The Reeling festival was held last weekend, June 10 and 11, in Rouken Glen Park on the fringes on Glasgow, and the photos show a spectacular start in its inaugural year. The Highland pipes were well represented throughout the festival, and another positive aspect is how many Scottish traditional music […]
A Beginner’s Guide • By John Slavin. I have often wondered why the notes on the Highland pipe chanter have the wrong names, and thought it might point to a time in history when the pipe chanter’s low A note did actually sound an A note at 440Hz. I took […]
Breabach are playing in the main auditorium of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 7.30pm, tonight at Celtic Connections, and are soon to embark on a 17 date tour in America. The US tour starts in Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music on February 8, and full details of the […]
A Beginner’s Guide • By John Slavin. Part four of this series is to give pipers some understanding of what other instruments need to do in order to be in tune with our concert pitch B-flat chanter, or even allow you to tell your musician friends what they should be […]
A Beginner’s Guide • By John Slavin. As part of the interviews conducted for this feature in 2011, I focused on a few topics which are crucial, or closely related, to the whole subject. These discussions are not all about the theory but more about sharing the experience of the […]
A Beginner’s Guide • By John Slavin. If you have followed part one and part two of this series you should now understand the importance of playing a concert pitch B-flat chanter, and the following points summarise the other important aspects covered in the previous features. Your low A sounds […]
A Beginner’s Guide • By John Slavin. The first part of this feature focused on the basics of setting up your pipe chanter to allow you to tune to concert pitch when playing with other musicians, and to recap the main points: you must have a concert pitch B-flat pipe […]
A Beginner’s Guide • By John Slavin. THE GREAT Highland Bagpipe is a versatile instrument capable of producing breathtaking music in the hands of the finest solo performers and Grade 1 bands, or of stirring the emotions of the listener when a pipe band parades down the street with a […]
Piping and pipe band historian, Jeannie Campbell has unearthed a fascinating photograph of Willie Lawrie receiving the Gold Medal in 1910. There are very few known photographs of the Ballachulish-born piper in existence so the find is extremely valuable. It was in 1910 that Lawrie became the second piper ever […]
Iain MacInnes reviews Chris Gray’s debut recording. As Scotland’s pipers explore ever wider musical horizons, this beautifully-made debut CD from Chris Gray points the way to what can be achieved. Gray comes with an impressive piping pedigree (he was a pupil of Tony MacDonald’s in his native Lockerbie), as well […]
