November marks one year of publishing a tune of the month. I hope it is enjoyable. It started out with a few competition worthy tunes but quickly devolved (haha) into shorter, session tunes as my interest changed. We continue along that thread with a fine two-part reel, Paddy Cronin’s, aka The Mill Stream.

The tune exceeds the standard scale of the highland pipes in either one of two ways depending on which key it is transposed to. In the key of G major, it requires one to play C naturals. However, this key does not sound “right” on the highland pipes because of our drones in A (drones in G would be best, see below). In the key of D major (or for the highland pipes the A mixolydian mode), it requires a high B. The high B however, is a transient note that, while valuable, is not essential. Another compromise made is the tune is actually transposed up a step from G major to A major, of which A major has three sharps, C#, F#, and G#. The latter is not in the standard highland pipe scale, but again most the the high G notes are transient and as is often the case, substitution with G naturals is passable. This is what turns an A Major tune into a D Major tune: G# to G natural leaving only C# and F#.

In the sheet music provided here, the tune is presented first in D Major but also in G Major. I have not recorded it yet in D Major because I have a special set of highland pipes set up to play G Major tunes as it has a G Major chanter and G drones. Below is a bit of info on how to set up a G major highland pipe followed by a recording of a tune of my own composition followed by Paddy Cronin’s. Where the one high A is in the second part when played in G Major is where the high B is when played in D Major. You’ll note the D Major sheet music requires playing something else and has the high B already substituted; I encourage you to come up with your own substitution. I changed the timing to a series of high A eighth notes separated by two thumb grace notes in the spirit of the E and D eighth note patterns that follow shortly afterwards.

Sheet Music – Paddy Cronin’s (the top is best for normal highland pipes).

A few notes about highland pipes in G Major: After tinkering for hours over the course of a couple years as I revisit the concept of a highland pipe that plays in G major, I am getting closer and closer to a more stable instrument and felt I would share what it takes to make it happen along with a few tunes. Highland pipes in G major requires the drones to tune to the G on the chanter instead of the low A, so the drones are playing G. Additionally, the normally C# needs to be flattened so that it plays C (natural). I’ve previously shown that it takes brass tubing to extend the drone reeds so that they can get low enough to play G, a whole (musical) step below A. It’s best to use a very sharp chanter reducing how far down the drones really have to go to get to G. The chanter I’m using currently is a Colin Kyo laminate, though this chanter only tops out around low A = 482 Hz, usually. Referencing the tuning chart in this document, you can figure out how you tune the chanter notes when the drones are tuned to G. The biggest complication has to do with when the drones are tuned to A, the G notes on the chanter are tuned 31 cents flat of equal temperament tuning (piano tuning) in order to have consonance with the drones. However, for the G pipes the G notes are the standard which means that their relative flatness requires all the other notes to be taped down just to get started since the G notes start furthest from an equal temperament tuning reference. The biggest hurdles in tuning the chanter then become covering most of the E and C# holes with tape; in the case of E just to get it flat enough because it has to be 16 cents flat to have consonance with G drones, plus having to flatten it just to get it in line with the G note which started out flat because we’re adapting a normal pipe chanter. In the case of C#, we’re trying to get it all the way down to C natural which will take a lot of tape. B gets flattened to 14 cents flat as well but this usually isn’t an issue because of the size of the hole having plenty of room to tape. The rest of the instrument is a late 90s Kron standard pipe (which, like Naill pipes) are a bit on the flatter side drone pitch wise. Drone reeds are Crozier Omega on brass tubing extensions.

Seth Hamon’s Gamble & Paddy Cronin’s

I just recently attended the Spanish Peaks Piping Retreat held in conjunction with the Spanish Peaks Celtic Music Festival in La Veta/Walsenburg, Colorado. The concert highlight of the festival was Old Blind Dogs featuring Ali Hutton on the pipes. Kevin Burke (fiddle, solo) was also a delight to listen to.

One nice thing about the smallpiping retreat (there’s an uilleann pipe retreat also) is that La Veta is basically a higher elevation version of Lubbock, so all my pipes work exactly the same more or less, no worries about differences in humidity.

The piping retreat was taught by two instructors 1. Tim Cummings and 2. Ben Miller. Ben had his playing partner with him, Anita MacDonald on fiddle, so it was a treat to learn a couple of tunes from their band’s repertoire after getting to hear them play together at the kick off party. Tim Cummings taught mostly Appalachian tunes like the Tombigbee Waltz and Old Joe Clark, which was really cool. He has published many such tunes and sells them through his website. I also got a border tune and Breton tune from him which are unique in their own right. It’s always good to challenge yourself with new idioms! Many thanks go to the smallpipe retreat organizer, Jim Conley!

Linking the concert and workshop together: on Old Blind Dogs’ newly released album, and at their concert, they play a couple of Appalachian tunes, Bunker Hill and Sandy Boys. This set was electrifying in concert and coincidentally relevant to the workshop with Tim over Appalachian music. While Tim didn’t cover the tune Sandy Boys, I cannot let it pass without it being a tune of the month. This tune is so good, and so versatile, I’m just waiting for an innovative pipe band to end their medley with it.

There are so many awesome versions of this tune. Variations galore! I’ve gone through and found a few of them and mashed them together. However, there are no gracenotes in the sheet music I’m providing. This is for two reasons. 1. This is folk music, play it how YOU like and different every time. I don’t just mean changing the gracenotes, change the big notes too! 2. If you want to mark up your own version with gracenotes and/or change the big notes, I’ll give you the “code” in ABC format so you can change it yourself. My hope is you’ll keep it in ABC notation because it’s so easy, free, has accommodations for bagpipe notation, and EVERY OTHER FOLK TRADITION ALREADY USES IT making it easy to transpose tunes from other traditions into the highland bagpipe key. Here’s your introduction to a wider world of music if you haven’t already used ABC notation. Many bagpipe specific music programs are capable of importing ABC notation if you insist on sticking with software you might have already paid for.

In ABC notation, the bagpipe scale is ‘G A B c d e f g a’, bar lines are the pipe | on the backslash key (repeats with a colon :), and anything in curly brackets {} are gracenotes, e.g. high g gracenote = {g} and taorluath = {GdGe}. Set the key in the header of the file to K:Hp and it automatically adjusts formatting for bagpipes! My preferred program for rendering ABC notation files, EasyABC, is no longer being developed by the original programmer but it is still available for download from his website. It went open source but I can’t get any of the newer releases for mac on SourceForge to execute, so I stick to the last version released by Nils.

Sandy Boys – pdf file (the last iteration is repeated only because I didn’t bother to further modify the version that had the note B in it)

Sandy Boys – download the ABC file

Me playing through all the versions in the pdf file:

If you want to hear someone really bang this tune out on clawhammer banjo, go here:

Clawhammer Banjo