I'm starting to "get it"...

[Alan H]

.... just "starting", eh?

I have a couple of friends who are pipers and two or three of them are quite good. A couple are Grade Three pipers, one is probably going to move up to Grade Two after this year. I've come to appreciate pipes in a way that I certainly did not, say, seven years ago. However, because of the nature of pipes, you can't articulate notes like a clarinet or flute player can. Instead, there's sophisticated fingerwork that is used to delineate...for example.... repeated notes.

OK, so I listen to my friends and as they develop, I start to notice how more musical, perhaps "lyrical"....certainly "unencumbered" the phrases become. The sound becomes more than an "ambiance of drones and notes" as their skills develop. Now, I certainly enjoy the "ambiance" but as a woodwind player, I want to hear musical phrases. As a very, very GENERAL rule, with the vast majority of pipers I hear, those phrases are "there", but they're chopped up pretty drastically by the necessity of the fast fingerwork needed to provide articulation.

However, at Woodland a couple of weekends ago, OCRichard came by the MacNaughton tent and played a new-to-him set of chamber pipes. THAT was a joy to listen to. Richards fingerwork does NOT get in the way of the phrasing, it CREATES the phrasing.

And now I "get" at least one small part of the difference between a **Really Good Piper** and a Good Piper. I really enjoyed that, it was a bit of a revelation.

Thanks, Richard!

[Tarheel]

It sounds as if the next level of listening for you will be connoisseur.

[Nathan]

.... just "starting", eh?

I have a couple of friends who are pipers and two or three of them are quite good. A couple are Grade Three pipers, one is probably going to move up to Grade Two after this year. I've come to appreciate pipes in a way that I certainly did not, say, seven years ago. However, because of the nature of pipes, you can't articulate notes like a clarinet or flute player can. Instead, there's sophisticated fingerwork that is used to delineate...for example.... repeated notes.

OK, so I listen to my friends and as they develop, I start to notice how more musical, perhaps "lyrical"....certainly "unencumbered" the phrases become. The sound becomes more than an "ambiance of drones and notes" as their skills develop. Now, I certainly enjoy the "ambiance" but as a woodwind player, I want to hear musical phrases. As a very, very GENERAL rule, with the vast majority of pipers I hear, those phrases are "there", but they're chopped up pretty drastically by the necessity of the fast fingerwork needed to provide articulation.

However, at Woodland a couple of weekends ago, OCRichard came by the MacNaughton tent and played a new-to-him set of chamber pipes. THAT was a joy to listen to. Richards fingerwork does NOT get in the way of the phrasing, it CREATES the phrasing.

And now I "get" at least one small part of the difference between a **Really Good Piper** and a Good Piper. I really enjoyed that, it was a bit of a revelation.

Thanks, Richard!

I enjoyed reading this post a lot and look forward to hearing Richard play sometime.

[OC Richard]

Wow thanks! I appreciate that very much.

My piping career has been, let's say, spotty. I'm in no danger of winning a Gold Medal, nor have I ever been!

I will say that, nearly from the get-go, I had the good fortune of being surrounded by pipers far better than I. My start on the pipes couldn't have been less promising: I was a teenager living out in a desert (literally, surrounded by sand dunes and roadrunners and coyotes and palm trees) with no-one around for guidance, and no internet then! So on my own, armed with a practice chanter and the COP Green Book and the Donald MacLeod albums, I took to hacking away. I practiced fanatically. It was two steps forward, one step back. Ever after I've told people "don't do what I did! Get a good teacher!"

And three years after I got my first practice chanter I was playing in a Grade Two band, far over my head, surrounded by guys who had won Silver Chanters and who were piping judges and so forth.

And I spent a fantastic two years, in 2005 and 2006, playing in a very good band led by Steve Megarity (ex-FMM), until most of the pipe corps quit and went over to the Grade One LA Scots. Once again I was far over my head, but I benefited greatly from Steve's emphasis on the music, and wanting the ornaments de-emphasised in favour of the phrasing, exactly as you describe.

I'm just a lowly Grade Four piper playing in a decent Grade Four band, nowadays!

BTW now it's 40 years on the Highland pipes for me, and 35 years on the uilleann pipes.

[IsaacW]

I absolutely love hearing the pipes played well. There is certainly a musicality of hearing someone that knows what they are doing compared to not; probably more so than many other instruments. Were I to win the lotto, I think I would hire my good friend Jeremy (a rather excellent piper) to pipe full time for me and my household. Totally frivolous, but totally cool!!

Here are a couple photos of him piping at the house this past weekend while we hung out and had drams.

[OC Richard]

What a beautiful setting, in which to hear beautiful music!