Yesterday we received the annual facts and figures from our web host and they made pleasant and satisfying reading. 400,000 visits from 156 countries in 12 months cannot be bad, and I would like to thank all of our readers and advertisers for their support. It is clear that you approve of a web magazine that educates, informs, criticises and entertains – and always with the highest journalistic standards. I know…
Mentioning Duncan Campbell as one of the old school of Scottish bagpipe makers reminded me of a visit to Edinburgh a few weeks ago when I was able to call in to the Wm Sinclair workshop in Leith. In all my piping years I’d never been before and it was a pleasure to meet Alastair Sinclair, the present proprietor, a master craftsmen who is carrying on the fine tradition of…
Reader Thomas Mitchell asks about canntaireachd: ‘Thank you for posting the link to the Piping Press Shop for the Gesto Canntaireachd PDF book which I just downloaded. I remember watching a video years ago of interviews with pipers. One gentleman discussed the merits of pipers learning to sing canntaireachd as it was his contention that the singing could show subtleties of phrasing that are more difficult to put into standard musical notation. Have…
Both Les Hutt and Barry Donaldson make some very good points about the demise of our mining communities and their contribution to piping and pipe bands and the lack of recognition thereof. It is apposite that their comments should come in the week that we saw the closure of the last deep coal mine in the UK – an industry which at its zenith, in 1913, employed a million men, men who fuelled an…
My report the other day on P/M Peter MacInnes and his tune for Captain John Young brought to mind Peter’s own heroism and that of his piper colleagues in the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards during the 1982 Falklands War. Many youngsters now learn the tune Crags of Tumbledown Mountain by P/M James Riddell, Scots Guards, but how many know the story behind the tune? The picture above was taken on…
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