Hope you enjoy the tunage.

M.

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!

So it turns out that the Benbecula village, or maybe more rightly stated, “enclave of houses”, that is Torlum, Benbecula, forms a seriously common thread for both of them. On the birth of their first child I have a feeling they were on high alert for overly close eyes – or, worse, only one: mid-forehead.

Of course, all’s well but interesting to learn more of my brother-in-law’s family; most probably, my family.

Here’s a tune he passed to me. Provided here at his courtesy. I looked at this and thought right away that the way to find out more about it was to talk to Reay Mackay, a Godfather of North American piping.

Reay is a veritable fountain of piping knowledge, a child prodigy and so a person who has made music through a good chunk of 20th century piping life. In his insight to this tune, he didn’t disappoint.

This tune, “Alex MacMillan”, is my brother-in-law’s grandfather [**small world alert**born in Torlum one year after my grandmother with the same surname as my grandmother's mother, the 1891 Scottish census shows both families living in Torlum at that time ... I digress]. It was written by Donald Ewen Macpherson from Skye. Reay relayed yet another fascinating back-story to this manuscript [I admit: it's the second back-story that may interest you].

First, the tune is really good. We both agree, it’s full of merit, clearly written by an accomplished musician and completely playable and worthy of competition. Second, **small world alert** the manuscript is from the hand of Murdo MacLeod, one of Reay’s teachers and Benbecula emigrant – and, just by the way, a pupil of John MacDougall Gillies.

Reay said he could recognize Murdo’s hand anywhere and has copies of tunes written in the same stylish pen. So here we have a tune for a Benbecula man, composed by a Skyeman and in the hand of another Benbecula man – all immigrants to the Toronto-Hamilton area, you’d have to think they were all good pals.

But the really interesting thing about this is related to the composer of “Alex MacMillan”.

Donald Ewen Macpherson was something else: a real all-rounder. Not saying the guy could just play jigs and the big music, no, this guy could play the whole gamut of bagpipe music and highland dance, toss the caber and do all the heavy events – and do them well. In fact, as Pipe Major of the Royal Scots he won the wrestling championship of the British armed services [William Donaldson, “The Highland Pipe and Scottish Society: 1750-1950"].

Macpherson was a man cut from the all-rounder rough cloth of John MacColl and D.C. Mather. Though those guys, while Highland dancers [the kind of Highland dancing, by the way, the Gaelic College is so down on], didn’t seem as big on the heavy events. Not like our Donald Ewen Macpherson.

So what’s the deal with Donald Ewen Macpherson and his buckshot aim at all the prizes on offer at the Highland games?

We only have to look to Donaldson for a little insight. Referring to the early days of the twentieth century he notes the problem [p. 205] of the “same old names” turning up in the solo piping prize lists with the “struggling young player” never seeming to catch a break. I suggest that’s probably an age-old problem. Though pipers like Donald Ewen Macpherson had a solution to covering their travel – and other – expenses: they competed in all the events they were able:

“Given such difficulties, some young pipers preferred to concentrate on track and field events, where arcane considerations of authority and reputation did not predetermine the outcome, where they did not have to bear written accreditation from social superiors before they could even enter (as was the case with piping events at a number of games, including the Northern Meeting), and where victory and defeat were normally unequivocal. Robert Meldrum recalled one of his own pupils, Donald Ewen Macpherson of Skye, ‘who was a most promising piper, playing some splendid piobaireachds, but he preferred the athletics side of the games…”

Indeed he did. He emigrated to Toronto and, according to Reay, opened a gym on Queen Street in Toronto, one of the city’s main streets. Signs, like this tune, point to his continued involvement in the piping world.

So, there you have it: an interesting story and damned fine tune – all courtesy of my brother-in-law.

That’s Brother-in-law: thanks to our small world, with the biggest of upper case Bs.

M.

PS. Interesting to note that on emigrating to Canada Alex MacMillan joined the 16th Battalion (The Canadian Scottish) and in WWI fought at the Somme serving in the same regiment, and battles, as piper James Richardson, VC.

M.

From “Nine Blasted Notes“, the dance remix of “End of the Road” (featuring Paula Lynn Walker). The hornpipe is my tune, “The Anne Spalding Hornpipe” – score here.

End of the Road

Ev’ry road thro’ life is a long, long road,
Fill’d with joys and sorrows too,
As you journey on how your heart will yearn,
for the things most dear to you.
With wealth and love ’tis so
but onward we must go-

Chorus
Keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end,
Tho’ the way be long, let your heart be strong, keep right on round the bend.
Tho’ you’re tired and weary still journey on, till you come to your happy abode,
Where all you love you’ve been dreaming of will be there at the end of the road.

With a big stout heart to a long steep hill,
We may get there with a smile,
With a good kind thought and an end in view,
We may cut short many a mile.
So let courage ev’ry day,
Be your guiding star alway-

Anyway, get out those fancy pumps and dance!

M.

First up, Home Depot, that huge North American mecca of all that’s DIY. I needed a light switch cover. It’s pissing rain, I aim to be in and out in a few minutes and carry on. In I go. First off, as I pass through the door, there’s a pimpley-faced guy in his early twenties with a fist full of flyers and a way-too-cheery “welcome to Home Depot”. Yeah, whatever, thinks me, as I stare fixed on my mission and rudely (yet supportively of Home Depot) carry on. So I grab my $2.98 purchase and head to the cashier. And what awaits me?

“Hi there, did you find everything you were looking for today?”
“Yup”, says me.
“Are you paying with your Home Depot card today?”
“Nope. Debit.”
“Would you like to get a Home Depot card?”
“No”.
“Can I have your postal code?”
“NO”
“Do you need a bag today?” [our so-green part of the world charges five cents for every plastic carry bag used]
“NO”

I manage to make my way out of Home Depot without a Home Depot credit card and a marginally increased level of crabbieness (crabbitness to some).

On to Chapters, the bookstore (bookstores of a similar size in the UK would Waterstone’s or W H Smith, Collins in Australia).

I picked up my purchase and walked to the cash, dreading, every step – and I mean this – that I’d get the infamous/dreaded (to us locals) cashier who asked twenty questions before taking your dough.

The dreaded Chapters cashier was there but fate smiled on me and I got “Betty” to take my order. Betty: a late middle-aged disciple, as it turned out, of our infamous long-winded Chapters check-out person (name witheld – but believe me, she is infamous amongst people I know in the area who shop at this store: a cashier to be avoided at all costs).

“Hi there, did you find everything you were looking for today?”
“Yes.”
“Can I interest you in a rewards card?”
“No.”
“Are you aware that the reward card benefits… ”
“Yes.”
“Oh, how would you like to pay?”
“Debit.”
“Can I have your postal code?”
“No.”

Everyone I know hates this kind of invasive questioning. Why, oh, why do these places do it? To encourage online buying?

A check-out at one of these places is worse than being held at the line at a big pipe band contest. Really.

OK. So there is a bagpipe connection today.

Have you considered signing up for Dunaber reward points?

M.

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

The tunes are:

The very old Irish air “Samhradh, samhradh” (Summertime), and some jigs starting with “Dr Angus MacDonald’s Off to Skye”. I wrote this tune as a send-off to Dr A. as he and Emily and family left Cape Breton after a long stay and returned to Scotland – Skye, in fact. You can find it in my third book of music. I think this tune is a good solo competition tune. It’s been pretty friendly to me, anyway.

Donald MacLeod’s “Maid in the Glen”, a great tune from his “Book 3″, follows. My two-parter, “The North Shore Sisters”, from my fourth book and written for Ryan and Shannon MacDonald (from North Shore, Cape Breton) around about the time they played in Peel Regional Police Pipe Band when I was Pipe Major. George Grant’s superbly musical, “Marjorie Lowe” is next. You can find this tune in Seumas MacNeill’s first book of music. I play Reay Mackay’s neat little variation (or “tasty”, as Reay might say) on the repeat of the last part.

“The Bottler” closes out the set as Ian K MacDonald joins in for his bit. I made this tune the year I guested with the Lothian and Borders Police Pipe Band. It was named for a yet-to-be-named member who had the unfortunate habit of blootering-up almost every competition.

MG solo at el Mocambo

So there you go.

Happy Canada Day!

M.

Anyway, Georgetown put it’s usual classy right foot forward and, this time, organized a neat moment of recognition for Bill Livingstone. This note isn’t about Bill’s many [many] accomplishments. It’s about a well-placed good intention. The Georgetown games folk are thoroughly dialled in and, again, they stepped up and recognized a moment to do the right thing.

In part, courtesy of a rendition of the famous pipe-bandified Boys of the Lough “Mason’s Apron”, the closing ceremonies saw Bill recognized by band members past and present. The whole thing turned out to be a lovely gesture organized by Sue McCarroll and the Georgetown games committee.

The whole experience got me to thinking: aren’t we really shitty at recognizing – I mean, really, recognizing by thanking people. Especially in our sometimes “mental” competitive world of bagpipes.

Bill deserves his big, bold tune of thanks in the sun – but so, too, do a good many others.

Time to get the lead out.

M.

My timing wasn’t great in looking to get the job done: a recital here, a concert there; on the cusp of the hardcore bagpipe performing season, April is not the best month to be without pipes. Whatever. I forged ahead and shipped the pipes overseas by Fedex and their super-expensive-jig-time-delivery route. Kenny assured a speedy turnaround – the norm for McCallum, by the way. We didn’t bank on the customs equation and unfortunately my “horns”, as Scott MacAulay might’ve said, were tied up in London for about a week – ugh!

Long-story-short: for about a month I didn’t play many tunes on the big pipes. I did, of course, finally get my customs-delayed pipes and have to say I’m thrilled with hallmark outstanding McCallum attention and workmanship. But this is not the point of my note today. It’s about practice.

Right. Here’s the thing. With only a week and a half on the pipes I trotted out to the Livingstone Invitational contest – and sucked. Really not great. Not even good. Since receiving my revitalized pipes I had pulled together at home what I thought were solid “living room performances”. But bring on judges and a room full of critical/”nurturing” ears, well, it’s just not the same thing.

Practice is everything. To make it look easy, to be able to deliver something interesting in an environment of stress and distraction (like a competition), well, that just takes practice – and lots of it.

This past week I was working with a young pupil on his pibroch. He was playing really nicely. Hands creating engaging rhythm and technique – and music, too – but, oh, for the blooters . Note mistake here, note error there. Blooters don’t cut it in bagpipe competitions – let alone score-tracking pibroch events. I coudn’t prevent him from making note errors but I could find out a few facts – like how much he practiced.

I found that this promising – and quite excellent – young piper played though each of his two competitive pibroch tunes once every daily practice sess. NOT ENOUGH!

Until a piper get to a place where s/he has a comprehensive understanding of pibroch structure and form, one run-through on the horns is just not enough to burn the score on the personal hard drive. My prescription for this piper was to double his effort: he had to play each tune twice on the pipes – every day. And, if still falling to error-making, extra chanter work was in order.

My pupil wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of more practice (“what about other stuff, my marches, strathspeys and reels and all that!?”).

Suck it up, I say. The old line is so true: if it was easy everyone would do it.

Lauryn Hill nailed it when she said, “you don’t know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It’s all in the practice”.

S/he who can play bagpipes well must surely be the poster child for the hard practice brigade.

M.

I’ve taken some pics and include them here. Maybe someone can shed more light on the persons who won the prizes (there are two names listed both with the surname Walker). There are no longer games in Lucknow, St Catherines or Hamilton. I’ve never heard of competitions in Lucknow (a place I’ve only passed through driving north to Kincardine) or St Catherines. We know, of course, St Catherines produced a great pipe band in Clan MacFarlane, but these medals pre-date the band by decades.

Anyway, a little bit of history. These medals suggest a busy games scene in southern Ontario as far back as 1870. Look at the workmanship on these babies! Hand engraving. They really are lovely pieces of our history. And I always think that when it comes to bagpipes, pipers everywhere share a big collective history: a history without borders.

I cheekily include – for fun – a pic of what the overall solo piping winner is awarded at the North American Championships, at Glengarry Highland Games. Not sure anyone – even they with more dollars than sense – will be buying this at an auction in 140 years.

So I can say today, that the nicest prizes I have are those I never won.

M.

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.

But one of the biggest surprises, or “a-ha moment” is related to music copyright [here's me grabbing the chance to poke fun at corporate jargon: for those not exposed to the lingo, an "a-ha moment" is what people in corporate meeting rooms everywhere, it seems, say when they learn something new].

I’ve always imagined myself pretty savvy when it comes to copyright. I’ve a pretty good understanding of my rights as a composer, a publisher and what needs to be done when I make a record. But I’d never thought much about the licensing of music when it came to the subject of live piping, or pipe band performance. We so easily bend to the path of least resistance – the way it’s always been done. Sometimes, anyway!

Other competitive musical worlds – like those mentioned here – slavishly follow the laws of copyright to the letter. All scores must be provided in advance of a contest. Proof of publisher’s permission to both reproduce scores (those scores provided to adjudicators) and perform non-public domain compositions live, must be given to event organizers. This requirement is provided plainly in the rules of entry – not talking fine print here – it is baseline info provided up-front on entry forms. Penalty points are assigned musical combos that fail to follow copyright rules.

When it comes to copyright generally and performance licensing specifically, the piping world and, especially, the pipe band world, well, like a stop sign in Italy, it’s viewed only as a suggestion.

What exactly am I talking about? Well, consider this from SOCAN, Canada’s performing rights organization (and there’s an agency for anyone in the world looking to be aligned with one). These agencies exist to help protect the intellectual rights of composers and help get them what they’re due. They collect licence fees, as set by their national or organizational copyright board, from anyone playing or broadcasting live or recorded music.

In Canada, according to the Copyright Act, any public performance of copyright-protected musical works requires a licence. The Copyright Act is law. So, when a song – or tune – gets played in public, music creators (not just the performers) are entitled to collect their licence fees. This is the way of things in most countries; certainly so in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, France, Italy – and the United Kingdom. The list does go on.

Not unlike high school concert bands competing in the United States, pipe bands pretty much everywhere, need to have publisher’s permission, or a publisher’s license, to perform a musical piece. All those ditties we play at pipe band contests the world over – the ones that are not seriously oldie-goldies, like Scotland the Brave, need a license.

Like it or not, without a license, we’re breaking the law.

And that is the truth.

M.