Kilts on a Plane

Travel brings out the best and the worst in people. When you fly charter it’s usually the later. Endlessly winding cattle queues and travel industry regulations that have “FUN SUCKING” stamped in red on the cover of every volume help see to that. Still, despite baggage scales calibrated in micro-grams and pay-per-use WCs, oddly memorable occurrences can happen when flying – even charter.
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A Tune in a Canoe

I’ve been inspired, I’ve a new aspiration: to play bagpipes in a canoe. And the inspiration?
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Another Year-end List: My Top 12 in ’12

I thought I might as well jump on the year-end list bandwagon and dream up my own list. Blogs are made for lists and here’s one: my “top 12 in 12”: a random list of twelve of my very personal standout mostly piping memories of 2012 (“random” meaning I might have a different list if I sat down tomorrow and again thought about the year that was).

In no particular order:
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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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A Halloween Tumshie

I’m often asked, believe it or not, what the words are that kick off the “Sergeant Malkie Bow’s Consternation” tracks from my Shambolica! and Unqualified Favourites recordings. For the record, the words are, “Mikie, it’s Malkie, you’re a big tumshie…”.
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Martian Marching

At it’s closest Mars is just over 56 million kilometres from Earth. If you could walk at a fair pace, say 6 and a half km an hour you could do the Earth to Mars trundle in about 4000 years.
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MyVote: Cool App or Seriously Seditious?

Earlier in the summer pipes|drums was one of the first news outlets to announce the launch of Kenny Constable’s free MyVote app. Since then the app is getting loads of play – and use – from keeners around the pipe band world.
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Intransigence 911

The pipe band world is many things: unmercifully competitive, aggressive, cutthroat even – and, yes, occasionally collegial. But loving and nurturing? Not so much. The last little while I’ve stumbled on things said in public places (read: the Internet) and am genuinely incredulous at the anger, rage even, that pipe band music can elicit from people who purport to love the music. And to be clear: it’s not just the band I play in I’m talking about – it’s almost every band going, especially in the premier grade. It’s clearly powerful stuff we bring to the world through the wiggling of fingers and battering of sticks.
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DDD: Signature Tunes

Most musicians have music that is associated with them, either through performance or composition. For the pianist Glenn Gould, for instance, it’s his interpretation of Bach’s “The Goldberg Variations“.
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