GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. Piping Today #80, 2016. The Highland bagpipe can create some of the most rhythmically amazing music imaginable. A well-practised set of mitts can rattle off near endless streams of reels, jigs, strathspeys and hornpipes. Highland dancers would be lost if not struck dead still without […]
by Dan Nevans. Piping Today #89, 2018. Do you know what the first sign of madness is? It’s repeating the same actions over and over and expecting a different outcome. The second sign is hairy palms. Friends, bandspeople, country folk… lend me your reading apparatus. I am about to attempt to […]
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. Piping Today #79, 2016. I once read something somewhere about the spiritual power of making music in a group. The words I recall spoke to group music creation in a sacred sort of way. Making music with others joined energy and life forces and, well, […]
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. January 2023. It has to be more than coincidence that this past weekend should see a presentation and a petition collide. At this past weekend’s conference of leaders from the Alliance of North American Pipe Band Associations I led a talk on possible ways to […]
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. Piping Today #78, 2015/16 These days we hear more and more about “ground-breaking” studies trumpeting the health benefits of one thing or another. News in tandem equally pronounces the many things that are seemingly bad for us. One day it’s a daily glass or two […]
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. Piping Today #77, 2015. Yonge Street is one of the City of Toronto’s most important thoroughfares. It dissects the whole of the metropolitan area along north-south lines. From Lake Ontario north over 50 kilometers, Yonge covers a lot of diverse, sometimes gritty ground and on […]
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. Piping Today #76, 2015. A short note to people who don’t have a lot of height: taller adults snag jobs of higher status and, on average, earn more than other people. Yes. It’s true. Are you offended — you with the 26 inch inside leg? […]
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. Piping Today #72, 2014. If you want to make a fast million, forget trying to invent the perfect set of drones or never-fail chanter reed, like, say, a possible brand like the SkweelAway or, maybe, the NaySkirl 2000. If you’re looking for fast coin to […]
by BILL LIVINGSTONE. Piping Today #101, 2020. My own experience of composing music started when I was in my teens, creating rock and roll songs in the simple three or four-chord form of the times. But still I was doing it, and they gathered some local popularity. Of course there […]
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey. June, 2022. The writer, Ami McKay, has a great string of words about life in a small town, and that is, “no matter what you do, someone always knew you would.” Cue the local curtain rustler’s chat with the TV reporter, “oh, they was ruthless […]
