Tag: Piping Today Magazine

The real life of Colin MacLellan

The real life of Colin MacLellan

Piper, teacher, reed maker, judge and all-around bon vivant, Colin has spent a lifetime around bagpipes. While he’s the son of a piping legend in Captain John A, he’s done the business and won the big piping prizes — and much more.  In his life he has been a living […]

Opinions, assumptions and truths

Opinions, assumptions and truths

GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #65, 2013. Summertime and the livin’ is easy; fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high. Great words; in fact, great lyrics from George and Ira Gershwin. And while it’s our standard holiday season, with weather that’s light on the back, summer isn’t […]

‘Big Ronnie’ bridges the generations

‘Big Ronnie’ bridges the generations

Ronald Lawrie of Oban (1927-2008) wasn’t called ‘Big Ronnie’ for nothing. But his broad-shouldered, 6ft 5in frame and imposing, square-jawed presence were almost incidental to his considerable stature in piping — and an involvement that began with direct influences from the 19th century and continues into the 21st century. He […]

Tim Cummings: tunes based on a ‘gapped’ A scale

Tim Cummings: tunes based on a ‘gapped’ A scale

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #73, 2014. When people refer to musical scales, they are normally referring to the conventional major or minor, seven-note, “diatonic” scales.  If you’ve been following the recent Piping Today articles on music theory, you’ll know that seven-note scales can also be something other […]

Tunes in the key of A-Major

Tunes in the key of A-Major

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #72, 2014. This article is the third in an on-going series focusing on specific musical keys found in our Scottish piping repertoire.  Having already looked at the two most common musical keys in our light music, D-Major and A-Mixolydian, we’ll now put a […]

The real life of Mike Katz

The real life of Mike Katz

While not cut from the cloth of the competitive piper, Mike Katz is one of the world’s most successful American-born pipers. Born in the Los Angeles region of the San Fernando Valley, he broke his piping teeth in his older brother Steve’s high school pipe band – along with a […]

Flashbulb memories

Flashbulb memories

GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #64, 2013. It’s an uncomfortable truth that any sentence that starts with “One of my earliest memories…” will induce in any person — outside of maybe a Freudian psychoanalyst — a vacant stare, a droop of the eye lids and just enough open-mouthed […]

Tunes in the key of A-Mixolydian

Tunes in the key of A-Mixolydian

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #71, 2014. In the last issue of Piping Today, we took a close look at the key of D-Major.  That article was the first of what will be a series designed to supplement previous articles1 that painted broader pictures of multiple musical keys2.  […]

Two heads are better than one

Two heads are better than one

GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #63, 2013. It’s said that every day we each make thousands of decisions. Starting from the moment we wake up: do we get out of our chariots or roll over? And then: if we decide we want to eat, what’s for brekkie, what […]

Bearskin hats and pristine spats

Bearskin hats and pristine spats

GREY’S NOTES by Michael Grey Piping Today #62, 2013. I was at lunch with a work friend the other day when the subject came up:  just how old is the general public’s idea of the stereotypical pipe band? You know, Scotland the Brave, Black Bear, Green Hills and yards and […]