Bagipes Banned from Edinburgh Wedding !

[OC Richard]

I've piped at weddings and funerals here in the USA for over 30 years now, and this issue of certain clergy not wanting bagpipes inside the church crops up from time to time. Often the person objecting is not the clergy but the Wedding Coordinators (who have a way of imposing their will on clergy and congregants alike).

"Once bitten, twice shy" as they say, and I really can't blame the people who object to having pipes inside the church, after being exposed to pipers playing their Pipe Band competition setup pipes, with the chanter screaming a quartertone sharp and as loud and brassy as human ingenuity is capable of making it.

If all pipers used warm woody mellow concert-pitch (466) chanters for church gigs we would have far fewer people objecting to pipes in church.

But alas many pipers don't want to be bothered and just play their Band setup pipes indoors, and pipers like me have to suffer the consequences, either losing gigs (like the piper in the story did) or having to play outside.

I even have a hard time convincing people to let me play my uilleann pipes in the church. They don't believe me when I say they are the same volume as a single violin or flute. Many's the time I've had to actually play the uilleann pipes for them. As soon as they hear them, my playing in the church is approved.

And I tell them I can play Highland pipes at that same volume as well- my Miniature Highland pipes.

(Ironically it's the often the best pipers who do the most public damage, because the best band pipers have the loudest and sharpest pipes. I inherited one regular gig because the church didn't like they piper they had hired once, a former Pipe Major of a Grade One band!! The guy is a fantastic player but he came into the church playing incredibly loud and incredibly sharp and the church didn't like it one bit. Of course this guy knows all about 466 chanters and probably has one, but he didn't bother to switch out his band chanter for the gig.)