Dunaber Music

It’s Free! Michael Grey Book 5: Music for Everyone

Here you go: my fifth book of music, “Music for Everyone”. First published in 2006.
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Alex MacMillan: It’s a Small World

“It’s a small world” must be one of the most often said bromides in the English language. But, surely for a reason: it is a small world. The top-of-the-small-world-pops in my family belongs to the story of my younger sister and her husband.

Here’s the scoop: After meeting and date number three or so they start talking a little about their families. He says to her something like, “my Mum’s family comes from a little place in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland: Benbecula”. “Yikes”, thinks my sister – or something like that. That’s where my father’s mother comes from!
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Gaelic College Fiddles with the Great Highland Bagpipe

Cape Breton is surely a beautiful part of the world – in the summer, anyway. I’ve spent a good few summer weeks in the past teaching at the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts in St. Ann’s. Happy times, for sure, with a hundred kids or so running up and down the hills with their chanter and pipes and plans aplenty for pranking (mostly) suspecting teaching staff. Though “from away”, as they say in CB, my time at the GC gifted me some truly great memories, lifelong friends and some modest insight into how things “go” in that part of the world.
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(Tunes for) Summertime

Here’s a few tunes to help while away your day – a holiday if you live in Canada.

Here’s me playing my solo spot at the May 21, Toronto Police Pipe Band show at the el Mocambo club in Toronto.
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Copyright this Way

A week or so ago I led a talk at the annual judge’s meeting of the Pipers’ & Pipe Band Society of Ontario. The day’s always a good one. At the very least it’s a great gathering of old friends and acquaintances and at it’s best its a really insightful exchange of ideas and perspectives.

Anyway, my bit was a comparative look at pipe band ensemble. I checked out competitive orchestras – yes, they do compete – American high school concert bands and British brass bands. I learned a lot in my seeking out of information related to other competitive musical worlds. For instance, I can now tell you with great certainty that it’s scarily, freakishly and jaw-droppingly amazing how close the British brass band world mirrors that of the pipe band. Maybe a blab for another day.
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Advice from Jimi Hendrix

I have to admit I’m not one of those blindly obsessed Jimi Hendrix fans. Not even close. Guitar players tend to worship him – especially electric guitarists. I do appreciate his musicianship, though. Absolutely [I'm sure Jimi is sighing with relief amongst his rock and roll angels].

But his stuff, unlike, say, Cathy-Ann MacPhee’s, is not what I listen to; it’s not music that tends to make my day – or night – better. And we all know music has that magical power…if directed to the right ears.

But just because someone hasn’t dialled in to your music, well, that doesn’t make it any less great.
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Japanese Cinema and Pipe Bands

Now there’s a subject line you probably never imagined.

I always thought those old cheesy Japanese movies from the 1950s might benefit from a little kick, a little something to give them a boost. I’m not talking Seven Samurai or Rashômon here, I’m talking about movies like those from the Godzilla and Mothra franchises (did they call ever call old movie serials “franchises”?).

Anyway, I thought how great it would be for one to snag a pipe band soundtrack, music to go along with the badly dubbed English.
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A Healthy Band: It’s About Feeling Good

We’re entering the time of year (in the northern hemisphere, at least) where pipe bands experience a drop in consistently good attendance. For as long as I have played in bands this has been a truth. From January through to March a good whack of the band, a sizable group of people (usually the same), fail to attend, or attend sporadically, due to “busy-ness” – or whatever. Excuses are legion and, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker [she of "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"], they run the gamut from A to B. The reasons may be unique to those “busy” but to core membership – and every band has a hardcore group of members that keep the ship afloat – they bore.
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Bagpipes and Inuit Tradition

People who love bagpipe music also love to deliberate what makes good bagpipe music. It happens in solo piping all the time (“Ooh, did you hear how s/he played the first variation of Mary MacLeod? Rubbish. Clipped to hell…”).

But, really, its when pipe band music is talked about that we most often hear the most intense debates. I guess its due, in part, because there’s more people involved. I think, though, its more the sports-like, hyper-competitive, team elements that characterize the pipe band movement that makes for the fertile ground of relentless pipe band music debate.
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Those Who Can, Teach

The world’s population is roughly 6,697,254,041. Of those people, I figure, based on what I know, what I’ve read and what I sense to be true (so we’re talking science here) there’s about 100,000 of us Great Highland Bagpipers (GHBs).

And what’s that percentage? GHBs represent about 0.0014931492726393354 of the world’s population. More or less.

Should pipers feel vulnerable? I think I really refer to the pipe and not the piper so, I put it this way: is the playing of the GHB an at-risk art form?
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