From my earliest piping years its been Blair Drummond: A tune that’s both a perennial pipe band March, Strathspey and Reel favourite and a tune at the top of any top solo piper’s competing strategy.

I’ve always thought of BD as a great tune and yet if you’re to google “Blair Drummond” there is zippo bagpipe-pipe band-drum reference until around about the one hundred and tenth entry. Eek. And that reference is a year 2000 world’s CD.

Anyway, I’ll say now that Blair Drummond hasn’t found it’s way on my list by design. It’s been by chance. The tune is not one of my solo favourites. Yet, due to its six-part nature (and, therefore, part of a small and select group of pipe band repertoire) it’s the trophy wife [husband? Blair is a bit of a masculine given name, to my mind] of untold competing pipe band’s competition sets. In my many years playing in grade one pipe bands, there are few where BD wasn’t a featured strathspey. In fact, the 78th Fraser Highlanders of the olden days won a worlds with BD.

Anyway, a just a thought for the day – a hot day if you are in my neck of the woods.

I hope that the tune at the top of your own most-played list merits its place.

M.

In this list I’ve stayed away from competition winning streaks; I’m not sure record-breaking fits in that well with the definition I’m using: those moments that might be defined as “highly original and influencing the development of future events”.

So here’re my five “seminal” moments; I haven’t cast them in stone, of course, and these could all change tomorrow:

1. Friday, Janaury 18, 1901 – 9:30 pm – MacDonald, Morrison and Norris meet in the Horse Shoe Bar, Drury Lane, Glasgow and devise the three pace drum roll to the bagpipe ‘E’ note to commence the pipe band performance of a march tune alongside a strathspey and reel. Pipe bands never looked back.

2. Saturday, June 22, 1957 (month/day to be confirmed) – Drumming maestro Alex Duthart, with his drum corps of Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band, wins the first of his 14 world drum corps championships. This moment marks the sort of official comming of age of his pipe band drumming style. A virtuosic and musical way of scoring and interpreting that is standard today.

3. Monday, September 21, 1959 – 12:15 pm (date/time to be confirmed) – Bob Hardie agrees to take on the leadership of the Muirheads & Sons Pipe Band from Jackie Smith. Pipe Major Hardie builds on Smith’s already excellent band to create a legend. Hardie’s band creates a sustained level of musical excellence that is reflected in their refined musical phrasing, sophisticated technique and tight unison. Without Hardie and Muirheads we would not see pipe bands evolve as they have.

4. Saturday, August 13, 1983 – Boghall & Bathgate Caldeonia Pipe Band play their medley at the World Pipe Band Championships begining with the “The Big Road Brusher”. This excellent tune, written by accordion player, Bob Abbott, marked the beginning of a generation’s worth of medley openers and created, it might be said, a new form: the pipe band “marchpipe” or “reelpipe”. Here’s a 1984 rendition:

5. Wednesday, August 12, 1987 – 8:00 pm – 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, concert in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. This evening represented the output of a dynamic musical collective that was the band at that time and signalled a change in the way many pipe bands build and portray their music [full disclosure: I was part of the band that played this show].

I can think of at least five other moments but blogs work best in fives, don’t you think.

You’ll have your own moments, I’m sure.

M.

It wasn’t until the mid to late 1970s when people like Gord Tuck in Ontario and James Warnock in Northern Ireland (and others) started building chanters made from high density thermoplastics like Delrin and Polypenco. These new chanters, cheap and durable like an old Ford Fiesta, allowed the broader pipe band world easier access to unanimous pitch. The plastic chanter became a sort of equalizer, raising the quality of pipe band sound across all levels of proficiency and ability.

2. Synthetic Drum Heads: Invented in the 1950s (Wikipedia says the Mylar drumhead was invented by Chick Evans in 1956 – so who knows) the impervious nature of the synthetic drum head was a lifesaver for pipe bands. Until then heads were made from natural materials like calf skin or something equally susceptible to environmental changes. Think of the number of times you’ve heard a band play in pouring rain – or – start a performance in dry conditions only to have the weather turn torrential. Today, when that happens, drum tone changes very little. We can thank the synthetic drum head for that.

A corollary invention might be the Kevlar drum head. Kevlar has been around since the late 1960s but only came to pipe band drum heads in the 1980s. The result was a potential for higher pitch and more complex scoring.

3. Synthetic Drone Reeds: The guys in the band know my feeling about cane reeds: not worth the pain and aggravation. Flicking, rolling, snapping, starting, drying, rebridling, caressing, cajoling, hair-ifying, the list of negatives is effing endless and outweighs any positives by a country mile. I can imagine that there’s more than a boat load of pipe bands who have lost championships due to the fickle unreliability of cane reeds (I’m talking not just of roaring and squealing drones but also instability of tuning). The stratospheric benefits of the synthetic drone reed to today’s solo piping standards is a story for another day. I can’t praise the synthetic drone reed enough. I believe it was Mark Wygent of the U.S. who developed the synthetic reed in the 1980s with Glasgow’s Ronnie MacShannon and company being among the first to perfect the reed in the early 1990s.

Oh synthetic drone reed! Where were you when I started piping? I would’ve learned so many more tunes and practiced so much more (and probably had so much more hair today) had I not been forced to fiddle with bespeckled cane nasties.

4. The Korg Drone Tuner: I remember Ed Neigh’s Guelph Pipe Band of the 1980s as the first to use the big, grey, Soviet-looking Korg drone tuner. “Har, har”, we’d all laugh, as Ed and Pipe Sergeant Jim McGillivray speedily tuned the band to refined perfection. We were pipe band goofs who didn’t know better.

The tuner, like the plastic chanter, has brought the sound of even the least proficient bands up a notch – or ten. When I think about it – the advent of the electronic tuner could easily slip into number one spot on my wee list.

5. Cheap Air Travel: When I started in the pipe band game air travel was not common. It wasn’t uncommon. But it was not common. The competing bands of the world did not travel to Glasgow with any great regularity. Overseas trips were events and not, as they are today, akin to a July jaunt to a local cottage or summer place. There’s an implicit assumption today in many of the world’s competing bands that membership means personal commitment to an August trip to Glasgow. The effect of that assumption is a note for another day, but because of cheap(ish) air travel, that’s the way of it.

Still travelling today may be cheaper compared to times past but it sure is a lot less fun: no smoking cigars at the back of the plane (with drink in hand) or pipes strafing jigs at 10,000 metres – it’s all about removing shoes and belts and all the rest of the (now) usually torturous security rigmarole.

When I read today about great bands like the Australian Highlanders having to pass on the Worlds due to travel cost I have to think the winds of change are blowing and maybe Glasgow’s Worlds may be in the midst of a regression to past times.

Anyway, my point is that cheap air travel, to now, has brought the pipe band world closer together. It helped build friendships and it helped in the exchange of music and musical ideas. Even more than the Internet. Yes, I did consider the Internet.

There you go. Five things. Maybe a little food for thought to think of your own.

M.

This photo is full of neat little details like reeds, mandrill and manuscript on the table; discarded coffee cups under the chair. Oh, and I note that students wore a kilt to lessons. I think today a chavy track suit is about as good as lesson gear gets.

Interesting to note, too, (just can’t resist pointing out) that John MacLellan played a standard-sized practice chanter. I see I have my standard-sized R.G. Hardie in hand – the same one I still use today (“we’ll have none of those over-sized chanter monstrosities”). The best technique is, of course, nurtured on the standard-sized practice chanter. To hear recordings of John A., and his impeccable technique and now a photo of him in mid-tune on a standard-sized practice chanter is further evidence supporting this truth.

Anyway, a self-indulgent photo – but one I thought you’d find of passing interest. With that slightly sour puss I’d have to think I was being majorly corrected for a serious piping misstep. A photo for a “caption” contest?

By the way, summer piping (and drumming) schools are great things: you’ll learn – of course – but you’ll also experience fun that will be remembered a lifetime and, if you’re lucky you’ll make lifelong friends.

That’s my summer piping school experience.

A friendly suggestion, too, to not forget to occasionally let the camera capture those special “background” piping moments.

Thanks, Colin!

M.

Competing pipe bands are mostly made up of people outside of the leisure class – and I have to say I’m not even sure such a class exists in the world today – a long way off from my line of sight, anyway. Pipe bands are full of working people, or, just as likely, students and young people starting out a working life.

Forget for a minute the possibility that you’re one of the scores of bands from outside of Scotland that can’t fulfill their August GLA travel plans. So what? You find out that Iceland’s unpronounceable volcano prevents you from taking to the skies.

The real problem comes when you land in Scotland, practice your face off, compete, and THEN find you can’t leave the country. What does a band do — a travelling group of 30 to 50 (or more) in size? How to prepare for the possibility of an indefinite life as a Scottish traveller?

I hope to hell it never comes to be but maybe Iceland, in her capricious, Calum Campbell-y, volcanic way, will somehow bring pipers together.

Who knows? Come August 15th, maybe we’ll see the spare and front rooms of Scotland become the crash pads for visiting drummers and pipers.

Stranger things have happened.

M.

Anyway, from that point on my tune “Fleshmarket Close” has been cursed with inaccurate publishing and just plain wrong compositional attribution (I can hear “Chewin’ the Fat” guys now: “Ooooh, compositional attribution”).

So. Fleshmarket Close. It’s a reel I wrote September 21, 1986. I can tell you exactly where I wrote this tune (and I can’t say that for many I’ve made). And its with great presumption I imagine you give a rat’s ass.

The tune was written in the flat of then Polkemmet Colliery piper, Ian Morris. Ian’s place was in the west end of Edinburgh, a place known as “South Gyle” or, an area, I think, generally known as, “the Gyle”. After university I was determined to stay in Scotland for a good bit of time to take lessons from Captain John MacLellan and, to be truthful, delay the inevitability of working life. I did stay for a while though not as long as originally imagined. Anyway, money was tight and thanks to the largesse of my friend Andrew Berthoff – who himself was merrily crashing at Ian’s flat (a fellow Polkemmet bandmate) – I came to stay a very short while at Ian’s place (“Come and stay,” said Andrew, “he’s away, he won’t mind a bit” – [man, I hope Ian knows this story]). So, while sitting in front of Ian’s TV, while Ian was away and Andrew was busy making pies at “Mama’s Pizza” in the Grassmarket [still one of my favourite pizza places anywhere], I wrote Fleshmarket Close.

Andrew B was doing a recent office tidying-up and came across the following manuscript. He passed this score along. Note the careful penmanship, the near-architectural lines of the score. There’s next to nothing about this manuscript that is similar to my current scoring technique (read: scrawl) today. Unemployment and time-on-hands, I guess, have benefits in writing legible manuscript. So here is that score.

I published my fifth book not so long ago and included a four-part version of Fleshmarket Close. Up until that point, for people who knew it, the tune had always been a two-parter. After publishing, Andrew reminded me of my original score and the original four-plus parts. I had completely forgotten.

For those that enjoy the trivial minutiae of bagpipes [and when it comes to pipers I say their numbers are freakishly legion], the score here has added interesting sidelights. For instance, Bill Livingstone’s handwriting is seen down the right hand side of the page: “CHANGE”, he writes. Who knows what he wanted changed in such a pristine and perfect score – but fun to see all the same. His band, and mine at the time, the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, did end up starting a medley with the tune – two parts only. Maybe I was obstinate and wouldn’t change the score. So unlike me.

Fleshmarket Close came the morning after a long session in the Old Town with Brian Lamond and Andrew. I remember Andrew and me toddling down Princes Street, collecting Brian Lamond, who was busking in front of Jenners’ department store, then heading to Milne’s Bar on Hanover Street. We’d have a pint while Brian packaged the spoils of his pipe box and off we went. Up to the Old Town with first stop Fleshmarket Close and Jinglin’ Geordie’s pub - the famous newspaperman’s hangout.

There you are: Fleshmarket Close – and Edinburgh. Still up there with my favourite places anywhere. But like the tune I made, both places not as traditional as people seem to think.

And “Fleshmarket Close”? Surely, the coolest name of any piece of art, as Ian Rankin also found years later.

M.

In this picture we see the band seemingly going about a sort of fancy Kiwi-esque marching routine. The sun shines. Happily and blissfully ignorant of the concept known as “political correctness” the band regales the crowd resplendent in sealskin sporrans, their V8 Plymouth Belvederes – with 9 and a half miles to the gallon – idle in the car park. Without the aid of today’s fantastic synthetic bagpipe accoutrements their cane reeds, “elk” hide bags and unmatched pipe chanters help the air “tremble” with “…the sweet, sad breath of the pipes” (so says the advert).

This is Maxville and pipe bands before my time but I do know something of pipe band history – especially in these parts. I am pretty sure this band is the Worcester Kiltie Pipe Band – an American pipe band based in Massachusetts. An American pipe band in an ad for Canadian tourism! Perfect.

The Worcester Kiltie Pipe Band was no ordinary band. One of the oldest pipe bands anywhere, they were formed in 1916 and worked their way to becoming the pipe band of the early 60s in Maxville – and North America, for that matter. With a battery of ex-Shotts, ex-Scots players (Pipe Major Jim Kerr, leading drummer, Davie Armitt, et al) they won the North American championship in the years 1960-1963 [my facts need vetting - friendly suggestion to the current version of Worcester to flesh out the history section of their website].

Anyway, an interesting bit of ephemera. Feel free to pass along facts connected with the photo in the ad. I may have it all wrong.

M.

I obviously have zero understanding (nor do many outside of Google, apparently) how the algorithms work to make Google’s search engine so effective. But I’d have to think that previous searches and the general popularity of a search subject have to come in to play.

So what gives with “bagpipe cartoons”? What do people want with “bagpipe cartoons”? What do they do with these things (aside from tarting up whingey blog posts)?

Man, bagpipes need some new PR.

M.

Blah blah blah.

M.

At last night’s band practice the piper next to her turned and said, “I only soaked my reed for an hour, and, is it ever good!”.

Soaking a reed for any length of time will make it anything but good (for a non-piper reading this you’ll now understand the “LOL”). Water is the reed’s enemy. It brings instability and dullness to pitch. Water generally ruins a reed; it shortens its productive life. Tip of the day: soak a reed for an hour if you seek crappy sound.

Yes, reeds require moisture to produce bright, vibrant, engaging sounds. That moisture should only ever come from breath. Play a new reed in the pipe for 20 minutes and you’ll find that natural moisture postively transforms the sound produced by a reed. Living in a dry centrally-heated house I can empathize with a piper`s temptation to throw some water a dry reed`s way. But never soak it. Save that for your feet – or your head after a late night.

And a final funny from the same band practice; it sort of speaks to perspective and the importance of attending band practices so the whole team knows what you can and will contribute. In my friend`s words: “…the (new-ish) bass drummer asked me if I wanted a music stand for our ‘Scotland the Brave’ set. I think I need to attend more practices…”

Off to Glasgow (and Dublin) this evening. Celtic Connections calls.

M.