiddlers in the lowland and border
regions of Scotland/England before
Highland music became fashionable. It
is a tradition that has few teachers, and
fewer masters. It’s up to you.
Pete Stewart, Pencaitland, Nov 2012
3
In the December 2010 issue we printed the text of the original 1981
announcement calling anyone interested in Lowland piping to a
meeting in Edinburgh. Here we reproduce the invitation that was
sent out in March, 1983, inviting ‘fellow pipers’ to attend the first
official meeting of the proposed society.
4
Word processing has come some way since 1983; For those
struggling to read the original, here is the text of Mike’s
letter:
Mains Castle,
East Kilbride.
31st March, 1983.
Fellow Piper,
You may have thought that the Lowland Pipers' Society had died the death, and
that you would have to struggle on by yourself. If you did, you were wrong! Oddly
enough it is almost exactly a year since I wrote to you last and that may have been
the problem, because I have found that the meetings for which I had sent out
letters immediately beforehand were all well attended, whilst those that were set
up a long time in advance were small to say the least. You obviously have bad
memories and don't keep diaries.
Throughout the year new ideas have been developing and more instruments
have become available. We need to meet again or the good work will have been
wasted.
Happily Seumas MacNeill has kindly made the College of Piping available to us
for a meeting and workshop on 16th April, 1983. Following on our previous
meetings we have decided to change the format to suit our requirements better,
so we’ll have 3 sections. Firstly we'll have a workshop to get the pipes in working
order; there will be items for sale, such as bags, bellows and reeds, and there will
be several skilled players and makers on hand to help you tune up, repair leaks,
even fit new bags. Bring along your pipes and any old bits and pieces you might
be able to swap- spare drones, chanters, bellows or stocks-for exactly the piece
you require.
Secondly we'll have a playing session - again there will be experts to help you
with your style (if you need it) and maybe we could all play a tune together (Mary
Scott or Sir John Fenwick's the flower among them) we'll have to work out which
version we're playing on the day.
Finally we'll have the talking bit. There is a lot to discuss but the most important
business is going to be formalising the Society, so here is a simple agenda to cover
that:- [Ed. This agenda followed on a separate page]
5
W
hen the LBPS chairman
Hamish Moore first circulated
his ideas for this year's collogue it was
clear that this was going to be an exceptional event. The 50 or so who packed
the Edinburgh rooms of the Royal
Scottish Pipers' Society, [a venue with
pipe music, as Mike Katz put it, 'absorbed into the walls’] were not disappointed.
Hamish had taken for a theme the
matter of playing pipes with other instruments, a choice which naturally
enough led to performances by way of
demonstrating the variety of approaches.
After a brief welcome Hamish introduced Will Lamb, who gave us an introduction to the bouzouki, and outlined
the pleasures and challenges of playing
it to accompany pipers. Fin Moore
joined him to demonstrate some of his
points.
Later in the morning we were greatly
entertained by the inimitable Mike Katz
talking about accompanying singers,
including an impromptu song inspired
by a newspaper article.
The day was not entirely taken up with
Hamish's theme however. David Taylor
gave a stimulating talk about tradition
and the re-emergence of the border
pipes, a talk which concluded with
some challenging comments on the Society's failings and an extensive proposal for ways in which they might be
overcome. Transcriptions of all these
talks are included in this issue. They
6
have been kept more or less as spoken,
in the hopes of preserving something of
the flavour of the speakers.
Alongside these talks we were also
entertained with stories about pipers
from David Campbell and Linda Williamson, two of Scotland's leading story-tellers, an innovation for this event.
The afternoon was largely taken up
with performances by five different
pipers each playing with a different
fiddler. Hamish Moore introduced himself and his daughter Fiona as ‘the
warm-up act’. They were followed by
Callum Armstrong with Pete Stewart
on fiddle, with Callum once again demonstrating the smallpipes' ability to expand into upper octaves in a stirring
performance of a William Dixon tune
in thoroughly modern mode, as well as
the polyphonic capabilities of the double chanter.
We then had stunning performances
from Finlay MacDonald with Shetland
fiddler Chris Stout, Mike Katz with the
Tannahill Weaver’s fiddler John Martin,
and finally Fin Moore with Sarah Hoy.
The cover photo reveals some of the
participants who took part in a grand
finale.
This afternoon would have made a
first-class concert by itself, one which
amply demonstrated the wide variety of
approaches to piping and fiddle duos.
The day was rounded of with survivors retiring to the Oxford Bar for a
wee session. Altogether a thoroughly
memorable day.
Originally from Baltimore, Maryland
Will came to Scotland in 1996 to carry
out postgraduate work in Gaelic
linguistics. He now Lectures in Celtic
and Scottish Studies at Edinburgh
University. Will has played
accompaniment on bouzouki with many
of Scotland's and Cape Breton's bestknown traditional musicians.
T
he rest of the day is going to be
about piping, and of course this
talk is going to be about piping
too, but I'm going to be looking at it
from the perspective of playing with the
pipes, which is something that is fairly
recent - up until the time of, about the
Battlefield Band, maybe a bit before
that, this wasn't really a concept. I suppose there were probably a few tracks
where people tried to play an out-of
-tune piano with the highland pipes or
something like that, but using it as an
ensemble instrument is a fairly recent
development in the history of piping.
So Hamish asked me to talk about
some specific things today, and
amongst them are the challenges of
playing with the bagpipes. Every bagpiper has challenges with his or her own
instruments; rather like Chinese whispers I'm on the receiving end of those
challenges, specifically coping with
things like drones, especially the baritone drone on the smallpipes, and how
to approach chords on an accompanying instrument. Also the question of
rhythm. So those are the things I’m
gong to be looking at.
But it might be worthwhile talking
about just what is this instrument and
where did it come from? It would be
remiss of me to give a talk about the
bouzouki without mentioning its own
origins. [Here Will gave a brief demonstration of the sound of the instrument}
It's basically from the mandolin family,
but that is a fairly big family of instruments that are shaped vaguely like this
and that have 'courses' as opposed to
just single strings. The bouzouki originally of course is a Greek instrument,
but if you look at the word itself, bouzouki, that's a Turkish word and it's
thought that it came from an earlier
instrument, because that word means
'broken' or 'modified'. I wonder whether there was a player in Turkey who had
something like an oud and somebody
stepped on it and said 'Sorry, mate, I'll
get that fixed’, took it away and came
back with something like this. Anyway,
the Greek bouzouki has only been
around for just over a hundred years, in
7
the form we have today, with the round
shape and the four courses of strings.
Originally it was a three-course instrument, [courses being more than one
string tuned to the same note] and it
was tuned DAD or something like that.
Then they added another course in the
20th century. What then happened with
this instrument is that some time in the
1960's a fellow by the name of Johnny
Mornihan had a mandolin and someone showed him a Greek bouzouki and
he said ‘That's brilliant' and traded his
mandolin for it [and his friends at the
time, Andy Irvine and others said 'can
you trade it back?]. But then they started playing with it and developed some
tunings that worked with Irish music.
Then around 1970 Peter Abner [I think
that was his name] developed a version
of this instrument for Donald Lundy,
another famous bouzouki player, and
the difference between this and the
Greek bouzouki is how much bigger
the body is. Not all Irish bouzoukis
have such a large body, but it helps with
projection and bass tones. This is more
of a rhythm instrument in Scottish and
Irish music, whereas a Greek bouzouki
is more of a melodic instrument. For
me, especially when playing with the
pipes, bass projection is very important.
Another brilliant instrument maker,
Stefan Sobell, took up the gauntlet of
making these instruments and this one
was made by a maker trying to develop
from Stefan's designs. I can't tell you
what he did, because I just play the
thing and I get lost with what's going on
8
in the inside- the bracing system is apparently very important.
Why is this instrument good to play
with the pipes? I was a drummer for
about ten years before picking up a
guitar. But when I was getting interested in traditional music [I was back in
the States] I was taking lessons with a
guy who played both guitar and bouzouki and he said ‘If you really want to
do this, the guitar is great, but the bouzouki is probably a bit better’.
So I got my first bouzouki and found
myself up in Cape Breton accompanying musicians and that's where I first
started playing with the pipes. I quickly
realised that there were some BIG differences playing with the pipes versus
the fiddle or the flute or the other instruments that I was used to playing
with in Baltimore.
The good things first: what makes it
great with the pipes, as I hope you will
hear when Finn and I have some tunes,
is the sympathetic response you get
between the two instruments. When
both instruments are going really well it
almost feels like there's glue between
them. I don't know if that makes sense
but both instruments are vibrating in a
particular way that it really feels like it's
almost one instrument. I don't feel that
way with the guitar. I think part of it is
the tuning. If you use DAGD or one of
the open tunings on the guitar maybe
you can get that as well, but the bouzouki is tuned in a way that, generally
speaking, has a drone effect built into it.
31
The other thing that's good about
playing with the pipes is that the pipes
are an enormously harmonically complex instrument; you've got very, very
low notes in the drones and then you've
got very high harmonics. Basically it
sucks up the whole audible spectrum: it
starts very low and goes very high - it's
difficult to fit other instruments into
that. I worked as a sound engineer for a
long time and you always have to carve
out bits, to let other instruments
breathe when the pipes are playing- it's
a bit like the piano- same idea. What's
good about this instrument though, is
that it cuts through - it's very percussive, so that helps it establish its place.
The other thing is that because of its
tuning it lends itself to a modal approach. The bagpipes, as we all know,
are not in a standard scale - they're a
mixolydian mode - you've got a flattened seventh and a lot of the chord
sequences you get with the bagpipes,
you want to leave them quite open- you
don't want to dictate your thirds. Your
thirds are a very important note. I'm
sure most of you are familiar with some
music theory; if you think of the notes
on the piano, CDEFG, the CEG form
a chord, where E is the third and that's
what dictates whether something
sounds minor or major. What I do with
the bouzouki is just leave that open,
leave it a bit ambiguous and that seems
to work because a lot of times with
Scottish music it IS ambiguous - the
scales themselves are missing notes. So
one of the things that works well with
this instrument is to leave it be. Although you can do that with, say, the
piano or the guitar, with this instrument
it's just that little bit easier. So a lot of
what I'm doing when I'm playing the
bouzouki is I'm moving drones myself
around the instrument, I'm moving the
bass around, and sometimes using top
notes just to accentuate different things
that are happening in the tune.
Now I want to talk about some of the
challenges. One, is that, the pipes being
a solo instrument, a lot of pipers aren't
used to playing with other people. Maybe this comes as a surprise to some of
you, but they're not used to listening to
another person when they're working
out what they're going to do rhythmically. So, as an accompanist, if they're
not listening to you, you have to listen
to them very intently. It's not a dealbreaker, but it means that you can't
quite relax.
On the other hand I've met pipers that
are used to playing all the time to a
metronome, particularly people who
play in pipe bands. They tend to have
quite good rhythm because they have
to, to get the entire band to work.
Those people you can pretty much go
on auto-pilot, you don't have to worry
about anything. So you get the whole
gamut.
Tuning is the other BIG problem, as
we all know. At least it's not the Uilleann pipes, right? As I'm sure is going
to happen right now, Finn is keen to
come down and play because as he
waits his pipes are going down in pitch,
9
so a lot of times, if you start a set with
somebody, the pipes are going to be flat
to where they are eventually going to
get. So what do you do as an accompanist? Do you just say, well, forget it, the
first set is going to be out of tune, we'll
just deal with it later? Sometimes that's
just what you have to do- you're not
going to have time. You tune up early,
figure out what the note is going to be,
what it's going to settle to and then just
assume that's going to keep getting better as time goes on. I remember Finn
and I and Finn's sister Fiona were in
Barbados a couple of times, strangely
for a Celtic festival, and there, it's such
a hot, humid place that the pipes actually were sounding I think at about B
natural - these are A smallpipes - and so
I was breaking strings all the time just
trying to keep up.
One other thing. Playing with the
pipes means that you have to squeeze
every bit of volume out of the instrument that you're playing. [Here Will
picked up his 'other' bouzouki] As you
can see I had this fixed a couple of
times because of this massive 'dent'
from my plectrum hitting the instrument. And this is partly just bad technique, but the other part of it is that
when I'm playing with the border pipes,
or sometimes with two sets of border
pipes plus a fiddle or whatever it might
be, this instrument's getting a total battering, just to keep up with the volume.
There's no room for subtleties. The
approach is very different to that I
would take playing Irish music on the
10
bouzouki where you can do lots of
counter-melodies and runs and things.
There's no point, with the pipes, unless
it's the D smallpipes - you're just not
going to hear it. I'm not going to hear
it, you're not going to hear it, what's the
point in doing it? So you need to be
creative with a constant volume level.
[Here Will was joined by Fin Moore]
There are two tunings I use most it the
time, one a lot more
than the other. The Playing with
the pipes
one I use almost all
the time is GDAD.
means that
The other tuning
you have to
that people use is
squeeze
ADAD. The probevery bit of
lem here is the G
volume
out of
chord, which isn’t
the
as obvious, and you
instrument
can't go down to
the G from the A
chord which is the
main movement in Scottish music.
[Will and Fin then demonstrated the effect of
using the ADAD tuning; the A is firmly
rooted, but the G chord is not. They then
demonstrated the same tune with the GDAD
tuning].
Using the GDAD tuning means that
you do not need to use the capo.
[Fin then switched to his D pipes]
The beauty of the D smallpipes is that
they're a little quieter - I don't need to
thrash the whole time. you can start to
do runs and counter-melodies as well as
the fact that the D pipes sit in between
the two D strings, so I can play all the
tunes; for intros and things like that it
works nicely.
I also want to look at the strathspey
and the reel. The strathspey is a funny
one; people accompany it in all different ways. One of the things I hear
people do is play it like a jig. In some
cases it makes sense - for some tunes it
can sound almost like a slide -dagada
dagada. Personally I would only do it as
an effect, not as a standard thing. If you
look at the way people accompany
them in Cape Breton, even if you don't
like the piano, rhythmically it's where
you tap your feet, on each beat of the
strathspey. The whole difference and
similarity between the strathspey and
the reel is a really interesting thing,
though we don't have time to look at it
today, but recently I've convinced myself that the strathspey is simply the way
that highlanders played reels in the past
- reels meaning the way that they
danced - the dance itself incorporated a
tempo change. If you slow down the
recordings of reels, when people sing
and play reels to Gaelic singers they
sound exactly like strathspeys. But
that's a whole other talk.
So we'll look at what you do with the
tempo change.
[Will and Finn then demonstrated the
change; the recording will be available on the
website soon.]
I just enjoy playing with the D pipes,
it's so much more relaxed and it sits so
well. For me, this is the ultimate for
playing with pipes…
Fin Moore and Will Lamb
11
Mike Katz was a pioneer of the Scottish
smallpipes in the early days of the
revival and has remained one of the
leading exponents of the instrument
ever since. Originally from LA, Mike
came to Scotland 10 years ago to study
at Edinburgh University and has lived
here ever since, playing in various
bands and combinations, including
Scottish Gas Pipe Band, Ceolbeg and the
Battlefield Band. On the day, he also
displayed a high sense of humour and a
fiendish taste in shoes.
T
hankfully we're on a tight schedule, because I'm not very good
at talking for a long time.
Hamish asked me to talk about playing
pipes to accompany a singer
Frankly I would argue that it isn't a
very difficult thing. Whether you're
playing the pipes with another instrumentalist or with a singer, it's the same
thing. I will caveat the whole talk with
this- I will tell you what my opinion is,
you don't have to agree with any of it,
and also I believe in the great quote,
which is attributed to Frank Zappa,
'talking about music is like dancing
about architecture', so you can dismiss
anything I say if you don't like it.
Davey was talking about tradition, and
about teaching without bagpipes. I
would do that anyway, which is probably why I don’t get asked to teach.
Even when I was a kid I was taught to
sing it. Like Will, I'm an American, and
12
Americans are generally not very good
at singing or expressing themselves in
that kind of way, but I think that if you
don’t do that, you'll never be able to
play anything.
The speech element of living is something that's common to everybody no
matter how poor they are at playing an
instrument. So you are capable of expressing yourself through speech, without thinking, you just talk, say whatever
comes into your head. The whole idea
of learning to play an instrument, especially the bagpipes, with all that complicated ornamentation, the whole idea of
learning all that stuff is so that you can
express these things without having to
think about the minutiae.
If that's the case then when you accompany a singer, you're just accompanying a complicated instrument,
because what we all understand about
speech is the content of it, but within
that content is all of these noises which
are the same thing as cantareach, and we
speak about grips, even the word 'grip'
sounds like a grip, and of course that's
different for different people, for different languages. You listen to a Gaelic
singer, and if you don’t speak Gaelic,
and I don’t, you can still hear the
sounds and you can equate that to your
impression of what you want to play
and the ornamentation.
I play other instruments, but those of
you who play only the bagpipes will
sympathise with the mentality which
pipers have which is linear - we play the
tunes - we don't need anything about
harmony, we don’t need anything about
chords. The benefit of smallpipes is
that the balance between the drones
and the chanter is such that you immediately make chords, more readily than
you would on big pipes, so that every
time you play a note there's a chord.
Will was talking about bagpipes being
modal; that means that every note harmonises with the drones and to do that
it's 'out of tune'. Will was talking about
not playing thirds - an even better reason not to play thirds is, as any of you
guys that make bagpipes knows, that
they're not 'in tune'. If you have the
third, which is the C on an A set of
pipes, in tune with a tuner then it
sounds horrific with the drones, because it has to be flat to be in accord
with the drones. It's the same with the
G seventh note and with the note we
call F. If that's in tune with the tuner
then it sounds terrible, because of
things like equal temperament and a
bunch of things that you don't need to
hear about. But what it means is that
you can get a set of bagpipes or indeed
a pipe band or nine pipers all in tune
with each other and notes like the second, that shouldn't sound good with
the drones, do sound good. That's a
positive thing.
[At this point Mike got out his pipes, and
also a copy of the Metro free newspaper]
I brought this august journal, just as an
example - I've never done this before the way you
so it might not
do it is by
work very well. I'll communicat
just say three ion. You don't
things, in case
think about
there isn't time to
it,
you just do
tell you what I was
it. And do it
going to tell you.
and do it.
As I said, it doesn't
matter
whether
you're playing with an instrumentalist
or a singer; the way you do it is by
communication. You don't think about
it, you just do it. And do it and do it. It
doesn't matter that you're going to
make mistakes and sometimes its going
to sound terrible - hopefully the good
things will rise to the top, and that's
life. If you keep working on it, it'll be
alright.
For those of us who are pipers, that
don't know these things- we basically
organise western music in a series of
chord changes. In the States we use
number, we talk abut the 1 chord and
the 4 chord. If a tune is in A major, the
13
1 chord is the A, the 4 chord is the D
and the 5 chord is the E. Blues and
Rock and Roll songs are generally made
of chords 1,4,5. Will was talking about
A and G and he's quite right, all the 2/4
marches, or the reels, are just A and G.
That's not to discount the value of
these things, that's why they are attractive - it's kind of weird music but they
are like that.
Schematically for a bouzouki player or
other instrument, if you don't really
know the tune,
The good thing you go along with
that kind of thing
about this
- once you learn it
demonic
better you can be
highland
more clever, but
piping
you can get by
technique that with these basic
things. But if
we have is
you're going to acthat it is
company a singer,
complicated
you have a blend
enough that
of following exyou can mimic actly what that
the words of singer is singing
any language. and then also this
schematic
idea,
following the movement of the chords.
So you learn those chords - which have
substitutes; you can play different notes
for each chord- that's a bit more complicated and you don’t need to know
that now.
This means that you can mix between
playing very little, just the chords, and
playing exactly what the guy's singing,
and then maybe playing the harmony.
14
The good thing about this demonic
highland piping technique that we have
is that it is complicated enough that you
can mimic the words of any language,
in my opinion. But even within this
tradition there is a variety of options.
You can choose a blippy high G grace
note, or you can choose a subtler ornament such as a flute player might use.
You make that decision, you're all sentient beings. What happens is you take
all these things and you decide what you
like and just use it. And then, if no-one
else likes it, you don’t get asked to give
talks about these things. But that's not
your problem, you have to believe in
whatever you play.
So if we take a song [here Mike returned
to his newspaper]. We'll look at the sports
section, that's probably better. We have
a headline here 'After two days of talks
a decision on Levine goes into extra
time'. So if you think of that as a song,
[here Mike asked 'how much time have I
got?' and was told ‘about 10 minutes.’ 'Oh
that's a long time’, he replied, ‘I'm going to
have to do the crossword I think']
This is not going to be one of the great
songs but - 'after two days of talks'
sounds like a 2/4 march, [here Mike
attempted a sung version] but the rest
doesn’t scan very well. We’ll take another piece [from the newspaper]-the name
Milleband [the leader of the UK Labour
Party] here, for instance. You get a
rhythm from every word, is what I'm
saying. There's a number of ways you
can play that word. You have a triplet
going down - 'mill e band' - you have
Milleband with a taorluath or just playing on two notes. The one thing that's
constant is the 'Milleband'. So you
might say it's always going to be the
same thing, but the guy that's playing
with it can play more than that, or less
than that, or exactly the same as that.
Then you get into the schematic thing
of a tune having just chords, so that you
just get the two notes [here Mike demonstrated playing a tune, then singing the same
tune while he played just two long notes.]
The only thing that changes with the
singer rather than an instrumentalist is
that there is meaning in the words. That
can be more complicated because you
are then making a taste decision about
whether or not you want to detract
from or add to what the singer is singing. So sometimes you're wanting to
just lay-off and play less, sometimes
you want to play exactly the same.
Sometimes you can reinforce things by
playing the same thing, sometimes you
reinforce things by not playing anything.
That's basically all I have to say about
all this stuff. I don't know how to put it
in a digestible format, but that's really
all it is; all you’re doing is communicating, in the same way that you would
communicate by talking to your pals or
telling jokes- it's the communication
between all the participants. What you
want to happen is that when the two of
you are playing together it's always going to be better than either of you on
your own. How you find that way is
really up to yourself.
[Mike then went on to comment on David
Taylor's points about tradition]
I travel around all the time, playing in
a band, and I sometimes find myself
thinking, why am I doing this? But
when you visit a place where they don't
do it, you realise how absolutely vital it
is; it's the most important thing in the
world; it is the same thing as telling
jokes, love, and all that kind of stuff. All
this playing tunes, or if you're into
painting, or writing books or reading,
art and everything. What's the point,
there's no point, in being alive, if you
don't do this stuff. When you go to
places where they're not playing tunes,
they're not doing these things, you
think, this is shite.
What you do with the tradition is you
absorb all this stuff and then you decide
what you're going to use, what you like,
and if you take that back into a microcosm of playing with a singer, you take
all that stuff and then stop thinking
about it. You do all this preparation
and practice, and when you get to the
situation you just play, so that you're
communicating the same way as you
talk. You just make stuff up and hope
for the best. Sometimes it's not good,
and sometimes it's good.
[The final question Mike was asked was
where he got the impressive pair of red-decorated black shoes he was wearing - ‘I got them in
the Bronx’ was his reply, ‘two pairs for a
hundred bucks - they’re very uncomfortable’.]
15
Hamish introduced David Taylor as a piper
he had met in his first year at University,
playing for the New Scotland Scottish Country Dancers. David has spent his life as a
history teacher in Kingussie but on the side
was also the unofficial pipe teacher fro the
whole of that part of Strathspey. His talk
was entitled 'The Aspen Tree and the Border Pipe'.
T
his is kind of strange. I'm not
an expert on piping. I'm not an
expert on border music. If you
asked me to talk about 18th century
highland shieling economy, that's where
I am at the moment, I can talk about
that ad nauseam.
I want to look at basic aspects of tradition. About the title of this talk: Aspens
don't grow as single trees, you get a
stand of them, a hundred, a hundred
and fifty trees growing, all almost identical but all slightly different. But the
key thing about an aspen tree is it grows
on runners underground. An aspen tree
grows and dies, grows and dies, but the
root remains constant. As the aspen
tree grows, for a hundred years and
then dies, it rots down and nourishes
that common root which sends up new
shoots. So when you see an aspen tree
you're talking about the oldest living
tree in existence, because that common
root can go back thousands of years,
and that is the crucial thing. Is this a
metaphor for Scottish tradition? That's
what I want to look at, the idea that
16
tradition evolves in the same way as the
aspen tree does.
I believe that Scottish tradition is like
the aspen tree; there are hundreds of
trunks and stems that are Scottish tradition. Over thousands of years they have
lived and died and nourished new
stems, new traditions. And so the tradition that we are part of today actually
goes back thousands of years into a sort
of common root that has gradually developed through innumerable influences and traditions.
Go back fifteen thousand years to
Mesolithic times - rhythm and chantwe have no idea what it might be like
but you can't imagine any society without rhythm and chanting. You can
move through that to neolithic times to
Scara Brae where we may have bone
whistles, you can move from that into
the iron age carnyx music, we have the
Pictich harp and triple-pipe; into the
Middle Ages we have minstrels and
troubadours and so on. And each part
of this is a tradition that is growing,
dyeing. Carnyx music has gone long
ago. But it is part of our tradition, it is
there in a long-forgotten root, and each
generation inherits that. Gradually, as
we move beyond the middle ages we
get into a more recognizable form of
tradition. We get the emergence of the
bagpipe, we get the more identifiable
clarsach and fiddle, whistle, instruments
that we understand, music that we begin to get more familiar with. The ballad and work song, step-dance, country
dance- a constant process of death and
rebirth, old traditions dieing out, old
instrument dieing out, new traditions
and instruments emerging. Think about
what happened to the medieval instruments that a thousand years ago folk in
Scotland would have been dancing to the old fiddle, the rebec, has gone, the
old stock 'n' horn has gone; dances like
the gavotte and pavan have gone. But
they've been replaced. So you get new
instruments coming on the scene like
the accordion, the piano, the bouzouki;
but it doesn't change, in a sense, be-
Chris Stout and Finlay MacDonald
cause the traditional music remains
the same. The medium on which it is
played may change but the basic genetic construction of the music is always the same. It's always constant, in
a sense, it's just evolving.
New dances come in, like the country
dances from England, things like the
Schottisches, the Quadrilles and Lancers in the 19th century, that come in
as European dances and these all have
an impact, they all become part of our
tradition.
And that is one of the interesting
things about tradition. What is it? It is
something that is constantly evolving
- there is no such thing as a fossilized
tradition. You cannot say 'this is how
people played music in the 14th century, or this is what it sounded like in
the 7th century - it is a living thing, it
evolves. It is not like classical music when Beethoven wrote the Ninth
Symphony, we can now see exactly
how it was played, note by note. That
Mike Katz and John Martin
17
doesn't happen with tradition. Each
generation brings its own new take on
it.
If you think about the aspen tree, then,
we’ve got all these different stems, the
fiddle, accordion, Gaelic song, border
ballad, all these different things, they're
all part of an identifiable tradition of
Scottish music. In the piping world,
we've got an immense stand of trees;
we've got smallpipes, border pipes,
highland pipes, we've got competition
style, we've got pipe-band style. We've
got pibroch, we've got folkstyle piping,
we've got ceilidh band, rock band, jazz
piping, we've even got world music
piping.
Something is happening in Scottish
music - it is taking off. Fifty years ago,
when I was a kid learning to play pipes,
there were two things, competition piping and pipe-bands and there was
damn-all else. I wish I was growing up
in the Scottish piping scene of nowadays, where there is so much more
scope for young people. The whole
scene of Scottish music, not just in
piping, is absolutely vibrant in terms of
what is happening. There's been this
massive revival and what's particularly
exciting, all across, is the number of
young people who are caught up in this
tradition New tradition, old tradition?
It's hard to say where we are because
the young people take it on and they do
their own thing with it.
In amongst this vibrant new tradition,
for instance what Hamish has been
doing with Cape Breton music, and
18
Allan MacDonald working with the reinterpretation of the ancient pibroch
tradition, or what Martin Bennet was
doing, revolutionising piping, there has
been this common root. Nobody took
it to more extremes than Martin, but he
was incredibly deeply-rooted in tradition -there was no piper in the world
better than Martin Bennet.
And that's the key thing. Innovation is
fabulous, it's a vital part of folk-tradition that each new generation is improvising and adding and developing
things. But it must have that common
root; you must be able to go back into
the deep-seated traditional root because
if you lose that root you have lost
everything in what makes the music.
So in tradition we are looking at this
constant process of death and rebirth:
as old styles die new styles come in;
sometimes people can go back and recreate old styles, but there is an essential
element that holds it all together.
To me there's two ways of playing
music, of playing a tune. There's one
where you get a set of notes in front of
you and your eyes look at the notes and
something comes out of your fingers it goes from here [eyes] to here [fingers]it's what I call 'heart-bypass music'. It's
got no meaning. There's another kind
of music that comes from here [heart] to
the fingers, and that, of course, is what
we're talking about, that tradition. If
you do not have the ability to understand music within its cultural context
then it means nothing. If you're born
and brought up in it, as so many of us
were here, it's part of your DNA, it's in
your system. But to me it's absolutely
vital we understand our cultural background, or the tunes that we play are
heart-bypassing, we simply play a
bunch of notes without understanding
where they come from.
If we look at the LBPS, the question
that comes to me is, can we actually
revive a tradition of things that are from
the past? Thirty years ago the LBPS
started up, a rather disparate group of
individuals got together, with no real
motivation other than the fact that
there was an instrument and a type of
music that had died out and people
were interested in it. The problem was
there was no tradition, no tradition
bearer. Hamish was able to go to Cape
Breton and listen to Cape Breton piping; Hamish Henderson was able to go
to the travelling people, listen to what
they were doing and study it. With border piping the whole thing had jut died.
Does that actually matter? Can we
revive a tradition that is dead? In a way
Fin, Will and Mike at David
Taylor’s talk
we can. The one thing we can say and
be absolutely certain is that if border
piping had not died out, and if the
theory of constant evolution is true,
then the border piping of today would
be totally different to what it was in the
17th century anyway. So how do we
create a style that has actually long-since
gone?
The Society has had some fantastic
successes over the years. When I first
came along to the society there were a
handful of bellows-pipes and to be
honest most of them were pretty grim.
They sounded awful, were out of tune,
hard to play, leaking bags and bellows.
And now there are thousands of sets
across the world, beautiful instruments,
nearly every one sounding great, nicely
made, nice to look at and nice to listen
to. The quality of instrument has
changed out of this world and that, of
course, has had an impact on how people can appreciate the instrument.
The other thing is the tunes. There has
been a huge amount of work done
Callum Armstrong and Pete Stewart
19
producing a vast repertoire, studying
ancient music books and pulling together tunes, so that we have a border
repertoire. So we have got an instrument, we've got a repertoire and the
society has been largely responsible in
helping to form that.
The society has also been important in
providing the historical framework for
the instrument, something I believe is
hugely important. The society has also
produced a public platform, in discs
and concerts, for the music and there
has been con“We are not in stant teaching
fact the LBPS; to try and projwe are the
ect the nature of
these
instruHBPS, the
ments.
Highland
So in that sense
Bellows Pipers
Society. 99% of the society has
been successful
all pipers
playing bellows over thirty years.
Certainly
the
pipes are
idea of a belplaying highland lows-piping tratunes in
dition
in
highland style” Scotland
has
been
revived.
It's totally different to what it was thirty
years ago. But in fact there are three
massive failures and that's where I'm
going to maybe tread on a few toes but
I hope, not upset people too much. It's
maybe things that couldn't be avoided,
in a way.
First thing; we have totally failed to
create a style that could be described as
border piping. Secondly, and a related
20
one, we have failed to break what I have
called the hegemony of the highland
piper. In other words, we are dominated by the highland piper. We are not in
fact the LBPS, we are the HBPS, the
Highland Bellow Pipers Society. 99%
of all pipers playing bellows pipes are
playing highland tunes in highland style,
highland fingering. This is the problem.
Can we get back to a different style of
playing? I don't know, but there is a
challenge there.
The third thing, maybe related, is that
the society has failed totally to break the
generation gap. We started off with a
fairly elderly society, and looking round,
well there are not too many teenagers in
the audience. Now maybe it's the nature
of societies. The young don't need societies, they just go and do it anyway. so
maybe it's an inevitable thing.
Can you revive an extinct tradition?. I
think yes. Is it worth trying? I would say
absolutely yes. I'm an historian, I believe past cultures are always worth
studying. Of course, we live in a cultural
world that thrives on the past, the
works of Michelangelo the works of
Burns or Shakespeare. So it is worth
studying the past, and perhaps in doing
so we might be able to create a new
style of piping that would be different
and dynamic.
How to do it? I devised, tongue in
cheek, a piping course, a piping strategy, for completely revolutionizing standards of play The key to it, the secret,
is that we ban bagpipes. We need a
course of bagpiping with no pipes al-
lowed. Why? Because we are highland
pipers. We are junkies, we are conditioned. We are tachum addicts. It is
drilled into us. If you give a highland
piper a tune with a C and an A he will
play a tachum, even if it makes no
sense. So what we have to do is deprive
the highland piper of the ability to play
these things for a while. In Stalinist
terms it would be called ‘re-education’.
I'm a great believer in cultural immersion to understand our music and so
any course I was doing would have a
broad cultural input. We need to understand border culture. I think that highland piping and border piping were
different traditions The tunes would
have been played differently. We can't
just say that's what old 18th century
highland pipers were doing, therefore
that's what border pipers were doing.
I believe musical traditions develop
early in a society. We may not play
exactly like someone 200 years ago
would have played but that doesn't
David Campbell tells a story
mean to say we haven’t got that DNA
in our tune system. How else can you
explain the fact that Scots music is
different from French music, is different from German music from Swedish
music? There must be a long process of
evolution going on within societies.
So I would go right back to the earliest
society in the borders; what was their
lifestyle, tradition etc.? Then we come
to the things that are gong to make that
tradition. For instance, you have the
Roman influence. For four hundred
years the borderers lived in the shadow
of Hadrian's Wall. Four centuries! That
would take us today back to 1600. The
societies who lived here were living in
the cultural influence of Mediterranean
culture, on top of what was an indigenous Celtic influence. After the Romans leave, we get the emergence of
very different things. In the borders,
the post-Roman societies emerge as
what we call the P-Celts, the Brythonic
peoples of Britain. Putting it in simple
terms their nearest relatives are Welsh.
The language of the borders was Welsh.
The place names of southern Scotland
are Welsh. The earliest great Welsh
poetry was written in southern Scotland.
At the same time, in Ireland and the
highlands you've got the Goidelic, QCeltic languages emerging - quite a different tradition. So as early as the 5th
century we have different two different
strands emerging, the Irish and highlands on the one hand and the borders/
north of England on the other. Added
21
to that we have the Germanic traditions
coming in from the Angles, the Scandinavian influence from the Danes.
When, in the 12th century, Geraldus
wrote his history he drew a distinction
between the Gaelic music of Ireland
and the highlands of Scotland and that
of the Welsh and northern English.
Then we have the impact of the AngloNorman French culture and the French
monastic culture. The borders were
dominated by monasteries - four centuries of monastic culture must have
rubbed off.
So we have a melting-pot of cultures.
But the dominant root that had stayed
right through is Celtic. Nevertheless,
border society hated highland society;
that's one thing that becomes very clear
from historical study. There was a mutual antipathy between southern Scotland and highland Scotland. These were
two different traditions.
If you're going to understand the music of the border tradition there are
three elements; the music is ‘who we
are’, ‘where we are’ and ‘when we are’.
I’ve already looked at ‘who we are’.
‘Where we are’ means the landscape.
The landscape of, say, Shetland has
produced a very different music; the
influence of the sea, so powerful in
Shetland, is not very great in Hawick.
And ‘when we are’: Martin Bennet’s
music of the 1990's could not have
been written in the 1890's. In fact, when
I first taught Martin in the early 1980's
there was no way either he or I could
have predicted the kind of music he
22
was going to unleash on the world just
ten years later.
You also have to ask 'what was the
purpose of this music?' Well, there’s no
question, border pipes had a ceremonial
function. They also had a dance function, a song function and a work function, and let's not forget they had a
listening function. Music has always
been for listening as well as all these
other functions. If we are going to look
for models, the first place to go is the
Northumbrian tradition. That’s the
closest we've got; a lot of tunes are
common, though it has also evolved in
different ways, We have to remember
that for a long time Northumbria
should have been part of Scotland!
The second source is the music of
Wales. When I first heard Ar Log, I felt
a great affinity with that music; they
played reels, but they played them differently, a gentler, softer feel to them.
Another element worth looking at is
the types of tunes. When I first started
looking at border music, there were
these strange tunes, these 6/4 hornpipes and the 9/8 jigs that I'd never
come across. These two rhythms are
basically non-existent in the earliest
highland sources. The 3/2-6/4 rhythm
was very much a thing of southern
Scotland/ northern England. This is a
different style of tune, of music. How
do we learn how to play it? And what
about the strathspey? You will find the
strathspey rhythm in the borders, but
was it perhaps a case of tunes that were
adapted to suit new dances like the
Schottische that were being imported
from Europe?
If I'm not going to allow pipes in my
course, how are we going to learn? To
me the one thing that preserves tradition is song. Instrumentalists are notorious for taking tunes and changing
them, doing this and that with them,
but a song that's linked to words, a
border ballad, say, the words dictate
how its sung. There'll be minor variations from singer to singer but you can't
totally change the whole thing. In a
border ballad you could be looking at a
tune that hasn't changed much in 5 or 6
hundred years. So song is a key thing
here - you learn through the singing.
So we get a good singer in to teach us
to sing - 'Give me the brose, brose, gie
me the brose and butter' - or we take
something like Robin Shure in hairst,
and we sing it and we sing it until that
rhythm is there instinctive. We take the
Reel of Stumpie, that most of us know
as Highland Wedding, strip off the six
parts and get back to the basic reel and
learn it by song. We get every recording
of a border singer like Willie Scott and
we listen too him sing. He is the most
authentic voice of border music. His
voice encapsulates hundreds of years of
border tradition.
So we have to study - not listen, study and find out what are the internal
rhythms of those songs. Similarly I
would listen to the instrumental music
of old fiddlers like Tom Hughes. This
way we can start to get the rhythm and
say, this is the rhythm that tunes were
played in.
It's also important that we look at
dancing too. But what dancing was
being done too these rhythms? Stepdancing can be done to these rhythms,
so we get a step-dancer in and we learn
to dance to these rhythms, 9/8, 6/4.
What all of this will give us is the
context and the rhythm for our tunes.
What we haven’t got is a fingering style.
How do we break this highland fingering? Answer? I don't know. but here's a
go. We do it without pipes. We'll learn
on whistle. The border practice chanter
will be the whistle. We'll translate our
tunes from singing to the whistle. We
get someone to teach us whistle ornamentation, and Irish pipe ornamentation which isn’t rigid like our type of
ornamentation.
To sum up, what I'm suggesting is that
we have try to recreate an old tradition
by going through a cultural immersion
course, understanding where our music's coming from, learning through the
medium of song and dance; studying,
really studying, the culture of the old
musicians to get the feel of what the
music's about. And then the most difficult phase of all, the development of a
new style of ornamentation which will
hopefully make the music more fluent,
more musical.
[Ed. I should point out that one thing is missing from this transcription; throughout David’s
impassioned talk there was a definite twinkle in his eye. We welcome your comments!]
23
Three Tunes from the Bowie Manuscript
The manuscript in the National Library of Scotland known as the ‘Bowie’
manuscript [NLS MS 21741] marked
‘Geo. Bowie’ on the fly-leaf, dated
1705, is a collection of fiddle music,
which seems to have been compiled by
the Edinburgh fiddler John McLachlan.
His name also appears associated with
many tunes in the Balcarres lute manuscript, and indeed, the two share a number of settings. McLachlan also seems
to have been the source for Playford’s
‘Original Scots Tunes’, published in
London in 1703. It is clear that he
played a major role in the musical life of
Edinburgh around 1695-1705. There is
also
a
relationship
between
McLachlan’s tunes and those in the
Henry Atkinson manuscript [1695]1
suggesting that there was a repertoire
held in common across the border region at that time, though McLachlan’s
settings, as seen here in the second
tune, are usually much more extended.
The manuscript contains only three
tunes which can confidently be said to
be ‘bagpipe’ settings, though they are
written out in G. Matt Seattle printed
‘Cutie Clat Her’ in the first editions of
The Master Piper, but not in the third
edition. The others are printed for the
first time here . ‘Hit her on the bum
an[d] she come near me’ is currently the
oldest known version of ‘Hoopers and
Girders’, Dixon’s ‘Hit her between the
legs’, Wm. Vickers’ ‘Rangers Frolick’.
The title in the manuscript reads ‘and
24
she come near me’; the intention appears to be ‘an she come near me’, ie.
‘an=if’. This is the tune that Walter
Scott’s Wandering Willie said his grandsire Steenie Steenson was ‘famous at’,
and Bowie’s version would be more or
less contemporary with Steenie
himself.2
I have edited bar 7 of strain 3; the
original has 4 quavers of G[A as transposed] as notes i-iv and vi-ix - clearly a
fiddle ornament. I have suggested a
lowland bagpipe equivalent
‘Where Shall Our Goodman Ly’ appears for the first time in a B aeolian
mode version in Henry Atkinson’s
manuscript. A somewhat different setting, with the title ‘Torpichen’s Rant’ is
in Riddell’s collection, and was printed
in Common Stock in December 2010.
I have made one or two small amendments to the setting, replacing the low
E at the opening note and the low D at
strain 3 note i with B, and the last note,
low D, in the penultimate bar with G.
The final note in Bowie’s MS is G [A as
transcribed]; I have suggested E in
keeping with the other strains and the
lowland/border tradition.
Notes
http://www.asaplive.com/
archive/detail.asp?id=R0109501
2 Scott, Walter, Redgauntlet, p.126
http://preview.tinyurl.com/cmgd5xp
1
Hit her upon the bum an[d] she come near me
The tune as it appears in Geoghegan’s Tutor for the Pastoral or New
Bagpipe around 1746. The difference
in style is remarkable. Geoghegan’s
setting may be the first published in
this style, though many were to follow. Bowie’s however is an example
of an earlier style. But there are
probably other ways of interpreting
this difference.
Thanks to Ross Anderson for the image:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk
25
Wher will our Goodman Ly
wheir must our good man lye [Henry Atkinson’s MS c 1695]
26
Cutie Clat Her
The original is in G, with the penultimate bar and the first note of the last bar an
octave lower. The tune first appears in the Balcarres lute manuscript as ‘Iokie
leaped over the dyke’ where it is described as ‘mr maclachland’s way’ [one of
many spellings of the name in the manuscript]: Playford’s Original Scots Tunes has
the same version titled ‘And When She Came Ben She Bobed’ [which is the usual
title of a different tune]. It seems likely that McLachlan was the source of all these
versions. The heavy syncopation is typical of McLachlan’s setiings, revealing a
rather different kind of invention to that of Wm Dixon’s version.
27
Cauld Wind in the Massif Central
Among the many Society members across the world few are
more aptly named than Franco Zampogna. Here, this belgian-born Italian piper, living in France, writes about the
bellows pipes of Central France
"La tradition ne consiste pas à remuer les
cendres mais à entretenir la flamme" Jean
Jaurès
“The tradition does not consist in moving
ashes but in maintaining the flame”
n the Common Stock edition of
June 2012, I was very pleased reading an interesting article on the "Chabrette du Limousin" (Centre West of
France). I discovered that some of the
"Chabrettes" were also (although rarely) bellows-blown.
By chance, after two years of patience,
this coincided with the arrival of my
brand new set of French "Joseph
Béchonnet" bellows-blown "Cornemuse du Centre" made by Raphaël
Jeannin, a young piper and maker of
French "Cornemuse", among the best
in France.
I also visited Nicolas Rouzier, piper,
maker and teacher at the Conservatoire
de la Creuse (in the region of Limoges)
who made the bellows of my brand new
Joseph Béchonnet "Cornemuse du
Centre".
Indeed, both the "Joseph Béchonnet"
model of cornemuse and its bellows are
so specific, so particular, that nowadays
they require two different expert makers to produce such a marvelous double
I
28
perfectly matching combination [in the
past Joseph Béchonnet made both parts
of the instruments himself].
Of course this is not a good enough
reason to betray my Hamish Moore set
of smallpipes, a marvelous instrument
too, which has allowed me for a couple
of years to meet very friendly pipers
from Edinburgh to Cork as well as
Barga in Tuscany.
One common denominator drives this
short contribution to the Common
Stock readers' community: the “bellows”.
Although I am by no means a specialist of bellows-blown pipes, I am strongly motivated by sharing with the
"Pipers' Brotherhood" an everyday increasing love and interest for this magical instrument, "pipes" or "cornemuse"
whose constant sound of the drones
remind us of the everlasting continuity
of life, no matter times, places and ages.
I also thought it might be of interest
for the Scottish and Irish pipers as well
as all the enthusiastic readers of Common Stock (and in particular, the ones
playing Smallpipes, Border or Pastoral
pipes as well as Uillean pipes or Northumbrian pipes) to read something
about the "cousin" pipes of France.
French Pipes
Although there are still discussions
among the French specialists, it would
not be a mistake to state that the French
family of pipes is wide. We might consider that, at the end of the twentieth
century, about fifteen families of pipes
could be listed for the French territory
alone.
They are mainly mouth blown pipes
but not only; several types of pipes are
bellows-blown, and are not located in
the same region.
One of the currently accepted assumptions suggests that the "bellows" originated (or at least were used) in France,
first with the "Musette de Cour" towards the end of the sixteenth century.
This reminds me of another interesting
article from Common Stock referring
to the influence of the French Bransles
of this time and their possible connection with the Reels, Strathspey and other typical Scottish rhythms.
Coming back to the French pipes, we
might also consider that the widest variety of French pipes is located in the
Centre and South as well South-West of
France. Among the various types of
"Cornemuse" we find the "Chabrette"
or "Chabretta" (subject of the article of
Pete Stewart), but also the "Cabrette"
(which is a recent type of pipe created
and "exported" from Paris by people
who had emigrated from the Auvergne
region) as well as the "Cornemuse du
Centre" (located in particular in the
region of Berry and Bourbonnais).
This last type of cornemuse ("Cornemuse du Centre") is the one I would
like to focus on when describing the
"Joseph Béchonnet" bellows-blown
cornemuse
Nowadays several makers (and pipers)
located in France produce excellent instruments of all types of French cornemuse although the mouth-blown
"cornemuse du Centre" seems to be a
well-adapted instrument for beginners
as well as for experts of traditional
dances. Since the seventies, various regional movements, associations and traditional groups have been looking for
and "collecting" complex materials of
tunes, lyrics and stories related to the
cornemuse, re-discovering this instrument as a revival of the past. In particular, through the "oral" transmission of
the remaining pipers still alive, families,
relatives and friends, it was possible to
retrieve not only the life of these pipers
and makers but also, the tunes, their
stories, social uses, links between the
main social events of the villages in a
rural environment.
Today there are records, stored in several forms of modern and less modern
media, which describe the social role of
the earlier pipers, both those playing
only locally and the "ménestrels" (minstrels, traveling pipers), playing "de routine" (i.e. without knowing standard
music notation). These records also
reveal many ethnological aspects of the
rich and intense social cohesion of
these disappeared communities.
29
Joseph Bechonnet’s
cornemuse du Centre
Joseph Béchonnet (1820-1890) was
born and died in Effiat (Puy-de-Dôme,
centre of France) and started making
his instruments around 1855 for approximately 40 years. He made an average of 2 instruments per year and there
are still about 60 referenced. Each instrument is original, with several common characteristics which differentiate
it from the traditional "cornemuse du
Centre", its parent family (see the pictures).
The principle differences between the
Cornemuse du Centre and the Joseph
Béchonnet model are as follows:
The Béchonnet pipes are bellowsblown, whereas the cornemuse du centre is mouth-blown. Rather than lying
back on the left shoulder, the bass
drone is either vertical or directed forwards, meaning that all the sound
sources are directed forward. The common-stock is always a rectangle rather
than oval, with rich ornamentation with
mother of pearl, paintings, horn, ivory,
drafts, colours on the front and the
back, rather than the little or no ornament on the cornemuse du centre.
Béchonnet pipes are usually of ebony,
but sometimes boxwood, whereas the
cornemuse du centre may be of various
woods, generally fruit trees and box
wood, sometimes ebony.
The chanter has a double reed, (plastic
or cane) and a conical bore; a second
hole in the back for the right thumb was
30
added in the 70’s to give a flat third.
Measured in inches (2.77cm), the
chanters can be 14 # in A, 16 # in G,
20# in D etc. The most common nowadays is the 16# in G. The range is from
lower F to C’ (one octave higher) - 12
notes + intermediate semi-tones. The
progression of the conical bore is 1/22
- 1/30, an average widening out of 1
mm each 22 mm or 30 mm length; the
chanter of the cornemuse du centre is
longer with a higher progression of the
cone.
The Joseph Béchonnet cornemuse
My Joseph Béchonnet cornemuse is in
ebony (chanter, drones, stocks and
common stocks). I asked for the front
rectangular common stock to be decorated with black and white mosaic horn,
a symbol of the good and evil, the sky
and the earth, the border lines human
beings have to consider when behaving
in a balanced way between excesses.
On the back, the maker made me a
present: an authentic caricature from
the main production period of Joseph
Béchonnet (from 1850 to 1885) representing a "zampognaro", i.e. the piper,
player of the "zampogna" which is the
main family of bagpipes of Italy.
The back of the chanter stock, showing
the small drone
The bellows are made in French walnut and are exactly the same model as
the ones made by Joseph Béchonnet:
two trapezes without hinge, only leather
internally strengthened with wood and
stronger leather. Luckily an antiquary
asked the maker to repair and restore a
genuine set of original Joseph Béchonnet bellows which was broken, so he
could analyse and make new sets in
exactly the same way. The glue is a
special one as well as the "air inlet"
which has a smart system to keep the air
transfer.
The front of the chanter stock
31
The bellows, modelled after
Béchonnet’s original design
Comparing my Scottish set of smallpipes to my French Joseph Béchonnet,
the main differences are:
- The pressure on the bag is lower than
on the smallpipes (due to the use of
plastic reeds, which provide stability
across the various components)
-The sound is louder with the Joseph
Béchonnet cornemuse (due to the conical bore)
-Drones: A/D/E on the smallpipes
and only G on the Joseph Béchonnet
cornemuse
-Number of notes: about double the
notes with the Joseph Béchonnet cornemuse (flat and sharp notes) vs the
smallpipes.
32
-Grace notes: we note a very different
set of grace notes according to the instrument. Mainly the simple grace notes
are possible on both instruments but
even common “birls” for instance are
very difficult to do with the French
cornemuse. However, the traditional
repertoire of the French cornemuse
allows other types of appoggiature (ornaments) which would sound strange on
Scottish smallpipes.
In any case both types of pipes have a
common destiny - making dancers
dance because of the melody, the
rhythm and in particular the “dird” so
well described in the December 2011
issue of Common Stock.Whenever I
have the feeling of getting closer to this
exceptional combination of music,
rhythm and dird, I feel I have one foot
in paradise....while the other one is hitting the dance-floor ...!
I would like to thank Mrs Charlotte
Mear (at the end of the text) for revising
my text but nevertheless, on my request, leave some typical French mistakes to keep a "French" touch
although written by an Italian Belgianborn piper…
I would also like to thank the LBPS for
giving me the opportunity to express
my views on the subject: we should
stress how close the different kinds of
pipes are. To me, pipes are really a
instrument "à part" and therefore, the
link between the different pipers playing the different kinds of pipes, is "à
part" too ...
Franco Zampogna
Benjamin Miller celebrates the 25 Anniversary of this
unique event
H
eld in the idyllic setting of
Vermont's Green Mountains,
the Vermont Bellows-Pipe
School prepares to celebrate it's 25th
consecutive year in the coming August.
Founded by piper and pipe-maker,
Hamish Moore, in conjunction with
Vermont-based piper, Matt Buckely,
the Vermont School has long been
known for excellence in smallpipe and
Border pipe tuition in the Northeastern
United States.
For a number of years the School was
held at Buckley's home in Richmond,
VT. Recently, the program has been
moved to a larger location at the home
of piper, Bret Hamilton, a longtime
student of the School and friend of
Buckley. Bret's home is only just down
the road from the previous location and
boasts large fields, a small pond, and a
few outbuildings, also serving as a small
horse farm throughout the year. The
beauty and serenity offered by this picturesque location are only matched by
the warmth and hospitality afforded by
Bret, along with his wife Melissa and
their children.
The School is held each year at the
start of August, just before the annual
Piper's Gathering weekend that is run
in the nearby city of Burlington, VT.
The five-day program incorporates daily piping classes that focus on ear-learning, technique, and repertoire, as well as
a variable range of side workshops that
have focused on topics including Scottish step-dance, fiddle, whistle, and
playing for dancing. The School's approach focuses contextualising on the
bellows-pipes as a member of the wider
Scottish traditional music idiom, targeted at teaching pipers to play musically,
and along with other instruments or
dancers. Nightly sessions incorporating
fiddle, guitar, flute, whistle, etc. are a
regular highlight of the week, where
participants can put their new skills and
tunes to work.
The school began after a chance meeting between Hamish and Matt in 1985
at a week long workshop in Elkins
College, West Virginia, where Matt was
attending at as a student. after some
33
thinking over a few bottles of beer near
the end of this week, the idea for a
school in Vermont was hatched. The
pilot week for the School would come
to fruition in 1988, with a small class of
seven students and Hamish as the sole
instructor. Hamish notes that pipe
maintenance has always been a large
task at the workshop, especially in the
early days, when students and makers
were less familiar with dealing with the
maintenance and upkeep issues particular to the Northeastern states.
This issue, along with the growing
class size, as the program grew in popularity, eventually led Hamish to bring in
a guest tutor each year, to help with the
teaching and provide a bit of variety in
the instruction. The first outside instructor was an American piper named
Greg Morrel, who Hamish met while
teaching at another school in California.
Over the past 25 years, instructors have
included personalities such as Gary
West, Iain MacInnes & Annie Grace
(all from Scotland), Ryan MacDonald
(Cape Breton), Ellen MacPhee (Prince
Edward Island), Timothy Cummings
(USA), as well as Hamish's son, Fin
Moore.
In addition to piping tuition, other
instructors have been incorporated
over the years to provide further variety
and perspective on the Scottish music
tradition. These musicians have included Sarah Hoy (Scot) and Andrea Beaton
(Cape Breton) - fiddle and Scottish
step-dance, Norman Chalmers (Scot) -
34
concertina, and Laura MacKenzie
(USA) - whistle.
After teaching along side Hamish for a
number of years, Fin has taken over the
reigns for the majority of the organising
and teaching that goes into the Vermont School each year. Fin's drive and
passion for the School is evident in his
teaching and overall character throughout the week. This is little surprise, as
Fin was in attendance as a guest or as an
instructor for the majority of the
School's history, watching as it grew
over the years.
What Makes VTBPS So
Unique?
Aside from the extremely high quality
of instruction and the scenic location,
there is one other attribute that truly
sets the Vermont Bellows-pipe School
apart from other piping camps and
workshops. This is the emphasis on
community as a vital part of our musical
tradition that is inherently built into the
structure of this program. There is no
other piping workshop that I have attended, or heard of, where the number
of participants is deliberately kept so
small and students are encouraged to
live in the same home as the tutors for
an entire week. Camping on the premises has been the primary form of accommodation since the School's
foundation 25 years ago. While some
participants occasionally opt for the
more plush setting of a local B&B or
Hotel, commuting in for classes every
day, there is a core group that will pitch
their tents outside the house every year.
This means that you are not only interacting with the instructors and their
music during class hours. You share the
same kitchen, the same breakfast table,
and relax with a beer on the same porch
after the day is over. For those living on
site, meals are handled in a communal
manner, with a different pair of participants cooking for the group each night.
Payment for the meals is handled with
a jar, to which each participant adds
their contribution to the cost of food
for the evening.
Following dinner, a few drinks, and the
usual banter, tunes generally spring up
to accompany the washing of dishes,
perhaps while someone tests out a recently fitted set of new drone reeds.
Once these tunes begin, the session that
follows normally dwindles on until the
wee hours of the morning, when the
tutors and the more resilient of the class
realise they do need some sleep before
their early start the next morning. Any
hangovers are dealt with in the usual
manner -- Black coffee and poached
eggs, courtesy of Fin, being my personal favourite. Wash, rinse, and repeat
until Friday.
As well as the deep bonds and friendships that grow amongst the tutors,
hosts, and participants, year after year,
the School has also developed many
close ties to the wider musical community of Vermont. It is not uncommon
to have a few drop-ins from local greats
on the folk, or 'trad.' scene, such as
renowned uilleann pipe-maker Benedict Kholer, or the well known Old-
A kitchen session at this year’s event: Neil MacMillan’s head,an unidentified
fiddler,Timothy Cummings & Dominique Dodge
35
time fiddle and banjo maestro Pete
Sutherland. This provides a wonderful
exchange of tunes and insights that go
well beyond the normal bounds of the
Scottish tradition, and is always a highlight of the week for tutors and participants alike.
It is no mistake that these tunes and
friendships have flourished so naturally
in this setting. Not only is the workshop
held in one of the more beautiful areas
of the world, it is also all happening in
what is, perhaps, a more natural environment than that utilised in many
workshops. The tradition of sharing
tunes, stories, songs and even a few
drinks, is not one that occurs naturally
in a conference centre, or a rented university campus, and while there are
many wonderful workshops that continue to flourish in these other settings,
there are very few that take place where
our tradition came from -- in the home.
While many of us have heard stories of
the idyllic 'kitchen ceilidh', few of us get
the chance to experience these sort of
events in this day and age. The Vermont Bellows-pipe School is one place
where this still happens, without any
encouragement, or spectacle.
Another attribute that makes the Vermont School different from many other
piping workshops is it's method of
teaching tunes in class. While many
programs use written music as the primary way of transmitting tunes, or reserve this technique as back up if
learning 'by ear' fails, the VTBPS has
always insisted on sticking to aural
36
forms of transmission. Most commonly, tunes are taught by repetitively demonstrating a given bar, phrase, line, part,
or even an entire tune, depending on
the groups ability level, and encouraging learners to join in as they begin to
pick up the melody.
While this often begins as nearly organised chaos, once a group starts to
feel more comfortable with this methodology, tunes become increasingly
easy to pick up in larger and larger
chunks. 'It's taking away one stage of
learning,' Fin explained, 'So, instead of
having to learn how to play with the
music there --which can take "X"
amount of time, then you play it with
the music for awhile, then you have to
learn how to play it without the music-It is taking away that step, and though
it might take a little longer to begin
with, there is a much bigger chance of
the tune sticking, and becoming easier
to play. [...]
You might need to hear the first
phrase of it again, but once you've got
that first phrase, you can pick up the
rest of the tune quite quick. Another
thing is that there is not the barrier of
quite crudely written music in front of
people,' Fin continued, 'They [the students] are just playing it the way you are
playing it, rather than having to interoperate what is written on a page, that
usually isn't exactly what you are trying
to play --Whether you put dots and cuts
or leave them open, its not exactly how
you are going to play it anyway.' [Fin
Moore, 31/10/12] Despite this ap-
proach, written and recorded music is
always made available to all students
after the week is over, allowing participants to keep learning at home after the
workshop.
This aural learning method also encourages the social aspects of the tradition, noted Sarah Hoy, suggesting that
since the participants are not dependant
on sheet music and music stands, they
are more likely to engage with each
other in late night sessions. This, she
said, plays a part in helping the students
to see the 'bigger picture' and 'the point
of it all'.
One final characteristic that sets the
Vermont School apart from other similar programs is the natural way things
have seemed to evolve over the course
of the past 25 years. From the original
'pilot' year with seven students, to the
addition of each new instructor and the
addition of other instruments and classes, everything has seemed to flow and
evolve quite 'organically', suggested Fin,
Sarah, and Hamish. There has never
been any significant advertising or any
conscious push to make things change
or expand. The School seems to have
just grown along with the personalities
that have become involved over the
years and the needs of the students.
'Everyone always brought something
completely unique to it all', said
Hamish, 'I can't imagine another regular
piping camp that was anything remotely
like the anarchy of this, and the good
fun.' - [Hamish Moore, 31/10/12]
Looking Ahead...
The Vermont School has seen several
important changes in the past few years.
The largest of these is the program's
relocation to the home of Bret and
Melissa Hamilton. This move has provided more space for camping, teaching, and practice space, as well as
generally giving everyone a bit more
room to breath. Also, the past three or
four years have seen a boost in fiddle
and dance classes, alongside the usual
piping tuition. This has been made
much more feasible by the extra space
available at the new location, and
should continue to be an important part
of the program from here on out.
Despite the larger location and the
extra classes that have been made available to those who want to diversify
their week, it does not appear that the
School will be getting much bigger, in
terms of the student body. The organisers have estimated that the new premises will not hold more than 40 people
comfortably, including staff. Keeping
things on the small side, for the sake of
preserving the community spirit and
integrity of the program, will remain a
priority. The plan is not to expand this
workshop in size, really, just to keep it
going on as it has from the beginning,
says Fin.
The Summer 2013 Vermont Bellowspipe School has been set for 29 July - 2
August 2013 in Huntington, Vermont.
Instructors have yet to be announced.
Please see the website for more details:
http://www.pipesandfiddle.org
37
Johnny Lad
Pete Stewart explores the variety of songs with this title
Perhaps the most widely known song with this title is the one made famous by
The Corries among others, which has the chorus line:
‘I’ll dance the buckles of my shoon wi’ you Johnny Lad”1
All I have to say about this song is that at least one old recorded version has ‘I’ll
drink the buckles off my shoon’ 2 and to note that ‘buckles’ has been sung as
'...Ah'll dance the bauchles aff ma feet ...'3
There is, however, what appears to be an earlier version, with a rather different
tune: [this setting is from the Digital Tradition Folk Song Database at mudcat.org]
[These 4 bars are repeated for each 2 lines of the song and chorus. To avoid the
high B, play bar 2.vii as E, bar 3.i as G' ]
O- ken ye my love Johnnie he’s doon on yonder lea,
An he’s lookin an’ he’s jukin’ an’ he’s aye teasin’ me,
He’s puin’ and’ he’s teasin’ but his meanin’s nae sae bad,
Gin it’s ever gaun tae be, tell me noo, Johnnie lad.
Tell me noo, my Johnnie laddie,
Tell me noo, my Johnnie lad,
Gin it’s ever gaun tae be,
tell me noo, Johnnie lad.
There is more about the history of this song and its relations at
http://sangstories.webs.com/johnnielad.htm. Its later version, the ‘dance the
buckles of my shoon’ one, became the sort of song that accumulates comic
verses; Ewan McColl said of it “Johnny Lad moved to Glasgow during the late
19th century and was transformed into a children's street song. The lyrics became
urbanized and the original air was abandoned in favor of a catchy but much
plainer tune.”
38
But there is a much older song with the same title, the words of which were
published by David Herd in 1769. 4
“XXVIII
Johny Lad
Hey how Johny Lad, ye’re no sae kind’s ye sud hae been,
Gin your voice I had na kent, I cou'd na eithly trow my een
Sae weel’s ye might hae tousled me, and sweetly pried my mow between,
Hey how Johny Lad, ye’re no sae kind’s ye sud hae been,
My father he was at the pleugh, mu mither she was at the mill
My billie he was at the moss, and no one near our sport to spill,
The fint a body was therein, ye need na flay’d for being seen,
Hey how Johny Lad, ye’re no sae kind’s ye sud hae been,
Wad ony lad wha lo'ed her weel, hae left his bonny lass her lane,
To sigh and greet ilk langsome hour, and think her sweetest minutes gane,
O, had ye been a wooer leal, we shu'd hae met wi' hearts mair keen,
Hey how my Johnie lad, ye 're no sae kind's ye sud hae been
But I maun hae anither joe, whase love gangs never out o’ mind
And winna let the mamens pass, whan to a lass he can be kind
Then gang yere wa’s to Blinking Bess, nae mair for Johny shal she green
Hey how Johny Lad, ye’re no sae kind’s ye sud hae been,.”
Here is the music published in the Scots Musical Museum with Herd’s words:
[Vol. IV, Song 357. I have lowered the first three notes of bars 5 & 7 by an octave]
39
Robert Tannahill later produced his own version, published in The Pocket Songster
or Caledonian Warbler, 1823:5
OCH HEY, JOHNNIE LAD
Och hey, Johnnie lad,
Ye're no sae kind's ye should hae been
Och hey, Johnnie lad !
Ye didna keep your tryste yestreen.
I waited lang beside the wood,
Sae wae an' weary a' my lane ;
Och hey, Johnnie lad !
It was a waefu' night yestreen.
I looked by the whinnie knowe,
I looked by the firs sae green,
I looked by the spunkie howe,
An aye I thought ye wad hae been.”
However, I first encountered this collection of tunes when playing ‘Johnny Lad’
as published by Matt Seattle in his ‘The Border Bagpipe Book’;6 in his notes Matt
gives MacKenzie’s ‘The National Dance Music of Scotland’ [c.1840] as his source.
Before I was aware of the Musical Museum setting, I attempted to set Herd’s
words to this tune, which, with one or two minor adjustments, I was able to do.
Here is my slightly amended version of Matt’s setting: [Matt describes his version
as ‘with very minor alterations’; I have made some more, chiefly in the anacrusis.]
While working on this setting, I slowly came to realise that the tune was familiar
as a song which I had known many years ago from a recording by Ray Fisher,
titled ‘Johnny Sangster’, with the chorus:
“For you, Johnnie, you Johnnie, you, Johnnie Sangster,”
I'll trim the gavel o' my sheaf, For ye're the gallant bandster”
This song was probably written in Aberdeenshire by William Scott some time
before 1850. It is usually sung in Strathpsey rhythm.7 Notes in the Greig-Duncan
collection add that the “air to which Johnnie Sangster is sung is an old Strathspey
tune known as Johnnie Lad”, which seems to imply that the tune had an
40
independent existence prior to Scott’s song, and if that is so then it almost
certainly had a different set of words. Whether these words were those in David
Herd’s book is not likely to be easily decided. I therefore offer the following
combination of Mackenzie’s tune with Herd’s words as possibly originating in the
18th century, or possibly in the 21st; the pipe setting, however, is assuredly 21st
century.
SSP in A
Voice
Notes
Buchan, Peter, Ancient Ballads and Songs (1828)
Ord, John & Fenton, Alex., Ord’s Bothy Songs and Ballads, 1930
3 Jim McLean, http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7570
4 Additional verses were included in Herd’s notes; see
http://preview.tinyurl.com/clp665z
5 http://preview.tinyurl.com/cshk4rh ; you can hear these words sung to the
Muical Museum tune at http://preview.tinyurl.com/c7pc22y
6 Seattle, Matt, The Border Bagpipe Book, Dragonfly Music, 1994
1
2
41
In our previous issue we described the additions to both
technique and chanter design that Callum Armstrong has
developed with the assistance of maker Julian Goodacre. Here
Callum describes his explorations of the potential of the ‘double
chanter’, some of which he demonstrated at this year’s collogue.
W
hen I first heard of a Double Small pipe Chanter I
was intrigued. What was it?
What was the repertoire? What did it
sound like? Could you play harmony on
it? After finding out that it was two 8
holed chanters running parallel to each
other, I decided then and there that I
wanted one. Knowing nothing of the
history, I decided to ask Julian Goodacre to make me one, but with the addition of a second pair of thumb holes for
the right thumb [to give a C natural
option].
In the ensuing months as I waited for
the delivery, I began to think about
what I wanted the chanter to be able to
do, and what was the advantage of
having one. The obvious advantage is
that it will be louder than the average
smallpipe chanter, the disadvantage,
that tuning would be an increased problem, as a second chanter would also
have to be tuned in concordance with
the drones. I decided that the ultimate
goal would be to play two-part polyphony on the chanter, meaning that I
would be able to play two completely
independent lines of music simultaneously. I also decided that the best basic
fingering would be highland fingering,
rather than a covered fingering, as this
would allow the fingers to move more
42
freely when playing chords, like on the
fingerboard of a guitar.
The chanter arrived in November
2011, delivered by Julian to me at the
Greenwich Early Music Festival. I remember plugging it in to my smallpipes,
and being amazed at the tone of the
instrument. In particular I noticed that
if the two chanters were perfectly in
tune and in unison then the sound
seemed quite quiet, almost as if, as
Julian says, the sound was being sucked
into the instrument. However, if the
instrument was very slightly out of tune
with itself, the sound was suddenly very
loud and almost electrical.
Although my Chanter is in C with a
flattened leading-note, I will talk about
tuning it as if it were in A like a Highland Bagpipe. Tuning was originally the
bane of the whole project. First of all
precise unison tuning is difficult to obtain if you tune each chanter individually. With one chanter turned off, the
instrument operates at a lower pressure.
This means when you then bring in
both chanters together, after freshly
tuning them both separately, the chanters, now playing at a substantially higher pressure than they were tuned in are
thrown completely into discord.
The Eureka moment came when I
saw a violinist tuning up at college in a
practice room. Violinists tune in 5ths,
by double-stopping two strings at once,
and tuning one string to the other. So I
decided to do this with my chanter.
Tuning one chanter to the other in 5ths.
After establishing what pitch the low G
is at on both chanters, I then proceed
to tune a D on one chanter to the low
G on the other chanter, before swapping the notes around. I then tune the
high A to the D, then the Low A to the
high A and then E to the Low A. With
the main notes now fixed in place, I
tune the F and the C slightly flat so they
sound in concordance with the drones
and make a pleasant sounding chord
against D and C. The only notes that
now remain to tune are the B and the
High G. The High G is tuned in unison
with the low G and the B is slightly
flattened, so it makes a softer sounding
chord against the low G, but more
importantly, so that in B minor it creates a nice 5th with the already flattened
F. The result is a perfectly tuned chanter, with the exception of playing slightly
flat in B minor, due to the lowering of
the B and the F.
I was unable to find any specific repertoire for a double chanter, so I decided
to compose my own music. This allowed me to develop the technique of
the instrument over the various pieces
that I wrote, making the practice time
far more enjoyable than playing constant
exercises. I began by using mainly
parallel 3rds and 6ths. I then started
adding suspensions and contrary motion
passagework. As time progressed I was
able to make the two chanters more and
more independent until I was able to
play a flowing tune on one chanter and
a rhythmical accompaniment on the
other. My ‘Siciliana’ was composed to
exploit these possibilities. I have included a tablature for the basic note combinations F/D,G/E, F/A. The
intermediate notes follow this pattern;
repeated notes use simple gracings,
mostly ‘bottom-hand’ notes, but occasionally high G’s where an attack is
desirable. I also use some alternative
fingerings to deal with the issues raised
by the tempering of the chanters and
quick fix tuning, if the chanter is slightly
out of tune in a performance.
I still don't know much about the
history of the double chanters. I would
be very interested to learn more on the
subject should anyone know any thing.
43
Siciliana
44
Callum Armstrong
Bar 8.i
F D
0x 0x
Bar 8.iii Bar 9.i Tablature for the notes in bars 8/9. The chanters are shown as if viewed from the back;
G B
F A
0x 0x
0x 0x o=open, x =closed. The same principle applies
1x 1x
2x 2o
3x 3o
1x 1o
2x 2o
3x 3o
1x 1x
2x 2o
3x 3o
4o 4x
5o 5x
6o 5x
7o 7o
4x 4x
5x 5x
6o 5x
7o 7o
4x 4x
5x 5x
6x 5x
7o 7o
at bars 27-34 and 50-62
The left hand fingers are slid across from left
to right [keeping the left-hand holes covered] to
cover holes on the right-hand chanter as required; this is particularly challenging in the
section bars 27-34.
The c naturals are achieved using a right-hand
double thumb-hole at the back of both chanters. There are a number of other subtleties that
have evolved in my development of this piece,
but perhaps they are best kept for another time.
______________________________________________________________________CS
The Double Chanter
The editor is always happy to respond to readers’ requests,
so here is a brief introduction to the double-chanter as it
has appeared in the past and as it appears today.
T
he notion of one piper playing
two pipes at the same time,
though it may sound unlikely,
turns out to be at least as old as the
notion of bagpipes themselves; in fact,
the earliest surviving example of a reed
pipe of any sort appears to be a double-pipe. These pipes were discovered
by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1926. This is,
as far as we know, the earliest known
reeded instrument, dated back to
around 2800 B.C.1
The twin pipes of Ur
45
Numerous images and descriptions of
players survive from the Middle East,
Egypt and Greece. However, a Scottish
example does exist, on a Roman relief
carving found at Bowness; this features
the Roman double pipe, the ‘tibia’.2
From around the middle of the first
century BCE we have the small bronze
figure from Sardinia playing the instrument still known today as the launeddas.
This is a triple-pipe, consisting of two
‘melody’ pipes and drone, all of which
have ‘single-reeds’. It appears that a
similar instrument was known in Ireland and Scotland from the 8th or 9th
centuries, appearing on a number of
carved stones, and an English depiction
survives in a 16th century Norfolk
church. These examples are all blown
directly in the mouth with no bag intervening. There are many current bagpipe
forms in various parts of Europe and
North Africa, some with restricted
compasses and some with a full octave
or more, such as the Italian zampogna
and ciamarelle), as well as those from
Eastern Europe where most of the
holes on one chanter are either absent
or blocked, making it more of a ‘tunable
drone’. Some types of bagpipes from
the Carpathian basin may have up to
five such bores in the ‘chanter’.
However, there are also numerous
depictions in English churches which
show bagpipers playing double-chanters. A summary was published by James
Merryweather in the Galpin Society
journal, and others have been located
since. Julian Goodacre has made repro-
46
ductions of two examples, both from
pew-end carvings from Cornish
Churches. Both these have chanters
with the left hand having the upper
range of holes and the right hand the
lower.
Piping Shepherd at Marwood. N. Devon
Only one depiction has so far been
located in Scotland, on the painted ceiling from Rossend Castle, dating to
around 1575. It is, however, taken from
an French pattern book, although I
believe the original pattern has only a
single row of holes. 3
This instrument is clearly of the ‘musette’ type, with shuttle-drones. Another early depiction appears the Harmonie
Universelle (1636:). An altogether more
fanciful bagpipe is that referred to by
Mersenne as ‘Musette de Naples’, an
enhanced version of the Neapolitan
surdelina, having not only two keyed
chanters, but also keyed drones - regulators as they would be termed today.4
There are, however, descriptions of
bagpipes which appear to match today’s
‘scottish smallpipe’ in all but pitch. The
first of these is described and measured
Julian Goodacre has made a reproduction of this pipe.
This is one of Talbot’s two instruments he titles ‘Bagpipe - Scotch’,
though this term needs to be treated
carefully since it had a wider geographical meaning than it would today. Like
the Mersenne chanter, it has only the
bottom four holes for the right hand.
Its pitch appears to be around ‘E’, similar to the single-chantered ‘Montgomery’ smallpipe dated 1757.
The second example is contained in
the journal kept by George Skene on
his journey from Aberdeen to London
in 1729. When he stops at the Crown
Inn at Penrith and meets James Bell,
“ He [Bell] brought with him…, two
sett of Double Small pipes and two sett
of single ones, each differently key’d [ie
in different pitches], I bought his sharpest
double one for David wc. has three
burdens for wc. wt. a bellows pay’d half
a guinea…. I observ’d he makes more
out of variety in all parts wt. the Double
Small one, than I thought could possibly have been made of any small one…”
At the end of the 18th century the
double chanter appears in Irish imagery; there is a depiction in Ledwich’s
1790 publication The Antiquities of Ireland
Today double-chanter bagpipes of one
A reproduction of the ‘Talbot’ douform or another are common both in
ble-pipe, and the ‘Mersenne’ chanter.
North Africa, Italy, Greece and the
regions of Eastern Europe.
in the manuscript of James Talbot, Since the beginning of the revival,
compiled in Cambridge around 1700. several makers of Scottish smallpipes
have offered double chanters, (as have
47
An illustration from Ledwich’s The Antiquities of Ireland, 1790
occasional Uilleann pipe-makers).
These have generally been a single
piece of wood with two holes bored
down it, each bore having all eight
holes, although some have been made
from separate lengths of wood glued
together.
Hamish Moore told me “I found them
very difficult to set up and maintaining them
wasn’t easy unless the owners were very experienced – so - I stopped making them.” He
can, however, be heard playing one
made by him on his 1985 recording
‘Cauld Wind Pipes’.
I understand that Colin Ross has also
occasionally made them (apparently
with similar misgivings) and I have in
my possession one made, I think, by
Herriot and Allen, though the reeds
are severely damaged. I have also seen
pictures of one made by Ray Sloan and
48
it may well be that other makers should
be added to this list. Julian Goodacre
tells me that the one he made for Callum was number 59 and he has now
made 60, all with the full eight notes in
both hands.
This kind of chanter takes a good deal
of attention and perseverance to master, but can produce some remarkable
results, as Callum demonstrated at this
year’s Collogue. Hopefully videos of his
performance of his Siciliana will soon
be available on the website.
Pete Stewart
Notes
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ctz5zfs
http://preview.tinyurl.com/d45vyfo
3 http://preview.tinyurl.com/c2b6kcu
4 http://preview.tinyurl.com/c4daxmw
All retrieved 29/11.2012
1
2
Bellows by the Bay
In our previous issue we announced a new bellows-piping
event in the USA. We received the following report on what
looks like becoming a regular feature of the bellows-pipe
calendar
S
an Leandro, California was the location for a Pipers’ weekend in November which featured 2 days of classes for bellows pipers of all levels. It was
a fantastic weekend and I would very much like to give positive feedback
for EJ Jones our tutor!
Here's a little of what we learned:
● How to start up
● Tuning - to our drones as well as to pianos or singers
● The "lonesome touch"
● Jig phrasing (emphasis on beats 1,3,4 and 6)
● About just vs equal temperament tuning
● Mental power - practicing playing with only the bag and no bellows and
vice-versa
● Embellishments (turns, slurs, vibrato, suspensions, crossing "noises",
vamping, and Low A (or B) pedal tone
● Learning by ear - and some holiday tunes
● Drone and chanter reed adjustments
● Dancing to 'An Dro' and 'Atholl Highlanders'!
Being human, I am compelled to compare this workshop with the many others
I have attended over the years. And I can honestly say that the quantity and
quality of the material that EJ shared with us was just unbeatable. Here are just
some of the highlights that stood out for me:
● EJ's advance prep - sending tunes in advance so we wouldn't spend class
time learning the dots, but rather, learning technique. Talking with each
student before the workshop to learn individual goals and needs and
thus, to plan content tailored to the participants.
49
● Friday pipe maintenance clinic - making sure each student was sorted out
(as much as possible) before the workshop, thus devoting class time to
the group instead of individual "equipment" issues.
● One-on-one attention
● Unflagging energy and patience - EJ is completely focused on what he
can do to help his students - not what he can do to promote his products.
● Teaching style - mix of lecture, demonstration, and student participation
to reinforce what we just heard.
We are already planning our second annual Bellows By the Bay
EJ Jones teaching a group at the Bellows By The Bay Weekend
______________________________________________________________________CS
LBPS Development Grant Awards
Members are invited to submit proposals for these awards, prior to the
dates of the annual competition and the Collogue. On each of these
dates £1,000 will be available for award. Applicants must have been
members for a minimum of six months before applying.
50
THE BIRTH OF THE BAGPIPE
While some members were engaged in the International
Bagpipe Conference earlier this year, others were busy with
their own projects. Here, Jock Agnew describes their day
T
he 10th of March 2012 was declared, by the Bagpipe Society
and others, as International
Bagpipe Day, and I was joined by Vicki
Swan, Jonny Dyer and Sam Allen to
take the audience (of about 70) on a
journey spanning several thousand
years and a host of different countries accompanied, of course, by a large
helping of appropriate music.
The local press and radio gave us a
welcome build-up – the Maldon Standard announced: ‘A taste of Scotland will
be coming to Langford this weekend as the
country’s most iconic instrument goes under the
microscope.’ And we were mercifully
spared any of the eternal jokes.
I stole selectively and I hope with
impunity from Common Stock, Hugh
Cheape’s Book of the Bagpipe, Piping
Times, the Tara Music Company, Samuel
Pepys’ diaries, and Ruancie Kinaird; all of
which were acknowledged.
The format was simple: with the help
of the audience (which included several
Highland pipers, small-pipe players and
folk musicians) we established just what
a bagpipe might be; its component
parts and how it could be played. Then,
with appropriate pictures projected onto the screen, we looked at and dis-
Jock Agnew, Vicki Swan and Jonny Dyer lead the session. (Photo: Ron Axford)
51
cussed different types of bagpipe; how
they featured in literature and art; the
music that was played and the music
that might have been played; the points
of interface between pipe music and
other genres – classical, jazz, pop; and
some of the influence imposed by the
church and the army throughout the
ages.
Sam read out the different quotes
(which gave me and everyone else a
break from the sound of my voice);
Vicki, Jonny and I played the tunes on
various pipes and other instruments,
and at half time, when refreshments
were served, Vicki made available a set
of practice small-pipes (Richard Evans)
for anyone to try.
The evening ended with an invitation to
musicians in the audience to come and
join us for a few session tunes. This
proved very popular, and provoked
several ‘encores’. Vicki, with her
Swayne Border pipes led the tunes in G,
I led the tunes in D with my own Border pipes – and we found the volume
available on these pipes gave a good
reference point for the other musicians
(mostly melodeons) to follow. For instance we played Bobby Shaftoe followed
by the Rattling Bog in D, and Donkey
Riding followed by March Past in G
(Morris tunes).
When it became time to finish everyone was reluctant to go home. There
were so many questions to be asked and
information exchanged. It was a great
evening, and the entry fee generated
over £350 for our church bell fund.
Jock Agnew
Michelle Jones tries out a set of smallpipes. (Photo: Gareth Jones)
52
The Border Reiver:
Gordon Mooney 1983
Julian Goodacre
finds a groundbreaking recording
amongst his
collection of old
cassettes
A
fter years of working in a dusty
atmosphere, my workshop stereo has finally done me the
favour of refusing to play any CDs. I
have used this as an opportunity to play
through some of the hundreds of cassette tapes that I have collected or recorded over the years, some of which
even had their cellophane wrappers still
on. The most enjoyable tapes I plan to
burn onto CDs, which is a time-consuming process. And many of them are
getting thrown out. I have to be strict
with myself! But I have discovered all
sorts of gems that I have not listened to
for decades.
One of these unlistened-to gems is
‘The Border Reiver’, by Gordon
Mooney, produced by Keith Proud and
Richard Butler on the Border Keep
Label (BK009). He recorded this in
1983, the year of the founding of the
LBPS. All the tracks are unaccompanied. Side A he plays on ‘Lowland
Smallpipes’, side B is on Border Pipes.
I believe that his Border Pipes were the
set he made himself which had distinc-
tive sounding drones that he told me he
made from ‘shunt poles’.
I bought my copy in 1985 and can still
recall the excitement of listening to it.
In those days it sounded so new and
different. It is easy to forget that over
the subsequent years pipe makers have
developed such a range of different
sounding Scottish bellows pipes, and
pipers too have developed different
styles of playing on them, that the modern piper is accustomed to hearing a
whole variety of sounds.
Listening to this tape again in 2012 I
am amazed at his choice of tunes; with
one exception all the tunes he was playing were Border tunes that he had
researched. He had spent years in the
National Library to unearth these
tunes; Gordon was a real pioneer of
these pipes and of the music.
I mentioned this tape to him about 20
years ago and he was apologetic about
it and muttered something about burning all his copies. But I feel he has
nothing to be ashamed about. He was
53
playing well and his instruments sound
good. And his repertoire could not
have been more appropriate; 98% for
Border Content!
Obviously it is no longer available, and
I suspect that Gordon will not thank
me for such a late review of it. But I
think it is important that this tape does
not go unforgotten. It was an early
‘foundation stone’ for our Society. I am
sure many of the more ‘mature’ (ie
older!) members will have been inspired by this tape. I certainly was.
Side A. Lowland Small Pipes
1.
Oe’r the Border
2.
Souters o’ Selkirk: Willie stays
long at the fair.
3.
Cumha na h-oige (Lament for
the maiden).
4.
Go to Berwick, Johnny:
Mount your baggage: Jockey said to
Jenny.
5.
Jinglan John: How she’ll ne’er
be guided: Jenny Nettles.
6.
Mary Scott, the flower of Yarrow.
7.
Woo’ed an’ married an’ a’
Side B. Border Pipes
1.
Soor plums o’ Gallashiels
2.
Hey ca’ thru: Wee Totum
Fogg: Geld him lasses, geld him.
54
3.
Chevy Chase: Lassie gae milk
on my cow hill.
4.
John cock up your beaver: Follow her o’er the border: Drops of Brandy.
5.
Stumpie: Linkumdoddie (Blue
Bonnets): Coffee and tea (Jamie Allen’s
Fancy).
6.
Hoop her and gird her: Jacky
Latin
Sleeve notes
“Gordon Mooney lives in the old
burgh town of Linlithgow, West Lothian and is known to make raids into the
Border country. In 1958, aged seven,
he began studies in Highland Piping
with P.M. Gates of Edinburgh Police
Pipe Band, and has over the years
played in several pipe bands and competed in solo competitions. In 1978, he
became interested in the bellows blown
Lowland and Border Bagpipes and began to research the music and tradition
of these instruments. This lead, in
1982, to publications of some of his
research and, with other pipers, to the
formation of the Lowland and Border
Bagpipe Society. With one exception,
the tunes on this recording are traditional to the Lowland and Border, having been played by the old pipers from
time out of mind.”
Julian Goodacre 23rd November 2012
The Piper in the Holler
John Bushby enjoys an unusual
collection of bellows-piping
from Appalachia
Timothy Cummings,
with Pete Sutherland, Caleb Elder
and friends
W
hen we think of music
from the Appalachian
Mountains in South Eastern USA we think of the the fiddle,
dulcimer and 5 string (clawhammer
style of playing) banjo. Oh, and song of
course. Bagpipes? Now that is interesting, but here they are, featuring and
playing tunes and hymns from this region.
The region itself is a melting pot of
Scots, Irish, English, Scandinavian and
German immigrants to the New World
and many of the tunes and songs reflect
this migration. Many versions of English ballads can be found along with
instrumental music. Many tunes have
also survived though sometimes altered, though the traditional roots are
still there.
This CD by piper Timothy Cummings
has taken many of these tunes and also
those that are ‘home grown’ and has
given them a new flavour by using his
instruments, the Border pipes and Scottish smallpipes, as well as Highland
pipes (on one track) and whistle. Added to these instruments he uses the
clawhammer style 5 String banjo, old
time fiddle and viola as well as vocals.
Mandolin and double bass also feature
in the last track on the CD.
My first experience of pipes and banjos was Fred Morrison using bluegrass
banjo on his latest CD which showed
what a wonderful combination this
could be.
This CD steps back from the frenetic
bluegrass style and is what we call, or at
least I do, ‘Old Time’ playing. The
combination of instruments works very
well and I love the banjo!
From start to finish the CD is an interesting and refreshing change from a lot
of piping CDs we have these days. The
music is simple but in its simplicity
there is a beauty; to me it is seems
played not to impress but from the
heart. Having a soft spot for Appalachian music I have thoroughly enjoyed
this offering from Timothy. It shows
that the pipes are not limited to the
tradition on this side of the pond and
work just as well with tunes from elsewhere. Of course there are tunes or
variants that are played on this side, and
55
the Border Tradition itself gets a lookin with a track featuring Linkumdoddie
and Jenny Nettles, though it is given the
‘old time’ treatment.
The mood of the CD is broken up
with some very pleasant singing with
pipe accompaniment which once again
works very well.
Timothy has opted for a different recording approach too and rather than
record in a studio with all the trickery
that entails he recorded most of the CD
‘live’ with the musicians playing together in an open, reconstructed barn situated on a hilltop amidst the Green
Mountains. This has given the CD an
authentic feel. The result is that the
musicians could be in your living room.
As Timothy says, “This is a piping
album to be sure, but one with strong
Southern flavoring: a genuinely American expression”
I won’t single out too many individual
tracks but I particularly like the opening
track which sets the scene with
Bonaparte Crossing the Rockies which is a
well kent tune in the piping repertoire
but more well known as Battle of Waterloo. Starting with the Border pipes the
fiddle eases in with both instruments
giving that real old time flavour with
sliding notes and then the banjo comes
in nailing the ‘old time feeling’. All
instruments fit so well together with
good balance between them.
On track 2, Tim utilises an interesting
adaptation where he tapes the C# down
to C natural on A smallpipes and plays
a catchy set of tunes in G on the A
56
chanter with drones tunes to G/D.
Once again the combination of pipes
and banjo works really well.
Track 3 moves away from pipes and
features Tim on whistle with fiddle and
banjo. Listeners will recognise the tune
New Rigged Ship but in the Appalachians
it is called Chapel Hill Serenade.
Track 6 is the first vocal offering, The
Dying Californian with the pipes providing a delightful harmony to the singing
of Hollis Easter. No other instruments
feature on the track. This is a tragically
uplifting song about the California
Gold Rush. The pipes fit the song so
well.
A nod to the Border and its tunes
comes with a rendition on track 8 of the
well know tunes Linkumdoddie and
Jenny Nettles. As Tim says these ’were
chosen as a nod to the Old World’. To
me the banjo sounds as if it has been
tuned down which gives it a ‘growling’
tone which fits well with the chirpyness
of the pipes; then we have the only
appearance of that quintessential Appalachian instrument the Mountain or
Lap Dulcimer.
Following on from this track are a set
of three tunes, Wondrous Love, Ecstasy,
and Cowper from the ‘Shape Note’ singing tradition which suit the modality of
the pipes very well. Tim is double
tracked here playing low D whistle and
with banjo providing the backing. On
the next track Tim triple tracks himself
playing another hymn from the tradition, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.
I will admit it took a few listens to get
my ears around this track but I did. It
didn’t immediately stand out as one of
the better tracks at first hearing but
listening more closely I came to like it.
Some folks may question the playing
of religious music on the pipes but
heck, why not. They are good tunes.
Following on we have a second vocal
offering, Fathers, Now Our Meeting is
Over, sung by Pete Sutherland who puts
away his banjo and plays guitar and is
once again accompanied by Tim on D
taped smallpipes and Caleb Elder on
viola. The song is actually a funeral
hymn from the western part of North
Carolina.
The CD ends with a traditional hoedown tune called Sandy Boys where the
arrangement is in the true string band
tradition where all melody instruments
take turns stepping up to the mike and
soloing so in addition to the Border
pipes we have, fiddle, mandolin, banjo,
guitar and string bass. This for me
works really well with pipes and they
don’t seem out of place at all in this
instrumental lineup. Probably one of
my favourite tracks.
Although I don’t play this type of
music (well perhaps one song when in
the mood) I have always had a soft spot
for music from the Appalachians and
Old Time music in general.
I would thoroughly recommend buying this album and adding it to your
collection. It is a refreshing approach
to piping and takes us in a direction we
probably would never have thought of.
Playing with Timothy are: Pete Sutherland ( clawhammer banjo, guitar, song,
fiddle) and Caleb Elder (fiddle, viola).
Special guests Sandy Silva (hambone
or body percussion, clogging), Hollis
Easter (song), Don Pedi (mountain dulcimer), Joseph Campenella Cleary
(mandolin), Neil Rossi (guitar), and Michael Santosusso (upright bass).
The CD is available via the LBPS website as well as direct from Tim at
www.birchenmusic.com
Many of the tunes can be found in a
book of Appalachian tunes from the
same website.
Track list
1.
Bonaparte
Crossing
the
Rockies/Highlander's Farewell/Johnny
Cope
2. Red Fox/Stony Point
3. Chapel Hill Serenade/Pilgrim of
Sorrow/World Turned Upside Down
4. Pretty Saro
5. Natchez/Ducks on the Mill Pond
6. The Dying Californian
7. Wayfaring Stranger/British Field
March
8. Linkum Doddie/Jenny Nettles
9. Wondrous Love/Ecstasy/Cowper
10. Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
11. Fathers, Now Our Meeting isw
Over
12. Sandy Boys
John Bushby Nov 2012
57
Full details of all these events will be on the website in the New Year
Teaching Weekend
The teaching Weekend will once again be held at the Royal Hotel, Bridge of
Allen, on 22nd - 24th Feb 2013. Provisional tutors are Mike Katz, Iain MacInnes
and Finlay MacDonald.
______________________________________________________________________CS
Annual Competition
The 2013 competition will be held on Saturday, April 13th in The National Piping
Centre, Glasgow. See the LBPS website for programme, classes and rules.
______________________________________________________________________CS
30th Anniversary Celebrations
New Music Competition
To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the LBPS will be holding a competition for
new music in the border idiom, for Scottish bellows pipes. The competition will
be officially launched in February 2013. Prizes, £250, £150, £100. Entrants will
be invited to submit both notation and recordings of their compositions, which
should be submitted by July 31st 2013
Festival Event - August 6th
Introducing Scotland’s Other Bagpipes
We will be holding an event in conjunction with the special exhibition of historic
bagpipes from Scotland, England and Ireland The Piper's Whim (1 - 31 August
2013) at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh organized by the University of Edinburgh’s
Reid Concert Hall Museum of Instruments. The aim of the LBPS event will be
to give Edinburgh Festival visitors an introduction to the wider world of bagpiping with particular emphasis, of course, on the lowland and border tradition..
Anniversary Concert 1st November
The results of the new music competition will ba announced and the winning
pieces performed at a gala concert in Edinburgh on Nov 1st, on the eve of the
2013 Annual Collogue [venue to be confirmed].
58
Steenie Steenson, well-kent grumpy old
piper, sends us his ramblings and
rattlings
I
t was a wild night across Eildon as
I staggered back to Primrose
Knowe from my wee trip to Aul’
Reekie - I had plenty of opportunity to
savour the landscape of the borders, I
can tell you. I had on my mind, as you
may guess, the tales I had heard, both
of pipers and sea-maidens and of the
culture I learned I had in my DNA.
Well, I have a scary story of my own, as
you may well know, concerning whitehot chanters and devil dogs and a
misplaced male-payment, but I have
ever been unaware of what culture I
carried in my genes.
To be honest, ever since my grandsire’s
earliest days, though we sang the songs
right enough, we struggled to put aside
the culture we sang about, though
there’s now those, particularly, I notice,
in local councils and tourist boards, that
are, it seems, rather proud of it. I’m
talking, you’ll guess, about the reiving.
Now that was a time of terror for all but
the wildest and lawless of us, something
I would have no taste for, to be called
out in the dark of night by a slighted
warlord and dragged across the hills to
steal some other warlord’s cattle, and
slaughter some poor tacksman and put
his family to the fire on the way, belikes,
though I saw muckle mischief myself,
and maybe did some, that I couldna
avoid, in the riding days. There are
cultures that are best buried in the
nearest tarn, if you ask my opinion,
which there’s few are like to do.
There were more than a few I spotted
in that auspicious room who had never
blown into a highland pipe, who were
maybe as bewildered as I was, lurking at
the very back of the room, as is my wont
these days, to learn of the struggles a
piper who had been trained in the music
of the mountaineers might be put
through in order to instill something of
the flavour of the music of the borders
into their fingers.
I’m not saying I didn’t have my piping
drilled into me - my pappy made sure
of that - but the music was there from
the start. The dance, now, whether a
penny-wedding or a fair or what-haveye, you couldn’t keep me from it. I’d be
there, moonrise till sunrise, steppin’
awa’. I soon learnt that without the
dance in you, no matter how much
drilling your pappy would give you,
you’d never make a border piper, not
one who’d be asked back. And what
dances! My head reels. Well, my knees
and my back are well-gone now, but I
could out-step any of them when I was
a youngster. Ask me to tell you about
those dances some time; there’s few
now that remembers them at all…
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LBPS Teaching Weekend
22-24th February, Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire
Tutors Mike Katz, Iain MacInnes and Finlay MacDonald
LBPS Annual Competition
April 13th, National Piping Centre, Glasgow
Morpeth Northumbrian Gathering
5th April to 7th April, http://www.northumbriana.org.uk/gathering/
Ceòlas Summer School
7th - 12th July, South Uist, Hebrides: www.ceolas.co.uk
Prince Edward Island Fiddle Camp
July 12th - 19th, http://peifiddlecamp.com/
Tim Cummings & Iain MacInnes
Vermont Bellows Pipe and Fiddle School
July 29 - August 2, 2013 http://www.pipesandfiddle.org/
LBPS New Music CompetitionClosing Date for Entries, July 31st
Pipers’ Gathering
August 2nd to 5th, Burlington, Vermont, USA
http://pipersgathering.org
An Introduction to Scotland’s Other Bagpipes
August 6th, LBPS presentation recital,
St Cecila’s Hall, Edinburgh Festival Fringe,
Bagpipe Colloquium
Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments,
Aug 12, 2013. http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/uey/
LBPS 30th Anniversary Concert
1st November, Edinburgh. Venue to be confirmed
Common Stock is published by the Lowland and Border Pipers’ Society. All enquiries
and contributions should be sent to the editor, Pete Stewart at Stables Cottage, Winton
Gardens, Pencaitland, East Lothian, EH34 5AT, Scotland: editor@lbps.net
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