"The Pumpkin's Fancy"

[ritaxis]

Instrumental music is usually good for writing to because I don't get distracted by the words.  So I put on a Wicked Tinkers CD.

How in the <i>hell</i> do you get bent notes with a bagpipe?  I am not imagining this.  I am not interpreting grace notes as bent notes, these are definitely bent notes.  On highland pipes, it says here.  No electronic manipulation that I know if.

The heretical bastard Aaron Shaw has a bass tappan (drum) accompaniment to his  very scary, very creepy piobrochead ("A Flame of Wrath," commemmorating the composer. Donald Mor, burning all the people of a village in their homes to avenge the death of his brother, Squinting Patrick).  It just makes it creepier and scarier.  

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Doppler effect? How long is the bent part of the note?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

The note's probably a half or quarter note and the bending is proportionate. It's like when a fiddler slides into a note. But the fiddler has room to do that, with the fretless neck, and I just can't see where you'd do that. Not the chanter, surely? And you can't get at the reed to do anything silly to it. What's left?

How would you do doppler effect? By bending away from and back to the mic? But lead pipers (when not in corps formation) tend to dance back and forth and sideways to indicate the rhythm and stuff for the others, and that doesn't seem to do anything to the notes.

I just heard it again and now we've got that damned piobairechead is playing again. I think it's the only pibroch I don't like. Yes, I spell it differently every time, but if you google, you'll see I'm not the only one who can't decide how to spell it.

[brooksmoses]

I dunno; it is an interesting conundrum.

I was thinking of doppler effect about like you are, but now that I think about it a bit more, it doesn't really seem like it would be possible to get much of a note-change out of that without moving painfully fast.

[diminishedsheep.livejournal.com]

It's really easy - you just slide your finger up (or down) slowly over the hole. I've done this plenty of times during my concerts - I think you just forgot.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was me being dumb. You know what's dumber? I sent Aaron Shaw a note asking him about it.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

And he sent me a note explaining it and saying it's "illegal" on the highland pipes (but he does it anyway) but that can't can't be right if Jay taught it to you, can it? Isn't he the stickler for the most traditional things? well, maybe not.