MacEge’s Handbook for the Scottish Bagpipe

Foreword

… about the Great Highland Bagpipe

The Great Highland Bagpipe (GHB) is a perfect musical instrument that has been developed over centuries, but despite its archaic appearance it can also have diva-like, capricious sensitivities. The GHB is part of the ancient and rich Celtic culture, whose music is one of the most highly developed musical traditions in Europe. Every good pipe also represents the art of the old Scottish craftsmen, whose ambition and pride was and is to create only the best. Master pipes are still predominantly made by hand in small craft businesses – genuine manufactories. You should be aware of this and treat this venerable instrument with the respect it deserves.

Why a ‘Handbook for the Scottish Bagpipes’?

It is undeniable that the Scottish bagpipe – the Great Highland Bagpipe – is one of those musical instruments that demand a great deal of maintenance and care from its owner. As a piper you also need to have some basic technical knowledge to keep your instrument playable.

In addition to the activities required for all instruments, such as wiping or dusting, it is the specific tasks such as inserting reeds, tuning the chanter and drones and sealing the bag that pose problems for beginners and often also for advanced players. Even seemingly simple maintenance tasks such as fitting new windings or oiling the holes have a few pitfalls that you should be aware of and avoid.

Further work such as replacing bags or valves will be carried out by the pipemaker or a qualified pipe dealer as part of their after-sales service, but they are often far away and the postal routes are long and expensive – so the piper will have to do it himself.

From thirty years of dealing with pipes and many years of experience as an instrument maker, I am very familiar with this problem. It is my aim, similar to ‘MacEge’s Textbook of Scottish Bagpiping’, to provide the beginner and intermediate piper with the knowledge required to take the fear out of crafting and achieve what we all aspire to: being a piper.

The techniques described in this book are tried and tested. They have been published in the usual English-language books, magazines and on the Internet and have also been used by me for years. You may have done quite well with other methods so far and been satisfied with them. In this case, I advise you to stick to your own methods and continue to use them. “Never change a winning horse”, as our friends from the island say.

Nevertheless, I advise you to try out my methods in a quiet minute and compare the results. And then you can decide. I don’t claim to be omniscient and I don’t believe that my methods are the only ones that will save you.

Frank Pain, to whom I (and others) owe a great deal, once wrote that he had explained to many people in his life exactly how they should have done things properly. Some people then went and did exactly the opposite – and with good success. So, don’t be discouraged, make your own experiences!

To ‘Piper German’

Just as hunters, anglers, sailors or computer freaks speak their own idiom, pipers use English expressions such as reeds and drones as a matter of course.

This development is reinforced by the peculiarity of the German language, which allows foreign words to be conjugated or declined in the German way and combined to form new words. More recent examples in computer slang are ‘downloaded’ or ’emailed’. Even within the piper scene, the technical terms have already reached this level and are used like German words. So don’t be surprised if you hear expressions like ‘geseasoningt’ or ‘gepipet’ – the Pipers really do talk like that! The Germanic pluralization on ‘-er’ e.g. Piper or Chanter (instead of pipers or chanters) is also common. I will try to avoid this – but I can’t do it completely and I apologize for that.

I was once attacked quite fiercely for allegedly using too many English technical terms. Now, of course, you could translate some things and say ‘Pfeifchen’ instead of Drone Reed, for example, or ‘Brummer’ instead of Drone and ‘Blattl’ instead of Chanter Reed sound quite cute, while the good old German word ‘Sack’ instead of Bag is again considered offensive by some. Sometimes I actually do use the corresponding German word, especially when I would otherwise have to use the same English word three or four times within a few lines. Variety doesn’t hurt.

The technical language of the Scottish bagpiper is English, so let’s leave it at that: the technical terms are mainly in English, in the appendix there is a very detailed English-German technical dictionary and in addition I always include the most important translations in brackets in the text.

How to use this book

The handbook was created from a collection of articles, text contributions to ‘MacEge’s Yearbook for the Piper’, instructions for various articles from MacEge’s mail order service and similar texts.

It is also not designed to be read from start to finish. On the contrary, it is intended for reference in individual problems, for browsing and browsing. I have deliberately refrained from including chapters on the history of bagpipes in various countries or listing the lineage of piper greats from the MacCrimmons onwards. This has been done in other manuals for the Great Highland Bagpipe, but firstly I have the suspicion that only the respective book should be made thicker, and secondly it is not understandable why such information, which can only be rudimentary in this context, is published in this way at all. These topics are multi-layered and complex and offer enough material for their own books – and they already exist.

To the ‘experts’

It’s not good to get angry about human stupidity and I try to avoid it too. But what annoys me to no end every time are the self-proclaimed ‘experts’ who cavort in piper circles. People who have had a pipe for half a year and are not even able to tune it properly, proclaim their opinions in a tone of conviction on questions of piping and the pipe that have been discussed by real experts for decades or even centuries.

When I hear an absolute beginner say that a Canmore bag is complete garbage and that a real piper would only play Sheepskin and when other people come up to me and ask if they should throw away their bags and buy sheep bags, my toenails curl.

Or when someone who has only owned a practice chanter for a few months and has no experience as a piper gives adult education courses in piping and then forces his students to buy long Blackwood practice chanters because all the others are garbage, then I really wonder whether something isn’t going wrong.

My advice: question the experience and knowledge of the people who are trying to talk you into something. An old book that used to be widely read says: “Beware of false prophets who go about roaring like lions”. Not bad advice!