This tune presents excellent opportunities for amateurs and professionals to make tired ears prick up and pay attention. It is one of those tunes begging for a fresh interpretation by a piper who wants to offer something extra – a memorable and authoritative[…]
The background to this tune has produced much speculation over the years with its Gaelic named version usually linked to the place of that name in Ross and Cromarty, about five miles NNE of Alness.[…]
This title bothers me: It is one of pibroch’s unsolved mysteries. No-one has come up with a convincing interpretation. There are two dogs in Colin Campbell’s Instrumental Book 1797: ‘Samuell’s Black dog’ (PS 108) and ‘McLeod’s Dog Short Tail’ (PS 131), but we[…]
The children’s game ‘Telephone’ (called ‘Chinese whispers’ in the UK) can have hilarious results. It works best when the seed phrase is unexpected. The same is true in oral transmission: bigger changes occur when the model is unfamiliar. If no template[…]
The title Port an Lùdag – The Little Finger Tune (PS 240) intrigues me. The idea that it concerns the piper’s hiharin finger doesn’t convince me because other more famous tunes make greater use of the little finger. A few months ago, I posted a story[…]
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Sweden piping at the opening of the Archaeomusica exhibition. Most of the pipes in my case were reproductions of archaeological finds. In 2008, a 40,000-year-old vulture bone with 5 finger holes was unearthed in Hohle[…]
The more I look into Gaelic poetry, the more convinced I become that this is the most valuable approach for anyone wanting to get inside the head of pibroch composers. It offers rich evidence of cultural context,[…]
