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.

Facebook, MySpace and all the other online “time-wasters”, surely take up more and more of our prime living, breathing, thinking time. I use the internet a lot. It’s an important tool for my work, my job. I probably use it more on-the-job than off. I’m fairly sure I’m near the top of my demographics’ internet usage stats.

No matter how we spend our time, especially our “free”, non-work, non-family time, we know that it’s finite – there’s only so much of the stuff to go around. I wonder if the internet, while a fantastic medium to connect people, may be having a negative impact on the quality of other “free time” pursuits; think pipes, drums.

Really, think about it: if someone is frantically clicking away on Facebook, regaling their friends with weather updates, their moods and the pork chop in the pan for supper, then you’d have to think that for the average user, more Facebook — for example — means less attention to other things, like music-making – and thinking about music-making. From my experience, when it comes to creating music it is the thinking part that is more important than the making part.

Just a thought.

A little book I’ve always enjoyed is Angus Macpherson’s autobiography, “A Highlander Looks Back”. In a cultural context, a bagpipe context, he writes of another time and place: the nineteenth century Scottish Highlands. I wonder if his time was more conducive to great music-making than ours:

“As a very willing pupil by the peat fire at Badenoch, I was initiated into the mysteries of piobaireachd, my tutor being my father, a product of the MacCrimmon school of Skye. In this modest school of learning, I have seen men who after a hard day’s work, walk ten or twenty miles for their ceol mor lessons, no matter what the weather, and in the small hours of the morning, after Highland hospitality and the environment of the good old-fashioned ceilidh, they would tread their homeward way with their minds steeped in that which conveys to the Highlander something which nothing else can.”

Not so much time in those days for Facebooking, “Mike is happy that the grass is cut”.

M.

We in pipebandom can – and do – get pretty uppity about our place, the pipe band movement’s place, in the culture of the world. We view pipe band music and pipe band importance as serious business: “don’t they know who we think we are”, I think back to a silly and oft-quoted line from a long-ago band. I know I have – and do. But really, I have to tell you, when the Chieftan guy, Lord Provost of Glasgow, Blethery MacSomebody, said, “…and I am happy to say that as of half eleven today the BBC has had 50,000 hits on their web offerings…”, I thought, “WTF, is that all?”. Good gawd, there’s 6 billion people on God’s green earth and a group of people not much bigger than the small town I live in tuned in … crap bags. Not good.

I suggest that should the full “ratings” stats be released by the BBC we, the “pipe band world”, will get one of the most accurate measures of our place in the world. We may not know, or have a sense, of the stretch of our influence in world music, world culture, but we will have a sense, courtesy of hard numbers, of our hard core audience. I would sorely hope it is way above 50,000 “unique hits”.

And a comment on the crowd: The BBC provided a fine aerial few of the crowd. The assembly of performers (and not all performers, I note, opted to participate in the massed bands thing) out-numbered the audience – or, at least, appeared to out-number the audience. Do the people of Glasgow really care about the WPBC? Enough to buy a ticket and have a listen? Once again, it looked liked families and friends filled the stands.

Hats off to Bob Worrall: He is one smooth, in-the-know and all ’round good-talker guys in the commentary department. While some of the pipe band world’s governing bodies (read: RSPBA) may not recognize his leading adjudication abilities, the world (all 50,000 of us online, at least) rates him tops in all areas that touch on fair and insightful.

Congratulations to all the winners and all the participants – you played your hearts out and we appreciated it all.

M.

PS. Is it just me? I hate it when in a music contest like this people start saying stuff like, “I’m proud to be a Canadian because the Canadian band won”, or “Proud to be a Scot becauase the Scottish band won”? That rings hollow with me in a contest that, I think, is about music.

Check out the 2009 order of play, or “draws“, for the event: grade 3B: 27 entries and no qualifier; all bands play for the trophy. Same thing does for grade 3A with 29 bands and grade 2 with 26 bands in the contest.

And grade 1? The premier event. The event that pronounces the true pipe band champion of the world. With 23 bands. Yes – twenty-three bands. Well, there’s a “qualifier”.

The grade 1 event is the one event where there is the deepest international participation: 14 of the 23 bands come from outside of Scotland. That’s over 60% of the bands entered. The bands have violated every green guideline on the planet and together have travelled something like 240,000 kilometres to have a shot at the championship. Yet, the contest has a “qualifier”.

I just don’t get it.

I’ll think the best and assume there is fair and equitable reason for this qualifying approach, one that befits a competition that is fair and equitable.

But, I say again. I don’t get it.

Can someone draw me a picture?

M.

I love the Piping Live Fest, but really, when taken in context with the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association’s small view of pipe bands, I thought the whole thing seriously out of line with the way of things: the RSPBA, the organization that currently hosts the championship, has pretty much dissed the proven abilities and considered judgement of people who hail from beyond their shore.

I’m guessing the Piping Live people were canny and did their best to smooth over the RSPBA thing with their international launch. All the same, I hope the they have a line to – or maybe even some influence over – what’s going on in the RSPBA.

I imagine the continued success of their festival depends on it. Piping Live has flourished with a “world’s” that is well-supported by people from outside of Scotland – and most of those people play in bands.

M.

I don’t think the PPBSO is any different from other like organizations around the world. The set bores. Scintillatingly soporific. The pipe band set represents a configuration of tunes that represents a singularly unimaginative representation of the best voice a pipe band can offer. The pipe band MSR is a parochial “treat” we can no longer afford. To reach a broader audience, engage new markets and really let the pipe band art blossom, we need to seek to promote our movement’s best musical offering. Like a jittery pre-contest piper or drummer, we need to drop the set contest.

Set loyalists will point to tradition. I say, the set is more habit than tradition. We’ve been playing sets for less than eighty years. Set loyalists might say it’s the meat and potatoes of the music offering players technical and performance discipline. Yes, half point there, but there’s far more opportunity to learn about music, technique, harmony, rhythm and the magnificent possibilities of ensemble in a medley performance.

Training for a set contest makes a piper or drummer a pipe band sportsman, a competitor, perhaps. The medley contest makes a piper or drummer a musician. Are we about Beckham or Beethoven?

Sets gotta go.

M.

There was a time I slavishly spelled pibroch the Gaelic way – lots of letters. I was (and am) keen on things Gaelic; I wanted to say, I think, I was a member of what J. Reid Maxwell called the “Piobaireachd Club”, and was on the inside Gaelic track – one heavily covered in peat no doubt. Poncy MacPoncypants.

It really doesn’t make good sense that we insert Gaelic spelling of pibroch in English text, English prose, does it? Among other things, it really doesn’t do much to promote the music to outsiders. We all know what happens when we come across a funny word we can’t recognize or pronounce. We almost always skim over it and quickly move on to something more comfortable, something easier to take in. To a reader of a report of one of our Big Music contests the peeobaireached took 13 minutes to play…

I note that Gaelic speakers I know, when writing in English, almost always spell pibroch the Anglicised way. That, too, is a political statement I think. Anyway …

I always enjoy talking to my français-speaking friends; their français is always a pleasure to hear. That sentence is a bit silly, isn’t it. What English-speaking person refers to French as “français” when speaking English? They say French. French is the English equivalient of français, of course.

Now take the word Gaelic. You often hear an Anglophone say Gaelic the Gàidhlig way as in, “She speaks lovely Gallic”, or, “He has the Gallic”, with the “a” sound short. To me that’s the equivalent of ordering fries française at McDonalds. My granny, who I’ve written about before, always said, “Gaylic” when speaking English, with the “a” sound long. That makes sense to me.

That I’m even writing about such trivialities speaks volumes about the parochial nature of things related to the Great Highland Bagpipe.

The tip today just might be to never question your granny’s wisdom.

M.

Anyway, I have always found listening to others talk about their aches, pains and maladies as interesting as a pipe band set contest, so I will refrain from more detail.

Part of my healing regimen was (and is) massage therapy. I have been seeing a registered massage therapist (Edward L, the former Soviet Army Delta Force soldier, with trained hands that would snap the neck of any unsuspecting enemy – or piper). The massage therapy has helped a lot [I sense your interest waining!].

Anyway, the other day, while being treated, Ed Delta Forski, says, “Mike, what is this? Why do you have this big muscle on the left side of your back? Very unusual.”

I knew right away: “A lifetime of playing bagpipes”, I say.

At least, that is my belief. I am right-handed.

So, again, another possible tie that binds pipers: left-sided trapezius muscles of Schwarzenegger-ian proportions.

I hope that pumps you up.

M.

I’ve complained about this before but I’ll say it again:  Celtic Connections programmers could do more to showcase pipe bands.  One simple way would be to schedule one of the festival’s primo concert events – “the pipe band afternoon” – in the evening.  Around the world, afternoon shows, or “matinées”, are rightly seen as the cheapie alternative for ticket buyers.  It’s at matinées that understudies get their shot at having a run-through performance and errant kids and frugal seniors have their look-in to a live show. 

Evening performances are always the main event. 

Speaking from years of experience attending Celtic Connections shows, it really is the pipe band – and piping, for that matter – that distinguishes this festival, no matter how many Nordic Rasta-country tabla players slotted in their programme. 

M.    

PS.  A fantastic and entertaining display of sophisticated muscianship from the Strathclyde Police and Cap Caval bands.

I suggest to you piping commercialization has grown above the natural levels associated with population growth. 

The bagpipe, drumming, and pipe band worlds have always had people who’ve made their living from the game.  It could never be any other way.  We needed – and need – people who choose to devote full-time energy and enterprise to support the infrastructure we need to exist:  manufacturers, retailers, promoters, organizers and, to some extent, teachers.

I know you’ll see me shill at every turn CDs and music books and – sometimes – me.  I think I give a lot away but, still, I’m a long way off from being a crazy Celtic philanthropist.  Far from it.

I think now of the good fortune I’ve had in my life in receiving the very best tuition.  My first teacher, George Walker, would “charge” $3.00 an hour [usually two hours]; even in those days $3.00 wouldn’t buy much, for George maybe a couple of whiskies in the band room.  John Wilson was the priciest, relatively speaking, at $15.00 an hour.  Bill Livingstone never charged a penny but for a couple of $20.00 lessons before I joined his pipe band [clever fellow].  Ditto for John Walsh, Bob Worrall and Ed Neigh - all free and generous with their time.  I had many lessons with Captain John MacLellan in his Dean Park Crescent home.  He’d never take a penny.

Teaching pipes got me through university.  I charged a firm rate – $20.00 an hour –  and was grateful for every penny.    I guess my ramble today is about the sense I have that the piping game (and I include pipe bands and drumming in all of that) today seeks out every possible and conceivable opportunity to squeeze a penny out of the musical pursuit.

I’m not advocating freebie lessons, really – though wouldn’t it be great if that was possible.  It just feels like the soul of the music is getting squeezed, beyond lessons.  Business sponsorships of bands and events common at every turn.  It’s more common than not that people looking to drink from the cup of the Great Highland Bagpipe are getting squeezed for a buck, a pound, or a Euro.  

It’s so nice to see people like Colin MacLellan (yes, admittedly, one of my friends) offer gratis online lessons.  Colin’s playing style is rooted in the very finest tuition and provenance but, still, very much his own excellent, original style.  I strongly encourage you to check out his fine offerings – all the finer for being free of charge for one and all.  His efforts are a good example of how it might be done.

“That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it;  Money for nothin’ …” 

M.