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Sunday, January 16, 2005
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Hello people! Here are some great and funny quotes on the Great Highland Bagpipe.
"If you simply pick up a Highland (or most any other) bagpipe and attempt to play it, you will get nowhere. Playing a bagpipe is a complex task with a lot happening at once and a lot to do at the same time. Once you inflate the bag and the four reeds start sounding, you're committed. You can't just stop to think about this or that when things get hectic. Get behind the curve and you're in deep trouble ... the wedding guests may run screaming from the church, your dog might bite you, or the neighbors might start shooting. "
"The GHB is a loud instrument, if not the loudest, and because the fairly high pitch makes the listener perceive it as even louder than it is; there's perhaps a certain charm in walking past a house and hearing someone awkwardly running scales on a tuba, but blundering into earshot of a neophyte honking away on a GHB might cause nose-bleeds, shattered eyeglasses and could lead to convulsions and death (including the piper's). The quiet, low-pitched practice chanter, on the other hand, will probably not even scare the cat."
"It is necessary that the air supplied to the reeds is of steady and unvarying pressure as the continuous transitions from bag to lungs to bag to lungs are made; if the pressure is allowed to vary, the four reeds will go in and out of tune with one another, with the result sounding like a cat fight rather than music."
"At a glance, a bagpipe doesn't appear to be a very complicated instrument, notwithstanding its unique appearance. The chanter (the melody pipe), with its simple open fingerholes, might remind you of the recorder you played in third grade. The drones look like simple, if decorated, tubes. Compared to, say, a clarinet or a guitar, there's nothing visible that looks particularly intimidating. Perhaps you've spent some casual time with a wind or string instrument and soon found yourself playing a little bit of music without having spent all that much effort. Why, then, should it be so necessary to approach learning the bagpipe in ways usually reserved for training brain surgeons?"
From Unviverse of Bagpipes -linked under ~linkies
(direction courtesy of a very crappy idiot, Nicole!)
turielenethnin blowing you away at 6:53 AM
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