tcheuchterloon
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Tha f?ram math fh?in, chan eil fhios agam far am faighte ?ite na b' fhe?rr.
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Post by tcheuchterloon on Apr 3, 2006 11:29:31 GMT
..or hoo mony choons div' ye' ken?? We are redecorating, and my missus gave me a couple of box files to tidy up the sheets and scraps of paper I have stuffed in places everywhere in my corner. I've got Piobmaster and Bagpipe Reader, so I thought why not collate everything into some binders, 3 sections, known tunes, part known tunes and "to do" tunes. Days later I'm still on known tunes, and I'm easily over 100. ![:(](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/sad.png) I've never counted before, but there's the essential tune type "standards", about 50 of them, about 50 from the London Scottish, the 60 odd in my current pipe band, about a dozen weird ones I still remember from the British Airways, a few I can't remember where I got them from, a whole heap from the Scots Guards that I went through with Roger Huth, a couple from the Seaforths that I got from Jim Caution, and the usual pile of ones you learn for yourself, for me stuff out of the Donald MacLeod books for my Institute of Piping certs and stuff I've chored off Bagpipe Reader. ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) It all mounts up, but I'd no idea till I'd started filing it away. There's so much more I want to learn too. ![???](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/huh.png) It's been good fun sorting the stuff out as well, I'm currently enjoying playing Glenfinnan Highland Gathering oot the MacFadyen book for the first time in years, I'd forgotten all about it. There's quite a few nice two part strathspeys and reels I've not bothered with for ages either, no tough stuff, just O'er The Bows to Ballindoch, Tail Toddle, that kind of stuff. My missus is miffed though, as I have stopped filing stuff away and am instead sitting with the practice chanter in hand. ![:-[](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/embarrassed.png) So, hoo' mony choons div ye ken??
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Post by malgremor on Apr 3, 2006 18:53:15 GMT
A better question might be how many tunes have you forgotten. When I was learning, I set myself a goal of 3 per week & quickly built a large repetoire, but many of them did not appeal to taste & I never played them again. When I was in a band I had to learn a lot of stuff that I didn't much care for & have since forgotten. I suppose that I have about 50(including originals), that I play regularly; & about 200 that I can readily play if requested. There are probably a lot more lurking in the dim recesses of my aging memory. I have a problem sometimes remembering the names of more obscure tunes, so that when people make requests, I have to ask them to hum a bit of it to stimulate my recall.
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Post by mrzdavid on Apr 3, 2006 19:53:39 GMT
Well, I have nae idea. Over the years I must have learned hundreds but out of memory could probably play 40-50 well. There's loads that I used to know but would need the music for a few runs through to bring it back. On top of the books I've collected for years I've folders full of old band tunes. That disna count the thousands I've in bagpipe player format.
The real question has to be how many do you actually like? Whenever I get the urge I always seem to run through the same set of jigs. I'll get them right one day LOL
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Post by malgremor on Apr 3, 2006 20:08:34 GMT
You have just reinforced my notion that on average, most of us keep about 50 practiced up & ready to go at any given time. These consist of the ones you like the most & the standards that people require you to play.
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Post by mrzdavid on Apr 3, 2006 20:46:55 GMT
I'd agree with that Malgremor. There's tunes I'm not too fond of but can rattle off when requested, my band tunes, ex band tunes and tunes I like to play.
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tcheuchterloon
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Tha f?ram math fh?in, chan eil fhios agam far am faighte ?ite na b' fhe?rr.
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Post by tcheuchterloon on Apr 4, 2006 8:14:25 GMT
How many do I like? Good question, there's not a huge amount that I dislike, (Amazing Grace, Highland Cathedral, FoS, maybe), but there's a huge amount that I don't have any feelings for at all. The massed pipe band tunes go by me while I'm thinking about what I'm having for tea that night, and there's a lot of 4/4's that leave me nonplussed, although I do still playing like Flett from Flotta. Black Bear is still a good laugh, (but usually to see the drummer's faces), as is 79th's Farewell. Tunes I like to play include good 6/8's, like Donald MacLean of Lewis and the old favourite Dr Ross's 50th Welcome, hornpipes like Duncan Johnstone and I like Spogan oot the Gordon's book. I'm currently getting Nelson Mandela's Welcome doon when I'm not being required to paper the walls or pick up a paintbrush. Good jigs are good fun, and that's the point of it for me. I know some competition style MSR's, but they are there for my own sort of bench mark, to know I can do them, I enjoy them but not in the same way as the tunes listed above. There's a kind of macho thing goes on here on Thursday nights when some of the ex Scots guards see who can play the most tunes from memory. I get astounded, there's two guys, (both ex SG P/M's), can play unfeasible amounts of tunes, they have both the SG books memorized, plus most of the Gordons and Seaforths. They seem genuinely surprised when you don't know something you'd consider quite obscure. In the 5 or 6 years I've been studying with them I've been force fed a lot of dots. It's not something I'd thought of before, but I'd reckon aboot 75% of my repertoire doesn't connect with me that much, which is not good at all. I'll have re-appraise how I look at it, because I'm getting too long in the tooth to change it now.
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Post by malgremor on Apr 4, 2006 18:35:34 GMT
When I first got the Scots Guards book (vol. I). I thought I'd found the last & only tune book I'd ever need & thought to learn the whole thing, front to back. Quickly realised that about 80% was stuff I didn't like & would never play. Now I just sift through them, looking for those rare gems that stand out above the typical pipe band rubbish that fills most of them. I like syncopated tunes & my sets tend to be heavy with strathspeys...they have a teasing quality to them, like foreplay...
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tcheuchterloon
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Tha f?ram math fh?in, chan eil fhios agam far am faighte ?ite na b' fhe?rr.
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Post by tcheuchterloon on Apr 5, 2006 8:02:12 GMT
Malgremor, there's a lot of things you say I just don't understand I think we must live on different planets rather than different countries. "Typical pipe band rubbish"? ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) I'm typing this at work, my pipes in their case beside me. I've been looking forward to tonight for a while, I'm meeting up with P/M's Hugh MacMillan and Roger Huth of the Scots Guards to have a blether and a few tunes. I can't wait to show them this. You might have another couple of new joiners on the forum tomorrow! ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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cullen
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Post by cullen on Apr 5, 2006 18:54:43 GMT
Unlike my taste in beer and whiskey, pipe music to me is more about quality than quantity. I've played a lot of tunes, but have only kept up on about 40-50 that I would not be affraid to play in a crowded pub with half a load on. ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/tongue.png)
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Post by malgremor on Apr 5, 2006 22:54:16 GMT
"Typical pipeband rubbish" was my teacher Seumas MacNeill's term for those uninspired & uninspiring 2/4 & 4/4 & 6/8, etc marches that seem to make up the bulk of sheet music available to us. I play very few marches these days; & when I do, I speed them up & jazz them up so that they sound more like jigs, reels & hornpipes. Though I spent some time in a band when I was just starting out, that side of piping has never appealed to me. I do not find pipebands entertaining. At present I own no recordings of them. About the only time I listen to them is when they're playing a tune that I'm interested in learning...& that's rare. Just my personal taste. I'm a stage entertainer & my style is adapted to that. My favorite "hornpipe" at present is "Greenwoodside". I've changed it's standard setting, streamlined it, composed 4 additional parts to it's standard 2 & rip it out much, much faster than you'd hear a pipeband playing it. I can sing the lyrics too, though not while piping... As for pub crawling, I've noticed that one's repetoire shrinks in porportion to how many pints one has ingested. I tell people not to play drunk, that you just make an ass of yourelf, but I often find myself breaking my own rule. "Do as I say & not as I do". Overdrinking is one of the hazards of our trade...everyone wants to treat the piper & it's sometimes hard to refuse all this generosity. Make sure the audience is in general, drunker than you are; & things sort of balance out.
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tcheuchterloon
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Tha f?ram math fh?in, chan eil fhios agam far am faighte ?ite na b' fhe?rr.
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Post by tcheuchterloon on Apr 6, 2006 9:13:18 GMT
Well, I had a laugh last night, I must admit, then we went through a lot of tunes from the Scots Guards, Balmoral Highlanders, Maggie Cameron, Duncan Johnston, Devil in the Kitchen. Gillie Challum. High Road to Linton. Lord Blantyre. Marquis of Huntly. Mrs MacLeod of Raasay, Reel of Tulloch, Sean Triubhais, The Blackbird, The Battle of the Somme, etc, till I was fed up. All pipe band tunes from Scots Guards, but also included in Seamus MacNeill's books. He did know a good tune. Seamus was my teacher too, (I did the first two Institute of Piping certificates, well over a year on the PC without ever touching a bagpipe, can you imagine that now), and I don't recall him ever using the phrase "typical pipeband rubbish" for the bulk of printed music, never mind in the SG collections. He was enthusiastic about nearly all pipe music, the tunes he described as "pipeband rubbish" to us were songs adapted to the GHB when they obviously didn't fit, tunes played in a plodding manner just for the sake of it, and most modern tunes from the last 20 years. He was a total traditionalist when it came to piping, you might say an extremist in some ways, and not everyone got on with him because of this. (One of the most famous of pipers, well known in the US, described him to me as a total c**t). Seumas recommended the first Scots Guards book to me, in fact I bought it off him at the CoP the year before he died. I do know that what he rather famously described as "garbage" was jigs, reels and hornpipes played at fast speeds with "jazzed up" arrangements, as well as people arranging tunes in the manner you describe. It was his public outburst against Gordon Duncan that brought his loathing of fingering tricks to wider attention when Gordon titled his CD, "Just for Seamus". This was in relation to Seamus stating after Gordon’s performance at the CoP Knockout final that, “If this is what piping has come to then I’m sticking to my fiddle”. When not solo, of course, Gordon was doing groundbreaking stuff with Vale of Atholl pipe band, but Seumas was not bothered about that either. The truth is Seumas's heart lay in piobaireachd, and his frequent comments on pipe band music were often designed to make pupils enquire about what the "proper" music for the pipes was, at which point Seumas could make your heart pump with excitement as he extolled the virtues of céol mor. Every pupil he had would be pushed toward piobaireachd long before the mandatory IoP level 4.
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cullen
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Post by cullen on Apr 6, 2006 12:58:52 GMT
Sorry to interrupt. Interesting discussion between you two (malgremor and tcheuchterloon). Are you guys talking about the same Seamus? If so, it sounds like he had multiple personality disorder. ![:o](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/shocked.png)
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tcheuchterloon
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Tha f?ram math fh?in, chan eil fhios agam far am faighte ?ite na b' fhe?rr.
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Post by tcheuchterloon on Apr 6, 2006 13:03:39 GMT
If so, it sounds like he had multiple personality disorder. ![:o](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/shocked.png) No, but he was cantankerous and sometimes slightly scary ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
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Post by mrzdavid on Apr 8, 2006 0:03:07 GMT
No, but he was cantankerous and sometimes slightly scary ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) Sounds like one of my old pipe majors ![::)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/eyesroll.png)
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Post by malgremor on Apr 8, 2006 20:20:44 GMT
A lot of people thought Seumas was a crusty old curmudgeon, but I found him to be anything but. He was always joking, but his dry & subtle sense of humor flew right over most people's heads. Not mine. I got his jokes & appreciated them. By the way, do you remember how he used to carry his beautiful silver mounted pipes in a common briefcase, with even the tenors taken apart? To everyone's astonishment, he'd put them together & strike up, with the pipes being in such perfect tune that he did'nt have to touch the drones. Those were Hendersons weren't they? Dear Seumas, God rest him. If there is a special part of heaven reserved for pipers, I daresay he is the king of it these days. Yes, his heart was in piobaireachd; & he did more than any other person to preserve & propagate it. By the way, Tcheuchterloon, I commend your taste. You like & play a lot of the same ones I do. "Duncan Johnstone" is perhaps my all-time favorite hornpipe. It has become one of my "signature" tunes.
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Post by FINN on Apr 8, 2006 22:44:46 GMT
My memory isnt all to great, I down flat 'know' about 30 tunes, all the others i've forgotten or would have to look at the music to remind me how it goes. I allways tried to perfect the tune then memorize it, then perfect it somemore. So i have a slow memorization process
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Post by malgremor on Apr 9, 2006 20:46:26 GMT
That should be enough ready repetoire to serve all your needs. Maybe a third o the stuff that I know was learned by ear; & I don't have it written down. That includes all of the Breton & Cajun pieces. It's a handy knack to be able to pick up tunes this way, especially when you do a lot of jamming with other musicians.
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tcheuchterloon
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Tha f?ram math fh?in, chan eil fhios agam far am faighte ?ite na b' fhe?rr.
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Post by tcheuchterloon on Apr 10, 2006 8:31:26 GMT
Finn, your method of learning tunes sounds just fine, if you learn a tune, do it properly.
Malgremor, apart from being a lecturer in natural philosophy, (physics) at Glasgow University, Seamus was a life long member of Fianna na h'Alba. His early attempts to join the Piob Soc were barred by Kilberry and Rothiemurchus because they considered him a dangerous communist. If he is in Heaven, he is no doubt very surprised to find himself there. I recall his silver mounted pipes, they were plain silver, but with a rich patina. I also recall him tuning them every minute or so for the first quarter hour of him playing, "screwing them down".
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Post by malgremor on Apr 10, 2006 18:56:56 GMT
Yes, he did have a particularly artful set of tuning phrases...I imitate them to this day. he had no problem with tuning in front of the audience, did it so artfully that it seemed part of the performance. He did the briefcase trick mainly to dazzle his students on occasion. I had no idea that he was a lefty in his younger days, because there was no time to talkm bout anything other than piping. I had to pay dearly for the brief time I spent with him. Burned through my inheritance....the family thought I was crazy for doing this...& discussed having me committed before I had blown all the money. Managed to stay out of the looney bin though...
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Post by FINN on Apr 10, 2006 22:08:00 GMT
His early attempts to join the Piob Soc were barred by Kilberry and Rothiemurchus because they considered him a dangerous communist. Well i dont consider my self dangerouse, but at that i should give up all hopes of entering the piobaireachd society
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