GREY’S NOTES
by Michael Grey.
Piping Today #94 • 2018.
I can remember the near-precise moment I was hit with a serious dislike for cane drone reeds. I was last on in the Gold Medal contest at Oban and it was at the start of the last line of the crunluath a mach of my tune – maybe 20 seconds from the finish. I’ll let Seumas MacNeill, one of the judges of that year’s event take it from there: “The strongest challenge to this fine piper was coming from Michael Grey … playing a quite magnificent In Praise of Morag. As so often happens in such a competition, everything went well until almost the very end, when disaster struck in the form of a stopped bass drone. Michael, and many more of us, will grieve over this for years to come.”
And so I have. Sort of. At the time of my ill-fated Morag, synthetic reeds were in beta testing stage and just not good enough to be plugged into a pipe that needed to sound pleasing. As soon as the first reliable set of synthetic reeds was available, I was elbows-out and at the front of the shop queue. In my many years using synthetic reeds I have never had a drone stop in mid – or late – performance.
The technology of the bagpipe has come a long way in a relatively short period of time: bags, reeds, bagpipe manufacturing, tuning meters and apps, these things are among those that have raised the overall level of bagpipe sound produced today across all experience levels. Today we have choice: natural or synthetic. Count your blessings.
I occasionally wonder at the untold hours of tune-playing I might’ve experienced – if not enjoyed – had I not had to fiddle with cane drone reeds. Shaving or waxing blades, rolling reeds, burning fingers, resealing reed ends, springing tongues. Oh, and waxing and tying bridles. Ugh. I can feel the sweat starting to pour down my brow; a flashback looms.
The speedy evolution of technology that supports an easier piping life, of course, has a broader parallel. The transformation of the developed world, especially, over the last 90 years, is nothing short of remarkable. Technological change has impacted every corner of society. Just as the invention of the wheel, the compass and the printing press changed the worlds of their time – and so ours – technology, and information technology, in particular, has changed how we interact with each other, how we buy stuff, what we buy, what we eat and how we make our way in the world; that is, how and what we do to earn a living.
The technology changes that have happened almost overwhelm. Consider the phone, the one that used to be wired to a wall. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the telephone became a common sight in the average home. And calling a friend who lived a long way away? Forget it – unless your family owned a Bentley and had a posse of servants. In 1927, the UK’s first trans-Atlantic telephone service was established. So if, say, the winner of that year’s Oban Gold Medal, John Wilson, wanted to ring his pal DC Mather, in Montana, and let him in on the news, well, a three-minute chin-wag via long-wave technology would set him back £15 – about £870 in today’s money. Think about that the next time you post to the world on Instagram your Tenerife selfie – all at no cost (loss of privacy aside).
Today, everyone has a smartphone; amazing little machines that hold more fire power than any computer used in NASA’s Apollo space programme. And we text. Anywhere. Anytime. And yet the first text, or SMS (short message service) message, was sent a mere 25 years ago (it was “Merry Christmas”, by the way).
The digitisation of almost everything (the conversion of pictures, text or sound into a form that can be processed by a computer) has laid the groundwork for the ascendance of the internet. The internet: the world’s social club, information and research archive, entertainment hub and shopping mall. It’s cheap to use and for anyone with a secret to keep, the worst place to hang out.
It’s the internet where so much immediate, near-to-home change can be felt. Think of the many economic impacts on piping, some positive, some not. On the “not” side, recording and book business profitability have taken a hit. Streaming services and mostly free sites like YouTube, social media and “pirate” sites have kicked the stuffing out of recording and music book sales. The cost of music ownership is equal to the cost of an internet connection. The production of a commercial record or “album” is rare today – in the piping world, especially. Where once we might have seen a score of piping projects in any given year, today there are few.
The internet is heaving with archives of a vast storehouse of recorded pipe music. And not just that, the internet is uber-democratic: anyone can record and upload their rendition of any tune any time. With no Master File Curator, it’s up to the consumer to decide what has merit – and there’s no shortage of choice.
While the internet has supported, if not transformed, the whole idea of distance learning (think self-paced e-learning modules and face-to-face video lessons) it has spurred on a wave of self-helpers. More and more I find myself meeting pipers who, in lieu of available teachers, seek out YouTube video performances of tunes they want to learn. In place of a teacher’s direction, voice and body language learning is by cold rote. I suggest that what works for learning the periodic table of the elements is a good way off from what it takes to play In Praise of Morag well. The act of parroting, or copying anything for that matter – especially art – prevents a person from developing a real understanding of the form, no matter what it is.
I do believe that the open archive that is the internet stands as a force for good. But the potential for it to support the development of a routine sameness to the music makes me stop – and think. When we seek to precisely trace our tunes from the same template, as in copying recordings, we risk homogenising the music. We’ll all sound the same.
The always quotable Pablo Picasso said that computers are useless because they only give you answers. His point, I think, makes us look to the warmth and value of humanity – say, to teachers – and the heartlessness of the digital. But to think what I would give to
have had all those years ago a good YouTube video: “How to keep your cane bass drone from stopping”. 🙂
Mike Grey is the pipe major of 78th Fraser Highlanders since September 2023, and he teaches, judges, writes and publishes bagpipe music. His Grey’s Notes series ran in Piping Today magazine for ten years. His Grey’s Notes book is available here.