Dunaber Music

Gimme Shelter

August 9, 2010 on 8:08 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Pipe Bands, Whinges | 3 Comments

This is Worlds week and as usual the city of Glasgow is thronging with pipers and drummers and all kinds of related Piping Live! events. It’s looking like a damp week (to put it mildly) is in store for pipers and drummers. Between “heavy rain showers”, “light rain showers” and “light rain” the cape carriers of the pipe band world will be sure to be under-employed. A good thing a lot of the Piping Live! events are either indoors or under cover.
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Just as I Would’ve Played It

July 18, 2010 on 4:42 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Pipe Bands, Solo Piping, Tips | 1 Comment

A while back I was going on about how I thought most of us go about listening to music – specifically, bagpipe music. My ramble was around how we should try and get over the discomfort we feel (that’s the delicate way of putting it) when we hear musical interpretations outside of what we’re used to hearing – or playing.
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Bring on the Giraffes: Blair Drummond

July 5, 2010 on 8:28 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Pipe Bands, Solo Piping, Stories | 2 Comments

Have you ever considered, thought about, reflected on, what pipe tune you may’ve have played the most in your life? What melody you, as a piper – or, as an accompanist, a drummer – have played more than any other? Have wiggled your fingers, twisted your wrists, and aimed to be true to the score of more than any other that was ever written? I have. And my burned-on-the-brain, firmly committed-to-muscle-memory, impaled-on-the-hard-drive? Well, here’s a hint: it’s the name of a Scottish “safari park”.
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Poetic Passion

June 10, 2010 on 4:23 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Pipe Bands, Solo Piping | Comments Off

A thought today, just as we enter the fray of the sometimes twisted piping/pipe band “music season”:
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Play the Sweet Music (You Like)

May 2, 2010 on 5:10 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Pipe Bands, Solo Piping, Tips | Comments Off

I was driving to band practice this morning and happened on a really interesting interview on the radio.
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Listening With Open Ears

April 24, 2010 on 7:42 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Tips | Comments Off

After pouring out their heart and soul and doing their best to play music for judges pipers often – very often – hear (or read on score sheets) comments like this: “Not the way I prefer to hear this tune,”, “Not the way I was taught this tune” and, if the judge is in high rotation (read: hired a lot more than s/he probably should be for their good health), “Not as good as I heard you play last week”. I can tell you I have had all of these comments – and a lot more – on my own crit sheets.
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Fleshmarket Close (Glad It’s Not Trad)

March 31, 2010 on 6:55 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Stories | 7 Comments

Of all the tunes I have built the one that gives me the most copyright grief is “Fleshmarket Close”. This tune wasn’t two years old and it appeared on a recording, a vinyl recording, with the dreaded “public domain/traditional” note. I won’t bother mentioning the offending parties – but it was not a bagpipe group. It was a “folk” band. Anyway, the cool part – especially thinking about it today – was the vinyl record bit of the story.
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So You Want to Compete at the Big Games

March 28, 2010 on 6:14 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Solo Piping, Video | 4 Comments

Thanks to the recent purchase of a video-to-digital box I’ve been able to post some ancient video. This particular sample presents as a fine demo of what it’s really like to compete at a big outdoor contest – in this case, The Argyllshire Gathering, Oban, Scotland. While this comes from 1991 (gulp) things haven’t changed and what you see is what you get.
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New Calum MacCrimmon Recording

March 19, 2010 on 1:43 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, News, Reviews | 2 Comments

It seems somehow right that I should be listening to Calum MacCrimmon’s new record, “Man’s Ruin”, on a Westjet flight to Calgary. The Scotland-based Canadian piper/multi-instrumentalist – and heir to the MacCrimmon piping line – comes from Alberta. It was western Canada, too, in Saskatchewan (the place you can all “say without starting to stutter“), too, while teaching at a summer piping school, that I first met Calum. Anyway, gotta write about his CD work, its “excellento” as Jack or Victor might say. His music is cool in that confident, strutty, know-what-I’m-doin-and-I’m-doin-it sort of way. I guess that’s as a good a definition of cool as anything, isn’t it.
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Bagads: The Long and Short of It

February 15, 2010 on 8:17 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, News, Pipe Bands | 2 Comments

Yesterday morning I dragged my ass out of bed and caught most of the bagad performances from the season’s first bagad championship. The camera work wasn’t especially sophisticated but the sound seemed pretty good and I was really thankful that a TV network in France opted to stream the contest live. Very, er, tres cool.
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