Some Piping for the Weekend

Alan Wade on Scottish smallpipes playing The Keel Row, The Marquis of Huntly, and Lexy McCaskill.

You get smallpipes today as they are on my mind at the moment. I need to perfect a few tunes for a gig in a couple of weeks and today's practice session was a complete waste of time. The humidity was in the cellar today - 28 at 2:30 p.m. - and the reeds in the bellows pipes are sorely distressed. They like their bit of humidity and under 40 can be a problem. Under 30 isn't worth the time. And today the Border chanter wouldn't tune and the low G and A developed a vibrato. The drones in the smallpipes kept shutting down, too.

I knew I should've brought the Highland pipes.

But since I'm in a small pipe mood, here's another one. This one has mouth-blown small pipes playing Loch Lomond. Usually not a tune I care to hear on the pipes since it has to be significantly re-arranged to fit the pipe scale. But this fellow does such a fine job with it I may give it a try. Although, to get the right effect may require someone playing along on acoustic guitar.