Learn (Some) Gaelic

Things (and people) Gaelic have always interested me. I’ve had a sense of (or is that for?) “Gaelicness” as long as I can remember. My dad’s mum, Margaret McBain came from Creagorry, a small place in Benbecula – also a small place in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. She was a great lady and a real favourite of mine. She would be the one who quietly slipped a fiver in my hand (one she really couldn’t spare) with a whispered, “don’t tell your father”. Who wouldn’t love that?
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The Inner Game of Inner Games

I’ve always held that piping, especially solo piping, is one huge massive headgame – played often by those of us with huge massive heads.

First, by “headgame” (and really it should read “head game”, but I like the diagnostic certainty implied by writing one word) I mean psychological “self talk”: ambiguity, uneasiness and worry all rolled up in one tidy ill-timed inner conversation.
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Dating Your Silver Pipes

That’s “dating” as in determing their age (anything else is just wierd!).  Anyway, there are loads of ways of figuring out the age of your pipes.  Some modern makers make it really easy and stamp the date of manufacture on a small area of the instrument.  But, really, it is the old, antique pipes where there’s as much art as science in the process of assessing age.
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Commiting Music to Memory

Tradition along with the physical nature of the instrument makes performing pipe music with scores or manuscript a little difficult – and a real rarity. Having said that I must confess almost any studio recording I do is always with score and stand. So much more enjoyable. So much easier. The only time I can recall performing in public with manuscript in view was with “classical” musicians in the concert hall performance of John Beckwith‘s “A New Pibroch”.
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Tips for a Novice Competing Piper of Any Age

I attended a Pipers’ & Pipe Band Society of Ontario adjudicator’s seminar on April 25 (the first day of 2007 where the weather was good, the sun shone and the temperature went above 15 degrees – perfect to sit indoors).

Lots of talk. Some discussion on the merits of providing tune selection guidelines for grade 4. This got me to thinking of other guidelines – tips, really. Here’s a few suggestions:

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