Harmony Writing Part Eight. By TIM CUMMINGS. Piping Today #92, 2018. We have arrived at the eighth and last article on writing harmonies for pipe bands and other pipe ensembles — for the time being, at least. In the previous seven articles, we explored a progression of approaches to crafting […]
Harmony Writing Part Seven. By TIM CUMMINGS. Piping Today #91, 2018. If you’ve ever heard a world-class uilleann piper, you’ll have experienced both the thrill of a magnificent instrument as well as the accompanying harmonies played on the regulators. Uilleann pipes are similar to Scottish-style bagpipes in that they have […]
Harmony Writing Part Six. By TIM CUMMINGS. Piping Today #90, 2018. Those of you following along with this mini-series on Harmony Writing may remember the project from the previous article, which involved developing a more involved harmony for the first part of John Walsh’s The Korgi (a reel in the […]
Harmony Writing Part Four. By TIM CUMMINGS Piping Today #88, 2017. In part three of this mini-series on Harmony Writing, we looked at the most common basic chords used to accompany Celtic music, in particular Scottish pipe tunes. A chart of the nine most common chords, most of them consisting […]
Harmony Writing Part Three. By TIM CUMMINGS Piping Today #87, 2017. Two articles ago, I lied to you: after describing the primitive harmony of the drone (or ‘pedal point’), I promised to discuss the harmony of chords in the very next part. And then I didn’t. That’s because in the […]
Harmony Writing Part Two. By TIM CUMMINGS Piping Today #86, 2017. In the last instalment of this column on music theory, we began looking at the most primitive, basic form of harmony that I could think of: the drone, or ‘pedal point’. Of course, droning is what most bagpipes do […]
