GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #59, 2012. What makes us do what we do? Cross a street with the red man aglow, hold the door open for someone, jump the queue at an airport check-in? We might be in a rush, we might just love people — or […]
Tag: Michael Grey
The rose-tinted glasses of time
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #58, 2012. There’s one sure thing about being involved in the piping game: there’s never a shortage of memory-making material. The bagpipe seems to have a way of finding the centre of the most percolating social action. Or maybe it’s the pipes that […]
An extrasensory sense of place
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #57, 2012. It seems to me that the more we visit a place and the more we get to know it, the stronger are our feelings for that place. It dovetails, maybe, that the deeper our memories connect with a place then the […]
Playing the parrot blame game
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #56, 2012. One way psychologists have been known to test how word meanings are stored in a person’s memory is by word association. In a word association test, a person is given a word and asked to respond with the first word that […]
Salute to the old-school time shifters
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #55, 2011. I’ve always thought John D. Burgess came as close as anyone to the title of ‘maestro’. Burgess was surely a true artist of consummate skill and not without a hint of charm and eccentric personal colour thrown in for good measure. […]
The Scottish Parish of Piping
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #53, 2011. It’s that time of year when Scotland is especially magnetic for travellers. Games season, the big pipe band championships and August’s Piping Live! festival all do their bit to attract pipers and drummers from all over. I was 20 when I […]
Give (new) music a chance
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #54, 2011. When a brand gets to be used as a verb you know the product is a popular, if not powerful, thing: “Facebook me when you’re done practicing your birls” and “Great idea about twice-through pipe band MSR contests, I’m gonna Twitter […]
What Motown can teach pipers
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #53, 2011. It seems like the more stuff there is on TV and the more channels there are available, the less there is to watch. This way of things has made me an impatient channel-clicker: two seconds on that show, nine on the […]
Wandering pipers
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #51, 2011. A couch that converts to a bed is a good thing to have. A spare bed is right up there with common household conveniences like, say, a toaster, a fridge or a bottle opener. A spare room may be best and […]
Superstitious Minds
GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #50, 2011. I’m not a hugely superstitious person. But then again, I’m not not a superstitious person. You won’t see me walk under a ladder. That’s just crazy. What harm’s a little salt over the shoulder when I’m in a spilling way, and, […]
