The Piping Press (Robert Wallace’s web presence since he left the College of Piping) posted the audio of an informal recital by Donald McBride on SoundCloud last month. I first met Donald a few years ago when he came down with a couple of his students to the Salado Scottish Games. I don’t remember if his student Griffin Hall was beating me in competition at the time (probably, just to be safe) but I’m sure he could now! We were treated to Donald’s playing in the open competition that year and he sat down down with us Lubbockites for a wee chat later that morning. Back to the recital recordings, Donald reveals a repertoire true to the many places he’s lived with both Scottish and Irish tunes, traditional and modern. I enjoyed his unique arrangements of The Jig of Slurs and The Gravel Walk(s). Another tune that stood out to me was Paddy Clancy’s, July’s tune of the month. It is a happy 2 part jig that I’ve arranged myself based on Donald’s playing mixed with settings found on the popular Irish music website, thesession.org.
I have not been in the music as much recently and so this is the first month I didn’t have a plan for the tune of the month (or I forgot the plan, haha). While digitizing an old cassette tape of the 1985 William Livingstone Sr. Memorial Invitational (a fantastic event requiring an MSRHJ) I ran across a hornpipe I did not recognize as it is not in the common repertoire. Of all the tune types, I know the fewest 4 part hornpipes and so I figured I could feature a 4 part hornpipe as tune of the month, perhaps the one played by Ed Neigh on this album, “The Owl’s Hoot” by Bruce Anderson. I discovered this tune could be found in Chris Hamilton’s “The Tone Czar Collection” Vol. 1 on page 78 using the Bob Pekaar Tune Encyclopedia (thank you Bob!). Luck would have it, I have that book and if you do too you’ll note this is a neat 4 part hornpipe. However, the ending phrase is a dreaded lone E gracenote from B to low A followed by a terminal birl. As you’ll note in some recordings on the blog, I have worked a lot to retrain my E gracenote in compound movements (GDE, taorluaths, etc.), but lone E gracenotes have no pattern to rewire in my brain and so the focal dystonia still manifests mightily in such instances. The same movement appears in Doctor MacInnes’ Fancy, another tune I considered since I need to sit down and learn more 4 part hornpipes. Since I’m a bit obligated to play the tune for the blog, I decided to shy away from this nice tune. I then considered my reworked version of “Doctor MacInnes’ Fancy” but thought that might be a bit heretical for such a classic tune. Another good 4 part hornpipe is on the facing page from “Doctor MacInnes’ Fancy” in Donald MacLeod’s book 3, “Clydeside”. So, there’s 3 good hornpipes you might want to seek out, but none of them are the tune of the month.
While I had Chris’ book out I was flipping pages and came across a tune I’ve heard before and liked very much. A two part hornpipe by William MacDonald, “The Champion of the Seas”. This is a lovely tune as arranged in Chris’ book, page 68. This is an older tune and it appears in several collections as indicated by the Pekaar Encyclopedia. In fact, an older arrangement can be found for free online in Logan’s Collection of Highland Bagpipe Music as provided freely by Ceol Sean (www.ceolsean.net). The sheet music to the arrangement I play here will not be provided as I do not want to violate Chris’ copyright, you should buy his book (if you still can, I dunno). Since a slightly older arrangement is available already in Logan’s Collection (click the link above to be taken straight to the sheet music), please use that as a resource and you can mark up the differences.