new pipe music collection

[Blupiper]

I'm not a piper and have never even seen pipe music so is it written much like any music (piano or otherwise) with staffs, clefs, notes and rests, or is it peculiar to the pipes? (The reason I ask is because I am a guitarist and there is a new method - new to an old fart like me anyway - that is called "tabs" that is written from the perspective of the strings and fingers.)

I'll take a whack at this question. Yes, pipe music is written out in staffs, measures, clef, etc. That being said, this is much of modernizing an ancient means of teaching, learning and playing the pipes from the old days, when it was all done orally (OK, steady on here.) You learned the tune through the singing of it and applied the playing after the tune was memorized in this manner. I suppose the Highlands, being relatively remote and removed, developed this method out of a necessity. The method is called canntaireachd (CAN-terr-ach <pronounce last syllable in the throat like the 'ch' in loch>) and is still being used today, in a limited, artisinal manner. When the European style of staffs, notes and measures overtook all of music, the piping music began to be transcribed into that mode. Tabs on stringed instruments might be considered analogous to the parts of canntaireachd after the memorization of the sung tune was transposed to the actual physical act of playing the tune on the pipes. If you look here: http://pipetunes.ca/digging-deeper/p...rn-manuscript/ you can see an attempt to transcribe the canntaireachd to the written word. Each note and piping ornamentation has its own distinct sound in the 'singing' of the tune and what you see is a literal recording of each sound a canntaireachd singer produced (kind of like a court reporter.) There you go, Slothead, now it's clear as mud.


JMB