Dunaber music

Rumours on the Internets

You don’t have to be very old to remember the world before the Internet.  I think my first foray was around 1996 using a workplace account (for business purposes only, of course).  I imagine there’ll be loads of people in their late 20s who remember, even a little, a pre-Internet world. 
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Idiom

The competitive pipe band world is a challenging environment to make music.  Rules (and hefty musical parameters) aside, its a place, generally speaking, where there are strong preconceptions about what a pipe band should - or should not - perform.  For example, the competition medley, launched as an event around 1970, is barely middle age in human terms, and in musical terms is still suckling at the teat.  For the most part, what’s heard in pipe band contests today are really well thought-out arrangements and configurations of the main tune types common to bagpipe light music.  And, with one main, notable exception: the “reelpipe intro” or “hornreel” or whatever you call it, there  hasn’t been huge interest in shaking up the 25 year-old (plus) competition “medley” format.
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Variations on a Theme of Good Intentions

Last Saturday at the Georgetown games the band I play in, The Toronto Police Pipe Band, participated in the grade one pipe band contest.  The event was a “medley” event and we played a piece of music I built called, “Variations on a Theme of Good Intentions“.  What an experience.  We had all anticipated playing this “medley” and the crowd reaction was spine-tingling.  I have never in my long piping career experienced spontaneous, mid-performance cheers from a crowd at a pipe band contest.  I’m not sure about the other players  but it was all I could do to hold concentration.  Believe me, these are the kinds of “challenges” we want to be faced with when competing!  Forget the results for a moment, reaction like this is a performer’s triumph.  It is what this is all about, or should be.   
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Joints

It’s summer, the pipes and drums are in high gear, and the games are afoot.  It’s also the time of year we put our instruments (and ourselves) under their biggest tests - under stressful and, usually, trying conditions.   Wind, rain, sleet, cold, hot, “gloom of night“ - we perform under the full gamut of weather conditions.  We’re the “postpeople” of the music world.  Rarely do we get that perfect, cloudless 21 degree performance day.  But we always aim to deliver. 
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Bagpipe Hero (Video)

So, there is this sometimes funny CBC television show: “This Hour Has 22 Minutes“… anyway, over the years they’ve done Gaelic bits and the odd nod to Canadian Scots … but this is pretty good…

The truth of the matter, though: bagpipes, destined to be a perennial novelty. 

 M.  

Summer Vacation

In honour of the looming and long-awaited Canadian summer I post for your edification and enjoyment a truly archival Grey family photo - summer vacation a good few years ago, Lake Massawippi, Quebec.
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Music-making

I really liked this quote.  It made me think a little differently about music-making:

“No good opera plot can be sensible:… people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”

  ~W.H. Auden (English poet)  

It Should Never Be a Chore to Play

You sometimes make your luck and you sometimes chance on luck but however it comes I can tell you I’ve had a fair bit of it when it comes to tuition.  The 20th century master, Captain John MacLellan, is one teacher who helped me a lot; he left a big impression.  Of his many memorable pieces of advice one that stays close to the surface is this:
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Early 20th Century Pipe Band Ensemble

A while ago I happened across a great site, the University of California’s (Santa Barbara) Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.  Here you can have a listen to any one of a vast array of mp3 recordings lifted from the university’s collection of almost 8,000 wax cylinders.
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Music-making Advice

My friend (and electronic music-maker) Mikael Hansson just passed me a quote that I absolutely love. 

So, some fantastic advice from Brian Eno, the “father of modern ambient music” and co-producer of the good U2 stuff:

“Play more things that make me dance around and less things that make me sit and look miserable in a plastic chair”

Yes, please.

M.