Dunaber Music

Smile!

I just caught wind of news that there’s been a discovery in a barn in Lewis, Scotland of a trove of World War I vintage photography – glass negatives to be precise.
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A Merry (Plaid) Christmas to All

Here’s wishing you and yours the best of the season.
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The Artist’s Bagpipe

I don’t know if it’s due to its many appendages (all projecting from its grand inflated centre) or if it’s just plain unobservant carelessness but it seems to me the bagpipe in the context of art is much maligned.
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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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One Sunday Morning

Here’s a photo from the archives; one of my favourites. I especially like the soft light in this pic. Here we see mid-August morning sun stream through the great stretch of high windows squintifying the weary, mostly hungover band of friends. [apologies to Sister Wendy: I may've ripped off her commentary/patter there].
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When in Rome …

I’ve had to pretty much watch what I eat my whole life. Fries and gravy, pasta and anything and pints stick to me like chrome on a trailer hitch. Maybe you can relate. The buckles on a kilt, or your pants (trousers) don’t lie. It’s probably the way of things for most people, I suppose. Anyway, I generally, sort of, mostly, do my good-intentioned best to keep things right.
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Plays Like a Flute …

… sounds like a bagpipe.
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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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Strafe Strafferson: What’s with the Crazy Piping Notes?

There’s a crazy phenomenon in the piping world [ok, yes, there's more than one, but I'm only talking about one of them here]. This phenomenon has to do with what might be described as the crazed strafing of notes on a pipe chanter; the random rat-a-tat-tat of notes on the chanter. This sort of unhinged insanity sounds like this: “upanddownthescaleupanddownthescalerandomtoptobottomnotesrandomtoptobottomnotes”.
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This Day in History

I don’t think many know that on this day, in 1927, Canadian Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, made the first trans-Atlantic telephone call to the UK. He apparently chatted with British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Maybe they chatted about King’s séances where he’d talk to his dead mum or maybe, they talked of that year’s Oban gold medal winner, John Wilson – or maybe not [you have to give me points for the segue to the bonus super piping trivia].
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