Quote Originally Posted by JerMc
I posted this once before, but, I was driving through a town near my home, and there was one of those "kids" with a thousand DB stereo in his small car. He had his windows open and had itt cranked up so high that the closed windows in my pickup were rattling from the heavy bass throb of the rap he was playing. I had a bagpipe CD in my stock CD player and as I approached at a stoplight, I cranked it up to my player's limited ability and rolled down my window. When I got beside him he looked over and glared at me before rolling up his window. I guess that if I had the kind of amp and speakers he had, I could have cracked the glass in his windows. The pipes do have a penetrating sound.
At the 2001 Maryland Ren Faire, the Scottish Rogues' frontman used that same scenario as a sales pitch. I bought their first four albums that day.

On a similar note, back in college when guys would p***ing matches over whose stereos were better, my roomate or I (who didn't like sitting in the middle of this) would put my CD of the Royal Scots Dragoons in, set the volume at 3/4 max (we never got mad enough to crank it, lock the door, and visit a friend six doors down. Things would normally stay quiet for a few weeks after that.

The young man in question isn't doing this sort of behavior. He is trying to be as quiet as possible, to the extent of geting smaller pipes. Given the community spirit he demonstrated with the work he's already done for the council, he probably practiced when it would cause the least disturbance. If the council can't take this into account, and test the decibel levels of the new pipes, then they should be boycotted by every piper within 50 miles.

There are some who will say "well, why doesn't the boy practice inside?" Having listened to pipers play in a building with bad acoustics, I tell you this is not a good idea. It was a bad enough that, even after paying the price of the ticket and the hour-and-a-half drive to get there, I left at intermission.