Bagpipes

[OC Richard]

I'm blessed with a perfect ear and the ability to play anything I hear on any instrument I've learned to play a scale on.

That's a great place to be, and it puts you miles ahead of the majority of pipers, who can't pick up tunes by ear, but need to see the dots. The Highland pipe's love-fest with sheet music and publishing has always struck me as a bit odd, considering that traditionally pipers and pipe bands don't perform with music in front of them. It's used only for aiding the learning of tunes. In my opinion reliance on sheet music retards learning more than it aids it.

If you came to me for pipe lessons I wouldn't spend one minute worrying about sheet music. We would work on everything by ear.

...the pipes...so spendy an instrument.

...a collection of brass instruments, a sax...

Pipes, I think, are less spendy than brass instruments and saxes.

I just bought a fantastic set of bespoke pipes from Dunbar Bagpipes in Canada, cocobolo wood turned to my (slightly odd) specs and mounted in hand-engraved alloy. This set was less than $1,500. I think a bespoke professional-level brass instrument or sax would be much more.

For under $1,000 you can get a cocobolo Dunbar that's as good as any pipe made anywhere on the planet, with the possible exception of Atherton MacDougall copies.

Here's a gorgeous new Dunbar cocobolo bagpipe for $830US. It sounds as good as any pipes old or new, pretty much, and is definitely a professional instrument.

http://www.dunbarbagpipes.com/cart.c...&&cisocode=USD

Here's what around the same money gets you in the sax world, from Woodwind and Brasswind: a cheap Chinese-made instrument

http://www.wwbw.com/Allora-Vienna-Se...-i1534384.wwbw

For a sax equivalent to that Dunbar you have to pay these prices

http://www.wwbw.com/Professional-Alt...axophones.wwbw

Here you can see the beautiful wood and workmanship of my new Dunbars. The hand-engraved alloy mounts were made by David Davidse. (I antiqued them myself.)



They came uber-bright like this, not my cup of tea