The music of John MacCrimmon – the ‘Gesto Canntaireachd’ — Part 2 By Roderick D. Cannon We don’t know exactly when Niel MacLeod of Gesto started collecting his music or how long he spent on it. We do know, however, that the collection had taken shape by 1815, because in […]
Features
The music of John MacCrimmon, part 1
The music of John MacCrimmon – the ‘Gesto Canntaireachd The 2015 College of Piping Lecture took place at the Birnam Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland in March of that year. Professor Roderick – Roddy – Cannon, who had been preparing his latest book for publication – The music of John MacCrimmon […]
Francie Markis: lone piper
In our report last week of the passing of Jock Duncan we made mention of 19th century Aberdeenshire piper, Francie Markis. In an article published in March 1990 in Common Stock, the journal of the Lowland & Border Pipers’ Society (LBPS), Jock unearthed information on Markis. Although the article shed […]
Dr Simon McKerrell: Act now for the future of piping and drumming
Many of us have been following the COVID-19 updates from the UK, Ireland and around the world over the past year and more, and are hugely thankful that in Scotland and the UK at least, the vaccine roll out is beginning to give us hope for a return to social […]
Dan Nevans: I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me? or The highland pipe and mid-20th century American collegiate basketball Please follow this link to Spotify to enjoy the playlist I have put together for you to enjoy while reading this article. (You will obviously need to have a Spotify […]
The tonal colours of the tune
In part 2 of his discussion on drone tuning and harmonics, John Dally uses Scotish smallpipes to explain how pipers can understand drones and the intricacies of tuning. By John Dally Now that we have established that the drones provide a harmonic background, it is easy to understand why different […]
Harmonics and drone tuning
Do your pipes sound alive with rich harmonics or are you content to have your drones simply ‘in tune’? As someone once put it, the drones ARE the instrument; the chanter an add on. In part 1 of this two-part article, John Dally discusses how your drones, in providing a […]
Stories of the Tunes – Colonel Maclean of Ardgour
Pipe Major John McLellan DCM, Dunoon is recognised as a composer of many fine tunes. One of them, the 2/4 march, Colonel Maclean of Ardgour, he named for someone with whom he served in the same regiment during the First World War. The tune can be found in Volume 2 […]
Stuart Letford: One picture, many stories
This is not a photo essay. Rather, it’s an essay on a photo, the one shown here. That said, the purpose of a photo essay is nothing if not a way to tell a story or evoke emotion from the viewers through a series of photographs. And I think there […]
Giving bellows pipes a name – an unresolved problem
By Jock Agnew Although the renaissance of Scottish bellows-blown pipes has been taking place for some 20 years [40 now! – Editor], there remain some matters that are, as yet, unresolved. For instance how should we identify these various pipes emerging from the past when there are references to smallpipes, Lowland […]