Piobaireachd Wednesday: My Dearest On Earth Give Me Your Kiss
This is the final tune from the Gold Medal competition at Winter Storm 2012, and it was the tune that won the contest. Alex Gandy is the player, and he’s a pretty well-known player in the North American piping scene. He is the son of Bruce Gandy, an excellent piper himself, and Alex has established himself as a top-flight soloist. He’s also recently taken over as the pipe major of the 78th Highlanders Halifax Citadel Pipe Band, making him one of the youngest ever to hold that position in a grade 1 band.
His winning tune was My Dearest On Earth Give Me Your Kiss, which is presented without further comment.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for Captain Donald MacKenzie
Continuing our trek through the prize list from the Gold Medal at Winter Storm 2012, our tune this week comes from Jori Chisholm. Jori has made quite a name for himself as a player, both as a soloist and with the world champion Simon Fraser University Pipe Band, and also as a piping teacher. He’s the piper behind BagpipeLessons.com, and I believe I am correct in saying that he was the first piper to offer lessons over the internet. In 2011 he launched a series of online piping competitions that attracted entries from pipers and judges all over the world; he has also announced another one for spring 2012.
His second place tune at Winter Storm was Lament for Captain Donald MacKenzie, which was the same tune you heard in the last installment by Alastair Lee. That’s one of the drawbacks of having limited choices of tunes, but it’s a good chance to compare how it’s played.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for Captain Donald MacKenzie
If you haven’t had your fill of Winter Storm piobaireachd, you’re in luck. After working through the Silver Medal prize list, I’m please to offer you the top three finishers in the Gold Medal. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see all of the performances, but a friend of mine was able to record them and has shared the recordings with me to use for Piobaireachd Wednesday.
Be prepared for a good sit, because the Gold Medal tunes are pretty substantial this year.
We start today with the third place tune, Lament for Captain Donald MacKenzie, played by Alastair Lee. Alastair is, I believe, the son of Terry Lee, pipe major of the Simon Fraser University Pipe Band. Alastair plays with that band, and has distinguished himself as a solo competitor as well.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The Bicker
This is the first of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Our tune this week is the tune that won the Silver Medal: The Bicker. The player is Colin Clansey, who is from Kingston, Ontario. Colin has been a consistent prizewinner in the Ontario piping scene for at least several years, and according to what I was able to turn up with a few minutes on the internet is that he is the pipe major of the grade 2 Glengarry Pipe Band. This was really a great tune, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing it person. I hope you enjoy it as well.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for Donald of Laggan
This is the next of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Piobaireachd Wednesday Bonus: You’re Welcome, Ewan Lochiel
This is the next of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Catherine’s Lament
This is the first of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Working up the prize list, our fist tune is Catherine’s Lament. The player is Jamie Troy from Victoria, British Columbia. Jamie is also an accomplished drummer, having played snare with the Spirit of Scotland Pipe Band when they competed at the Worlds in 2008. As you can tell from this recording, he knows a few things about piobaireachd as well; this solid performance earned him fifth place. Enjoy!
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Winter Storm piobaireachd update
I’m writing this from the lobby of the Marriott Country Club Plaza hotel in Kansas City, site of the world-renowned Winter Storm event. Most people would never guess that the center of the piping world on a particular weekend in January is in the US midwest, but it is indeed here. Lots of big name players are here, and it’s living up to its reputation of being a stunningly good time.
If you’re a regular reader you’re aware that I kinda like piobaireachd, and I spent most of Friday morning listening to the US Silver Medal piobaireachd competition. I was able to record 17 of the 20 competitors in the event, and it was definitely worth getting out of bed for. Look for a few of those tunes to be posted on Piobaireachd Wednesday over the next few weeks; especially look for Colin Clansey’s winning performance of The Bicker, and Ben McClamrock’s second place showing of Catherine’s Lament. The prize list shaped up as follows:
- Colin Clansey, Kingston, ON, The Bicker
- Ben McClamrock, Baltimore, MD, Catherine’s Lament
- John Lee, Surrey, BC, Lament for Donald of Laggan
- Dan Lyden, Baltimore, MD, You’re Welcome Ewan
You can’t tell from looking at the prize list, but the tune selection was pretty repetitive. If I had heard one more version of Catherine’s Lament I would have had it memorized; it was played five times. There were three each of The Bicker, Lament for Donald of Laggan, and MacGregor’s Salute, and only three tunes that weren’t repeated. That’s my only issue with set tune lists: there is some repetition when you listen to a contest all the way through. That sounds like a topic for another post, and for now I have to get to the registration table where I’m volunteering my time today.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Sir James MacDonald of the Isles’ Lament
Piobaireachd Wednesday is back on track this week, with another tune from the most recent online competition from Jori Chisholm at bagpipelessons.com. The player is Owen Capon, playing one of my favorite tunes: Sir James MacDonald of the Isles’ Lament. This tune landed him in the prize list of the grade 2 piobaireachd competition, placing 5th out of 12 competitors.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for MacSwan of Roaig
Our tune this week is a little gem I dug up from YouTube: Pipe Major Gordon Walker playing Lament for MacSwan of Roaig. I don’t know where or when this was recorded, but definitely worth a listen.
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: My King Has Landed In Moidart
I must admit that I’m very disappointed in you, the readers of Piobaireachd Wednesday. For many weeks now, I’ve had to comb the internet for tunes, and that’s not the intention of this feature. If you have a tune that you’ve been working on, please consider recording it and sending it off to me. Remember, no judgement, no criticism, just music.
Anyway, our tune this week is from Jori Chisholm, a professional piper who lives in Seattle. He’s made a name for himself on the competition circuit, and was also one of the first pipers I was aware of to incorporate the internet into his teaching. This video of My King Has Landed In Moidart was recorded at Winter Storm in 2008, and this performance won him the U.S. Gold Medal that year. I think you’ll agree that it was indeed a fine tune.
This video is split into two parts, so be sure to catch the ending of the tune in the second video.
Part 2:
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The Rout of Glenfruin
Our tune this week comes again from the author of this blog. For the sake of diversity I’ve tried to not include a lot of my own playing, but this week I make an exception to present my submission for Jori Chisholm’s most recent online competition. This ended up being the winning tune in grade 1 piobaireachd.
The tune is The Rout of Glenfruin, which is one of the tunes I learned this fall in the Dojo University piobaireachd class, taught by Bruce Gandy. The tune was written to commemorate the Battle of Glenfruin in 1603, which was a rather lopsided victory (hence the title).
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Black Donald’s March
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the U.S., and I present a very interesting tune for the occasion. Andrew Bova is a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a degree in Bagpipe Performance. He competes at the professional level, plays with the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, is an excellent player, and a good friend of mine.
While he was at Carnegie Mellon, he worked with Maestro Denis Colwell to the compose a piece entitled Variations on Black Donald’s March. He sent me the recording for Piobaireachd Wednesday, along with these notes from the program.
The Variations on Black Donald’s March is an experiment in using the traditional Highland Bagpipe alongside Western classical musical instruments. Here the bagpipe is featured, in fact, as the solo instrument, its line excerpted from the ancient piobaireachd Black Donald’s March (Piobaireachd Dhomnuill Duibh).
Black Donald’s March has been linked to the first Battle of Inverlochy (1431) where the MacDonald leader was Black Donald Balloch, a kinsman of Alexander MacDonald, Third Lord of the Isles. Clan Cameron has also laid claim to the tune, as MacDhomhnuill Duibh was then the patronymic of Lochiel
Cameron Chieftains.
Since the Variations on Black Donald’s March uses excerpts from an existing set of traditional bagpipe variations as its solo line, the resulting piece is a set of variations on a set of variations.
The piece was premiered by the Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble on February 10th, 2011 in Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh PA. The ensemble was under the direction of Maestro Denis Colwell featuring soloists Andrew Bova (bagpipes) and Adam Hill (tenor).
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: I Got A Kiss of the King’s Hand
As it turns out there’s a lot of good piobaireachd recordings on YouTube, and while looking through some of them this week I came across this one. Recorded at a recital at North West England Piping Society in 1993. The player is Brian Donaldson, former pipe major of the Scots Guards, and his tune is I Got A Kiss of the King’s Hand.
Unfortunately the tune is in two parts, but it’s worth the slight inconvenience.
Part 1:
Part 2:
If you’d like to have a tune featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Flame of Wrath
I’ve featured this tune before on Piobaireachd Wednesday, but not like this. This video was sent to me by Shana Blake, the vocalist and bassist for the Celtic folk/fusion band Gael Warning. This was a performance from the Scotland County Highland Games in North Carolina on October 1 of this year.
You may like this, or you may not. I think it’s interesting, and it’s certainly worth a listen. As the recording suggests, they do indeed “rock the piobaireachd.”
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Battle of Auldearn #1
Last week Jori Chisholm announced his third online piping competition, which have been very successful. The first competition was in January and February, and was expanded to include piobaireachd events for the spring competition.
Videos of the winners of each event were posted online, and our tune this week was the winner of the grade 2 piobaireachd. The piper is Stephen Ross, whom I have never met, but I’d like to some day. His tune was the Battle of Auldearn #1.
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for Mary MacLeod
Welcome to another edition of Piobaireachd Wednesday. Our tune this week is Lament for Mary MacLeod, submitted by John Bottomley of Bethlehem, PA. John is a judge in the EUSPBA, and he sends in one of the prettiest and most musical tunes out there. This recording is from his CD Bagpipe Classics New and Old, which he tells me will soon be available in an online music store.
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The End of the Great Bridge
Our tune this week was submitted by Andrew Donlon, a friend of mine who studies piping at the College of Wooster in Wooster, OH. He sends The End of the Great Bridge, which he played in the second round of the Gilchrist Challenge at the Mid-Atlantic Branch’s Delco Workshop in February. He tied for third in the contest, thanks partly to his performance of this tune.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: I Am Proud To Play A Pipe
Our weekly piobaireachd comes from Dave Mason, who was kind enough to let me use one of his recordings in a previous installment. Here is a recording of I Am Proud To Play A Pipe from January 2007.
If you would like to submit a recording for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The King’s Taxes
Our tune this week was submitted by Andrew Douglas, the pipe major of the Oran Mor Pipe Band from Albany, NY. He chose to send a recording of The King’s Taxes, which was made during his professional piobaireachd competition at the New Hampshire Highland Games on September 17.
He tells me that he didn’t place in the top six in the contest, which is an indication of how tough the competition was. Thanks for sending your tune, Andrew!
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Can you learn piobaireachd by yourself?
It’s generally accepted among pipers that every beginning piper needs an instructor. I heartily support this: it’s very important to learn the basics properly from the very beginning, and it takes guidance from someone with some experience to be able to point out places that need work.
Once a piper reaches a certain level of proficiency, an instructor isn’t as necessary. Once a player learns about reading music, tune structure, basics of phrasing, instrument setup and maintenance, and tuning, access to an instructor is not as critical.
Don’t get me wrong: meeting with an instructor on a regular basis is the best way to improve one’s piping, and it’s essential to have any reasonable amount of success in competition. My point is that it is possible for a piper to achieve some progress by working alone, learning music from books and applying knowledge already gained.
That’s all fine for light music, but piobaireachd is a different story. Reading scores from a Kilberry or Piobaireachd Society book will tell the piper what notes to play, but has only the faintest hint at the proper expression. This was why canntaireachd was developed, before piobaireachd was ever written down, to pass along both the notes and the expression. When learning a tune, it’s essential to have someone who knows the tune go over the expression and phrasing.
Or is it? The internet has done a very good job of making high-quality recordings available to the world, and listening to a recording can effectively get the tune in a piper’s head. Several well-known piobaireachd players, including Roddy MacLeod and Jack Lee, have made a business of selling recordings and manuscripts for many tunes.
The last few piobaireachds that I’ve learned have been essentially on my own. I can fill the time that I walk to class by listening to piobaireachd on my mp3 player; the walk is almost exactly two times through a ten- or eleven-minute piobaireachd, and if I listen to it two more times as I’m walking home it doesn’t take many trips before I have a good idea of how to play the tune (at least based on that one recording).
After learning a few tunes this way, I’ll try to meet with a piobaireachd instructor to get some feedback, playing through the tunes on the pipes and getting that expert instruction. I find this is a more efficient use of my time. It’s hard for me to get a sense of the tune without hearing it at least a few times, and I learn more from the instructor when I already have some idea of how the tune goes.
So to answer the title, can you learn piobaireachd on your own? My answer is “Yes, but…” Learn the basics of the tune from the recording, and then have an experienced ear listen to what you have learned.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Flame of Wrath
Our tune this week was kindly submitted by Patrick McLaurin of Lubbock, TX. When I asked him if he’d be interested in submitting a tune, he told me that he doesn’t really play piobaireachd. A few days later he sent me A Flame of Wrath For Squinting Patrick, which he had recorded during a practice session. After hearing this I find it hard to believe that Patrick doesn’t play piobaireachd.
This tune is one of my favorites, and it was after hearing it played by the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band on their “Flame of Wrath“ album that I decided maybe piobaireachd wasn’t so bad after all.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for the Viscount of Dundee
I’m contributing to my own Piobaireachd Wednesday this week with a tune that I’ve learned in the past few months: Lament for the Viscount of Dundee. Informally known as “The Viscount,” this is the tune that was the catalyst in the love of piobaireachd that resulting in starting this feature on my blog.
The inspiration for learning it came around quite accidentally. For a while I’ve been thinking I should learn this tune, and one morning in early May I set my iPod on shuffle as I was walking to class. A recording of The Viscount by Roddy MacLeod was the first track to come up, and I enjoyed it so much I listened to it again. My walk to the engineering library is almost exactly twice as long as the tune, and from that day I began listening to it on my walk to school and my walk home. It didn’t take long to have the tune mostly memorized, with only barely looking at the music.
This recording was made yesterday afternoon in the fellowship hall of a church near my home. I used the Audio Recorder application and built-in microphone on my MacBook Pro.
The playing is not perfect, but that’s not the point of Piobaireachd Wednesday. The tune is relatively new for me, and I’m in the process of refining it. As I listen to the recording, I realize I have a lot of refining to do.
If you’d like to submit a recording to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Battle of the Pass of Crieff
Our tune this week is submitted by Vince Janoski, also known as Pipe Hacker. Vince plays with Oran Mor Pipe Band from Troy, NY, and he’s chosen The Battle of the Pass of Crieff, and had this to say about his tune:
I sent along an audio file of me playing “Battle of the Pass
of Crieff” from back in December. It’s a practice recording so
soundwise, my blowing is not the greatest, but not too bad. There is also a
misstep in the A-Mach just near the end that mars what I thought was a
pretty good run through.
I tend to play the tune a bit slower and less driving than is usually
expected. I like to think of it as the rowing tune it probably originally
was, so I’ve been working on getting the momentum going. I’m looking forward
to fielding it at Altamont.
Thanks for sending this in, Vince! If you’d like to submit a recording to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
