On Piping

Early Friday morning my phone rang. It was an American calling from Spain, which got my attention (he’s from Atlanta metro area). His aunt here in Georgia had just lost her son. Although he and his wife are in Spain right now, he wanted to do something for her. She’s half-Scottish, he said. Would I go and play the pipes for her? 

Of course.

I went and played for the woman who had lost her son. I stood in her driveway, she sat at the edge of the garage with a couple friends near by. For an hour I played. It was a privilege.

An advantage of the pipes in this present time is that you do not need to be very close to enjoy them. In fact they’re nice from a bit of distance. Earlier in the week I played for a graveside service, while maintaining a safe social distance.

Pandemic “Cancels” St. Patricks Day

Of course, the spread of COVID-19 impacted St. Patrick’s Day events this year—organizers cancelled parades in Ireland and all over the U.S.  Since then, Scottish Highland Games that were scheduled for this spring began postponing or cancelling. So Saturday March 14^th was the last hurrah for pipers and drummers banding together.

I was fortunate that Saturday to play in one event with North Georgia Pipes & Drums in Atlanta and three events on my own, including an Irish pub and a couple private parties. Atlanta Pipe Band events Saturday and Sunday were cancelled. Some of my fellow pipers saw cancellation of personal gigs. Saturday was the end of piping for large events, as it needed to be. Gatherings are no longer feasible for the foreseeable.

By Tuesday, the actual St. Paddy’s Day, the pub where I was to play had to close. So instead I played for my neighbors. 

Still Piping

Pipers will play! Watch for us online. And if you happen to have a piper in your area, step outside. You’ll likely hear the pipes calling.  

And while many of us now work remotely, there are some things that cannot be done from home. So I stand ready to play. 

For many people, bagpipes are often closely associated with funerals. As pipers, playing funerals is just one of the things we do. Nevertheless, it’s an important one. And it is a privileged role. The unique sound and music of great highland bagpipes has a way of piercing the soul. In circumstances of a funeral, the pipes both call forth and assuage powerful emotions.

Not long ago I drove two hours southeast from Atlanta to a small Georgia town to play a funeral. It was a beautiful summer day. At the old town cemetery the crowd slowly gathered. The earliest arrivals had skipped the crowded church and just turned up at the cemetery to say goodbye to a notable town leader (and by a few accounts, a colorful character). The rest arrived little by little, working their way from the church on foot or by car.

I played as folks gathered. Finally the brief graveside service began, and after the pastor’s prayer, I went into Amazing Grace.

A few more words and the brief ceremony ended. I struck up again and, by prior request, played “I’ll Fly Away” and then went into a set of lighter tunes. The family and considerable number of friends visited, refreshed by lemonade and cookies set up in the shade of ancient trees.

I stood a little ways off to play. A lone young man came and leaned against a tree near me. I thought he was coming aside to smoke, but there was no smoke. He did have a flask in his hand.

His mood was markedly more somber than other mourners, save the elderly widow. The deceased, after all, had had a very long, full life. Two older men came over to him. It was clear the young man was emotional. One of the older men said he figured the bagpipes might hit him hard. He explained to me the young man was an Army Ranger with nine deployments to Afghanistan. The Rangers, of course, are point-of-the-spear warriors.

I had some idea. Someone close to me deployed with Rangers as an Intel officer. From him I knew that Ranger deployments, though a bit shorter than the average, pack in way more activity in highly kinetic (read: violent) operations, typically involving running daily (nightly is more accurate) raids to capture or kill bad guys.

In such an environment over nine deployments, this Ranger inevitably had been through it, experiencing the unimaginable. He lost teammates, attended funerals, heard the pipes play. Hearing my pipes was hearing those pipes over again.

Yet the strange power of the pipes is that they comfort even as they pierce. He came over and shook my hand. I asked if he had friends he can talk to. He said yes. (That’s important.)

He stood by as I played a bit longer. Eventually people began to depart. The young soldier walked over to me and grabbed me in a bear hug. Then he climbed into his truck and drove off.

I was glad to play in honor of the deceased that day, for his widow, family and friends. And I was glad to have played for the Ranger.

“You can tune those things?” my son asks with an incredulous expression. It’s his favorite bagpipe joke.

Though many may have seriously wondered, yes, you can (and must) tune bagpipes. Friend and EUSPBA Judge Al McMullin once told me, “It doesn’t matter how well you play, if the pipes are out of tune, no one wants to listen!”

Tuning the bagpipes involves matching three drones to the chanter. This is certainly critical, and it involves less than a hairline difference between “in” and “out” for each drone.

But it also means tuning the chanter notes in relation to one another. Whether what we want can be called a well-tempered chanter I leave to better music scholars. I’ve read what we’re after on modern pipes is just intonation to the Mixolydian scale. Whatever it’s properly called, I remember Duke Ellington’s dictum (slightly out of context): If it sounds good, it IS good.

When the chanter is properly balanced and the drone tuning “locked in,” the pipes will sound rich, “plaintive and sweet.” Whereas a chanter or drones that are out of balance are discordant and lacking the harmonics that make a well-tuned pipe so pleasing. Only when the pipes are in tune can people enjoy the music we make.

Balancing a chanter involves bringing the individual notes into alignment with one another. There are two adjustments that can be made (excluding, for the moment, manipulation of the reed itself, which is another challenging aspect). One is to raise or sink the reed in the throat of the chanter. Sinking the reed into the chanter will raise the overall pitch, though not evenly, while moving it upward/outward will flatten the pitch.

But the change in reed position affects the higher notes (“top hand”) more than the lower notes (played by the bottom hand).

So that’s part of the tuning equation, but it is just the starting point. Once the piper finds the optimal reed position, he or she must often adjust a few individual notes. The highland pipe chanter is a rather primitive instrument – it consists simply of holes bored in a conical pipe.

The adjustment mechanism is also simple. Tape. Look closely at a pipe chanter and you will see tape near and sometimes covering the holes on the chanter. That’s how we tune it.

Adding tape across the upper side of a hole flattens the note. Removing tape sharpens it, up to a point (that is, when there is no tape on the hole at all, it’s as sharp as it will go without altering the hole). That’s how we adjust various notes on the chanter.

If a note is flat with no tape, either sink the reed, or—if it is consistently flat even with different reeds, do a wee bit of carving on the upper side to make the hole larger. [Side note: Bill Caudill once told me that I needed to carve the B on my Naill African blackwood chanter. I cringed, but he was right—he’d heard enough Naills to know. Carving is permanent, so pipers, try everything else before carving, and carve little at a time and carefully.]

Sometimes we get confused, and we flatten when we need to sharpen or sharpen when we need to flatten.

This happened recently a friend of mine who was struggling to set up a new reed. He said, “… E & the As are pretty much easily ‘in the green.’ My C D F G not so much …” The latter group were flat, and he had tried to remedy it by taping them. It was the wrong direction. If your As & E are fine and all else is flat, sink the reed a bit and only tape E and As (you may not have to tape the low A).

Once he was reminded which way was up—bang—he got it sorted out quickly.

That’s sometimes how it goes. We find ourselves bumping around in the dark, our efforts failing; but with a timely word from a friend the light dawns. We realize which way is up and become even tempered and in tune.

My sisters love the bagpipes. Friends love the pipes. People I don’t know in the park or at a gig tell me they love the pipes. As a piper I am always glad to hear it.

But there is a kind of music I play that not everyone loves. It’s called ceol mor, which means great music. It’s also called piobaireachd (pronounced “pibroch” or “pea-brock”) which means, simply, “piping.” It was the original great highland bagpipe music.

It is referred to as the “classical” music of pipes. In form, piobaireachd comprises a theme (the “ground” or urlar) followed by a structured set of variations with increasingly complex ornamentation, ultimately returning to the simple theme.

Most of the time when someone hires a piper, they’re looking to hear ceol beag – “little music” – i.e. the dance tunes: jigs, hornpipes, strathspeys, reels. Marches are popular, and a few slow airs are always nice.

The exception to the above is funerals. When someone calls a piper for a funeral, they’re usually looking for a hymn or a melancholy air or lament. Sometimes that’s all they want – one, maybe two tunes. Amazing Grace is a familiar and regular choice, as is the spiritual Going Home. Those active about their Scottish heritage might request the traditional Flowers of the Forest. I’ve never been asked for a piobaireachd.

About piobaireachd, one of my sisters says, “I don’t get what you get from that.”

Now I admit that piobaireachd, like scotch whisky, is an acquired taste. Except when it’s not.

One Friday I had been asked to play at a memorial service. It was a particularly difficult time for the family as it was the second funeral of a sibling or in-law within a week. The service was at Christ the King Cathedral, a beautiful stone church in Atlanta. My charge was to play for 25 minutes prior to the service as mourners arrived, and then for a bit afterwards. There were a few particular requests, with the rest of the music left to me.

When one has latitude and time to fill on a somber occasion, there is the opportunity to include a piobaireachd in the music program. So it was that Friday. I began with a few more or less familiar laments, as various mourners arrived and entered the church.

Having a good bit of time before the start of the service, I decided to play the piobaireachd Lament for Donald of Laggan, a classic written some 350 years ago.  (As piobaireachds go, it’s a short one.)

I checked the tuning of the drones, then began. From the corner of my eye I noticed a small group of people who approached and stood attentively while I played. It was unusual that they did not walk by and into the church, but stood still while I played the entire piece, eight-and-a-half minutes in length.

When I finished, I looked over and at once recognized the woman who had hired me, by her description of her red hair—sister of the deceased. It was the family. Thanking me they proceeded into the church. When the service ended, I played two specifically requested tunes as folks exited the church.

As there again was extended time to play, I elected to play another piobaireachd. This time, I chose my favorite: Lament for Mary MacLeod, another 350+ year-old composition, this one much longer at ~13 minutes. It is a beautiful pibroch.

As I played, a brother of the deceased separated from the gathering and moved around the corner to the side doorway. From my vantage point I could see both the congregated friends and family, and the side of the church, where he was. Huddling by the side entrance out of sight of the crowd, he broke down, hid his face in his handkerchief and sobbed. A catharsis.

The piobaireachd had served.