Weekend of music, BBQ, designing and more.
I was making a re-arrangement of a bagpipe tune. Designing a blender 3D printed light box. Cooking a Mexican BBQ dinner. Visiting a textile place with old and new weaving looms. (Which gave me some great ideas). And working on my 68000 computer.
A great weekend.
My little record player project is also in the picture, I need to re-print the parts using my new printer!
Best Uilleann recordings I own or listen to.
Do you know any other good recordings? Let me know.
Uilleann CDs (no order)
Calum Stewart (I know him from his Flute playing)
I play “Am Monadh Ruadh” from this CD, also Randolph’s Leap is awesome.
Look up “Randolph’s Leap”. I’ve been there, beautiful.
(A better name should be Cummings Leap)
Brian McNamara
He plays a ‘flat’ set pitched in ‘C’ made by Geoff Wooff in 1997 and a ‘concert-pitched’ set of pipes made by Peter Maguire, I was lucky enough to have him as my teacher in Drumshanbo.
Single tracks I like
High energy playing of Blackie O’Connoll. He was my tutor when I attended Tionol 2011
Fred Morrison‘s Kansas City Hornpipe
Paddy Keenan – Harvest Home & Boys of blue hill
(Check The Pipering Of Willie Clancy Vol II)
Doinna by John McSherry (I play this one also, but it is nothing compared to his pipe-sound, melodic virtuosity and feeling he puts in this relatively easy piece of music)
Another often played CD with Uileann, Borderpipes and Low Whistles is:
Partners in Crime by Jarlath Henderson and Ross Ainslie.
A very nice combination of two different pipes together.
Coline and I try to have at least one set with both instruments.
Some others:
List of Artist i’ve got recordings from:
Cillian Vallely, Finbar Furey, Ronan Browne, Willie Clancy, Seamus Ennis, Johnny Doran, Leo Rowsome, Liam O’Flynn,Davy Spillane, Paddy Keenan, Finbar Furey, Brian McNamara, Paddy Moloney, Jerry O’Sullivan, Gay Conor, Sean McKeon, Declan Masterson, Michael McGoldrick I probably missed several
Female pipers
Also known as Mary Young and Fair – this Gaelic air was published in Capt Simon Fraser’s “Knockie” Collection of 1816.
I made an arrangement using Musescore, Ardour and Bagpipe Music Writer.
Hardware used: Tascam 2488, Behringer B-1 studio microphone, Yamaha QY-100 sequencer, ESI MidiMate eX USB 2.0 MIDI-interface and Shepherd Smallpipes.
(I tried Qtractor and some other tools but liked Ardour more)
Recording online soon, I have to re-record the harmony part.
Maybe I’m going to add a Flute part also.
Warning .. nerd stuff ahead, many many more.
These are the ones I currently can think off.
Sid music (commodore C64)
Northumbrian pipes
Concertina
Banjo
Irish Bouzouki
Mandoline
Borderpipes
Great Highland Bagpipe (TO many)
Irish Flute / Whistle
Uilleann Pipes
Other pipes
Callum Armstrong (with Branschke)
https://www.youtube.com/@CallumArmstrongPiping
Angie’s Jig on double chanter, I love that tune
He even has a tripple chanter
https://youtu.be/bGIhFBwItHA
Other instruments
Balalaika – Aleksei Arkhipovsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JqeSU7lSLE
Throat singing:
Here is Amazing Grace being played in reverse on a Bagpipe Practice Chanter.
(I just looked at the Music Score and reverse played it, starting at the end.)
Why? Because I was bored.
Halfway the movie clip is the reversed reverse playing 🙂
The speech in reverse sounds like Serenissima, another tune we play with our Folkband.
I will add to this in time
Folk:
Tunes:
Balalaika
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41_d4D7T6uI&pp=ygUJQmFsYWxhaWth
Some old skool CD’s
I’ve got many, some can’t be found online in a streaming service
(Maybe i’ll add some track info)
One of the first I bought because I had some cassette tapes with the Corries. Legends in Scottish Folk
PM of the Shotts and Dykehead. I’ve met the guy on a contest on the mainland, and got to speak to him and his mate Jimmy Killpatrick.
Liked his melodies, some easy to play but always interesting.
On of the first tunes I played with a natural C was Ebb-Tide.
Great piper, one of the most brilliant technical pipers. Met the guy in Scotland 1992. Got his autograph on this CD.
Mostly of his March, Strathspey and Reel playing.
(Got his MSR book somewhere)
https://pipetunesearch.henriaanstoot.nl/?select=listbook&book=ALGI
One of the gold old oldies folk.
I fell in love with this CD (got this somewhere in ’93-94)
Amazing fusion of pipes mixed with other styles and instruments.
I still play Death of a space piper.
https://www.henriaanstoot.nl/2006/12/09/death-of-a-space-piper/
Another amazing composer
This CD made me fall in love with “Cauld wind pipes”
(Not mouth blown)
There are many kinds of pipes on this CD.
It made me want to have a set of smallpipes.
Again amazing stuff, fusion of instruments and styles.
Dick Lee plays clarinets, saxes and melodicas. But composed as a non-piper amazing tunes!
With the amazing playing of Hamish Moore, a joy for your ears!
https://pipetunesearch.henriaanstoot.nl/?select=listbook&book=DICKLEE
He died far to young, this amazing musical wonder.
Hard to explain his style. From Classical piping to electronical music.
Some funny pictures I found
I stopped www.pipetunesearch.org in 2022. See below link for more info
But i’m getting emails and forum mentions, that people are missing this site ..
So .. it’s back
I’m using a windows program for typesetting bagpipe music.
Luckily this runs on Linux using wine.
Sometimes i just want a PDF version of a tune, for example for my tunebook compiler. (Other post)
Or i want to batch convert a lot of bww files.
A long time ago i used a virtual machine with automation software for this.
Why not automate the process on my Laptop?
So i made this script, with a workaround for the xdotool wine problem.
(wine window needs to be active to accept key strokes, other linux xwindows you can use the ID of the window)
#!/bin/bash # use c for close at the end, without c bgplayer wont be shut down # bww2pdf path/to/music.bww c # make tmp file cat "$1" > /tmp/deze.bww # start bgplayer if not started .. if not started wait 3 secs slp=0 pgrep BGPlayer.exe >/dev/null || slp=3 pgrep BGPlayer.exe >/dev/null|| ( nohup wine ~/.wine/dosdevices/c\:/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Bagpipe\ Player/BGPlayer.exe & ) sleep $slp # get program id pid=$(pgrep BGPlayer.exe) # get xwindow id using pid winid=$(xdotool search --limit 1 --all --pid $pid) # activate window xdotool search --desktop 0 --class "BGPlayer.exe" windowactivate # open file menu and Open file xdotool key --window $winid "alt+f" xdotool key --window $winid "o" # give program time to execute sleep 1 # open our tmp file xdotool type '\tmp\deze.bww' xdotool key KP_Enter sleep 2 # open file menu select Print and PDF as output xdotool key "alt+f" xdotool key "p" xdotool key "P" sleep 2 # execute xdotool key KP_Enter sleep 1 # File close xdotool key "alt+f" xdotool key "c" sleep 2 # close program when c was added to commandline mv ~/PDF/deze* "$1.pdf" if [ "$2" == "c" ] ; then xdotool key "alt+f" xdotool key "x" fi
