Big Sound, Smallpipes

Making a set of Smallpipes for Timothy Cummings may have been one of the best business decisions I've made so far. Tim has agreed to supply elbowmusic.com with a series of recordings made on his Plum and Antler A/D set. The focus of the recordings will be drone tuning possibilities. Since each of the drones on an A/D set of Smallpipes can play at least two different pitches, the possibilities for what drones to play are many. Tim must be excited about these possibilities because he's already sent me nine tracks and he's only had the set for three weeks.

For example, try "Breton Air". Here Tim plays a tune on the A chanter in Em with two E drones (alto and baritone drones) and on the repeat he kicks in the bass drone tuned to B. Not your Mother's drone tunings!

Or "Ebenezer" in B minor with just the Bass tuned to B.

Or "Passion Chorale" which uses the alto tuned to D and the tenor tuned G.

The first batch of tunes are up here. Keep checking in, Tim hasn't even gotten to the D chanter yet.

Piper's Gathering 2009

After driving back to New York from the Vermont Bellows Pipe School, and then up to Maine for a few days, and back down to Massachusetts and then back up to Vermont, I finally arrived at the Piper's Gathering on Friday evening, rather on time.

I'd had mixed feelings about attending this year's PG, as I didn't make any sales at PG 2008. But I'd signed up because my friend Ellen  would be teaching smallpipes. However, I was quite excited when I arrived having recently heard that Ellen was dragging down Ward, of Prince Edward Island, to play piano for her and that Tim Cummings of Vermont would be attending as a vendor. I could feel an unclosed circle closing.

Ward and Ellen were, or course, the two friends who have been coming down to teach at the Smallpipes and Fiddle workshops I have helped run in Maine twice a year for the past four years. It's a lovely time for Smallpipers and fiddlers, please feel free to email me about it. The next weekend will be at the beginning of November.

I got to know Tim Cummings through the Vermont Bellows Pipe School 2008 and 2009 and while working on his custom set of Plum and Antler Smallpipes. Tim runs a small Tunebook Publishing House in Moncton, VT called Beithe Publishing that puts out lovely tunebooks of "innovative reportoire for Scottish Pipes". He recently published a new book of tunes that includes one tune by myself, and a couple tunes by Ward called "An Ift of Efts". (Check it out!) Tim had met Ward at a Vermont folk event, and Ellen through some other obscure way (possibly when he was teaching at the College of Piping in PEI.) But we had not yet all been together in one place. It's a fun and rare thing for a group of friends who all know each other to get together for the first time all in one place. It's a little like magic.

Despite not having time to just play tunes together, I had a great time with everyone. And it was great to see and hear Ellen, Ward and Tim play one of Ward's G compositions, "the Ballerina" (found in "An Ift of Efts") at the concert on Sunday Night.

Another bonus of the weekend was finally getting to meet EJ Jones. EJ is a great piper, pipemaker, and now I know, also a great guy. I've long admired his work and have hoped we could meet and bemoan the troubles and trials of being a little pipe maker in a land of big companies like MacCallum. EJ was even more friendly than I could have hoped. You can see EJ playing some tunes with Tim below.

I even did a fair amount of business throughout the weekend and have had to up my wait list to 10 months (1 year wait here I come!). Thanks to everyone that runs the PG. It is a huge event that certainly doesn't run itself.

Ryan MacDonald Photoshoot

So while I was at the Vermont Bellows Pipe School two weeks ago, Ryan MacDonald asked if she could snap a few shots of me to possibly use in her critically acclaimed Pipes|Drums Series "Photographing the Art". Above is one of the shots from that session. And check out other notable subjects on her website such as Vermont based Piper and Tunebook creator extraordinaire Tim Cummings (with his Banton Plum and Antler Smallpipes) and the always in tune Fin Moore.

Vermont Bellows Pipe School

There are few things that I look forward to more than the week spent Smallpiping, Border Piping and camping at Matt Buckley's home in Richmond, Vermont. And this year's week was no disappointment. Imagine a beautiful old house, your tent staked outside under gnarly old Apple trees (the sound of the river the best lullaby), two most gracious and patient hosts, and two most gracious and patient piping teachers, Fin Moore of Scotland and Ryan MacDonald, originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, teaching you 25 of the best tunes you've ever dreamed of hearing. That's the Vermont Bellows Pipe School.

Strangely, the week is at once the most relaxed and the most intense week of the year for me. Work is, mostly, forgotten (what's a lathe?). But the tunes! I thought they'd never stop.

At 9:00am, more or less on the dot, the teaching starts and somewhere around 4pm it stops (with a mad rush into town for lunch in the middle). Things are low key until dinner (communal) and after the always delicious meal a session eventually comes together with sleep happening somewhere between midnight and six in the morning. Rinse and repeat until friday.

Notable non-piping (strictly speaking) events of this week were the beer bottle bagpipe choir (you had to be there) and the Mabou Square set I danced with Ryan, Fin and Sarah at three in the morning with Fin as my dance partner.

Once again I took almost no pictures at Matt's (too busy being relaxed and/or frazzled by tunes). But maybe it's for the best. If you want to see what it's like you'll just have to attend yourself.