May 2019 Tune of the Month: The Rusty Gulley

Tune of the Month

Shout out to dunholmpiper on Instagram (Paul Martin) for making me aware of this awesome tune: The Rusty Gulley (Wee Totum Fogg). The first three lines are pretty much his setting and then from there out I arranged it based on an amalgamation of other versions I found (which include thesession.org, Breabach’s track Farsund off their most recent album Astar, and my own head). It can also be found in LBPS’s suggested Session Tunes tunebook. If you’ve got a high B key, there’s some cool stuff you can do in the 4th line on the high hand in the first bar as is done on the low hand in the 3rd bar.

The Rusty Gulley <- pdf

Ackland Prototype Drone Reeds in Colin Kyo pipes

Bagpipe Sound Research, Drone Sounds of the GHB, Great Highland Bagpipe Solo

I spent my afternoon Sunday playing with the different widths of tongue blades on these Ackland prototype drone reeds. I discovered the wider tongue gave a smoother, simpler tone whereas the narrower tongues gave a more harmonic tone. I much prefer the narrower tongues. The previous post featured the wider tongues, so this post will feature the narrower tongues.

I recorded this go around with the Zoom H4n Pro feeding the audio into my iPhone 8 via a Blue Mikey Digital (the previous blog post used recordings made with just the Blue Mikey Digital’s microphones instead of bypassing them as I did this time).

Pipes are all Colin Kyo, Husk chanter reed.