Despite the fact that I received my Ph.D. in chemistry from Texas Tech University in 2011 and that my sister and brother-in-law both obtained their bachelors degrees from Tech, and my wife got her M.D. at TTUHSC, I caved and arranged a version of the Texas A&M Aggie War Hymn for a friend upon request. It actually fits on the pipes pretty well, except for a pesky D# which is really hard to cross finger, so we fudge a couple other notes to make it sound right, and the last few bars, or ten, are missing entirely because that part of the tune requires all kinds of notes the pipes don’t have. So this is for Braxton and ALL my cousins who went through the A&M system, both on my mother and father’s side of the family. Now if Tech would pony up a give me the sheet music to ours! That’s right, no midi of the Tech fight song anywhere to be found.

Aggie War Hymn

And, I figured I’d record Happy Birthday, as I’ve always wanted to post a recording of Happy Birthday on people’s Facebook wall, for something unique other than, “Happy Birthday ______!!!” So, here is the version you can find on my main website.

Happy Birthday!!!

The last post of my Henderson’s was pretty pathetic (it’s at the bottom of this post). So, here they are in full frontal glory. First up is two modern compositions, the first I heard on the Spirit of Scotland CD that came with John MacDonald’s “On The Day” box set and the second led the St. Laurence O’ Toole pipe band to their first grade 1 World Pipe Band Championship in 2010. Ooo, looks like John has t-shirts for sale now too. Neato!

Findhorn Bay (Stuart D. Samson MBE) and The Big Yin (Terry Tully)

This next selection will be semi-recognizable for those of you who own Battlefield Band’s “Home Is Where The Van Is” album. Ged Foley put this tune together and it features him on the northumbrian smallpipes. Unfortunately, the highland pipes are shy a note or two (depending on which key you set in) so I fudge the high part a bit and it detracts from the original melody a little, but I don’t own a set of northumbrian smallpipes and I love this tune, so, oh well.

Blackhall Rocks

A couple of other tunes I’ve heard over the years finally reared their little heads so in honor of them, as I always do here on the blog, I played them mediocrely sight read off the page. I wish I could find a reliable source for the version of the first tune as it’s a little suspect.

Ballyvanich Inn (Iain Kirkpatrick) and Ian Green of Greentrax (Gordon Duncan)

Lastly we’ve got two tunes that I think are really cool. However, the 2 hour band practice yesterday wore on my arm and I was pretty beat by this point. Having tried to read the first tune off my iPhone didn’t help either, so this is like the 10th try through the set, so as you can tell, as long as I made it to the end, I couldn’t care less what the middle sounded like. Bleh! I really like the hornpipe as it has already been featured on the blog recently (probably better played too) so I think this will be the next tune I memorize.

Leaving Friday Harbor (John McCusker) and PM Calum Campbell’s Caprice (Joe Wilson)

Lastly for real is on my Gellaitry’s. The high A is crowing a bit with this Gilmour reed and since I was recording the following tune for general consumption I tried to blow it out a bit, but that was really distracting, and the tuning suffered a little but I’ve been making enough excuses lately. This tune was written by Prince Edward, you know, that guy who abdicated the throne out of love for an American woman back in the early half of the 20th century. Yeah, that King Edward, the 8th, I think. A professor at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center is also a big history buff on this Edward and has asked me to play this on several occasions. It’s been a while, but I figured I’d record it for him anyway. Apparently Edward was a piper, of sorts.

Mallorca (H.R.H. the PRINCE OF WALES K. G. (1934)) – at least that is how it is attributed on the photocopy I was given of some sort of original print.