My Personal Collection of Pipe Tune Compositions.
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There are many types of tunes played on the Great Highland Bagpipe.
The following is an explanation of the different types.
Pipe music is divided roughly into three types: Little or light music, known in Gaelic as Ceol Beag pronounced kell beck; big or classical music, in Gaelic that is Ceol Mor pronounce kell more and an area between known as middle music or Ceol medaneach pronounced kell medanoch with a Scottish ch as in loch.
Light music consists of quick marches, slow marches and highland dancing music which are most familiar and usually comes to mind with most people when thinking about pipe music. Middle music consisted mainly of slow airs and more recently has included serious heavy competition marches and dancing music only used for listening too rather than for dancing, usually played somewhat slower than originally. Then there is the big music, known these days as piobaireachd or roughly Pibroch with a Scottish ch. This really is a bit of a misnomer as piobaireachd really means Pipering or piping. In Gaelic Piob pronounce peeb with the b having a little bit of a p sound means pipe. Piob+aire pronounced peepar meaning piper and achd on the end pronounced och\_ with a faint k sound at the end is the Gaelic syllable for ing in English, so that is what a piper does, i.e., pipering. At one time this would be synonymous with pipe music, as that was all there was at least for serious players such as a hereditary piper to a clan chief. Lighter music was introduced to the pipes by the British army when bands started to form in the middle of the 19th century. No doubt there was also a tradition of piping for highland dancing which was older but this function was also performed by other instruments as well.
Light Music
Marches can be further broken down into various types according to the time signature:
This is the original standard march format. It has two beats to the bar and is also known as duple time. Each beat coincides with the left and right foot of troops marching in step. Most of the old tunes are quite simple and can be played quite quickly. The light infantry pace of 120 beats per minute is accompanied by these types of tunes. 2 simple time beats per bar. A good example would be The Barren Rocks of Aden or Teribus.
These are similar to 2/4 tunes except that each beat has a triplet rhythm, giving the music more of a bouncy dance like quality, a little more difficult to play at speed but still good for marching at a more normal 108 beats per minute. These tempos are not heard these days in civilian pipe bands. It is more normal to march at 84 or 96 beats per minute, allowing players to put more expression into their music. 2 compound time beats per bar. A typical example would be, All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border or Pibroch O' Donald Dhu.
It wasn't till well into the 20th century that the 4/4 march became popular but it swept the pipe band world with a storm. Tunes such as The Liberton Pipe Band and Scotland the Brave were played and played ad infinitum till most pipers would say, "oh no, not that again." The 4/4 march is still very popular at the slower pace of a modern pipe band. 4 simple time beats per bar.
The 3/4 March
This is also known as a retreat. Not originally intended to be marched to but for listening to while waiting for the inspection to end during the ceremony of beating retreat. Most drummers hate marching to them because each heavy beat note lands on an alternate foot. 3 simple time beats per bar. The Green Hills of Tyrol and When the Battles O'er are two tunes written for the pipes in this time signature.
These are variants of the 3/4 and 4/4 marches except they have a compound or triplet rhythm on each beat, rather like the 6/8 tunes described above. They are used less than the other types in this genre.
These are usually written in 6/8 time but some are in 2/4 time or 4/4. They are used for ceremonial marching at about 60 beats per minute, with the characteristic point and slide movement of the foot. Some of these are original pipe tunes but many are adaptations of traditional song Aires. When played in a concert type performance, they provide a pleasant change from marching and dancing music. Funeral marches also come in this category. The Road to the Isles or The Burning sands of Egypt as it was originally known is a typical example.
This covers most of the tune types used for marching, except for some novelty tunes in time signatures like 5/4 and 18/8 etc. These are few and far between.
Dancing Music
Dancing music comes in several different time signatures and tempos depending on what type of dance they are used to accompany. Modern dances that use a bagpipe accompaniment are of two main types.
Highland Dancing
Highland dancing has been developed for the entertainment of an audience or for competition of the participants. It is generally based on celebratory type of dancing done by warriors after a successful battle in days gone by. A typical example of this would be the Highland Fling or The Sword Dance. Most of these dances are accompanied by either a Strathspey or a Reel or in some cases both. Usually there is a set tune for a particular dance, in the case of the Sword Dance, Gillie Callum is the tune used. For the dance called Seann Truibhas a tune called Whistle O'er the Lav O't is most used. For the Highland fling, any Strathspey can be used but The Marquis of Huntley's Highland Fling or Monymusk have been very popular. In team dances like The Argyll Broadswords, a whole string of tunes will be played in a set including a march as the dancers are entering, a slow march as they are saluting and positioning their swords, then the dance proper consists of five parts Strathspey and four parts Reel. The performance ends with a slow march again as the dancers are retrieving their swords and saluting, then they are marched off with a quick march. This is always one continuous performance.
The Reel
The Reel is a type of tune in duple time of quite fast tempo written in cut common time 2/2.
The Strathspey
The Strathspey is a slower type of Reel written in 4/4 time and was originally developed for the fiddle in the area of the Spey in Scotland.
Originally Highland Dancing was only done by men but for the last couple of hundred years women have gradually taken it up to the point where they now dominate the scene. There is also another type of dance which is mainly female in character which is called National Dancing.
Social Highland Dancing
There is also Social Highland Dancing which usually takes place at a ceilidh, sometimes in public halls but sometimes in peoples homes where space is at a premium. Usually there is only room for one set for a sixsome reel which allows three couples to dance at a time. If the pipes are used for this type of dancing, they are sometimes of the miniature type called Reel Pipes or Parlor Pipes. Very often a fiddle will be the instrument of choice for small places or Mouth Music (port-a-beul) if no instrumentalist is available.
Another type of Social Highland Dancing which uses the Pipes is that which takes place at Public or Regimental Balls when a Pipe Band may provide the music. In this case the dances are usually of a group nature such as The Eightsome Reel, Dashing White Sergeant, Strip the willow or The Waltz Country Dance. This type of dance is not to be confused with Scottish Country Dancing.
National Dancing.
Dances in this category are performed in a national costume such as a skirt for the girls instead of a kilt, or in the case of the Hornpipe a sailor suit is used and for the Jig an Irish type costume. All of these dances are of the performance type rather than social. There are dances with names like The Village Maid, Flora MacDonald's Fancy and The Scottish Lilt which can be accompanied with light march tunes of the appropriate time signature for the particular dance.
This is a lively dance done in 6/8 time. This is nothing like traditional Irish step dancing but more of a theatrical type of folk dance where the performer acts out the antics of an angry washer woman in a humorous way.
The Hornpipe
The music for the Hornpipe is played in 2/4 time and is similar to the Reel. As pipe music it was popularized in the second half of the 20th century by Pipe Major Donald Shaw Ramsay. It is now probably the most used format in pipe music when pipers are "Grandstanding" though the rhythm is now usually round instead of the pointed style of Ramsay. It now could be described as a Hornpipe-reel.
Middle Music
Middle Music mainly consists of Slow Airs, played on the solo Bagpipe, which are very beautiful and are not necessarily played in a strict tempo. They can be in any time signature and are mostly the melodies of Gaelic Song Aires which have a very long tradition in the Highlands. As there are many great marches and some Strathspeys and reels which are in a higher category than the military light marches and dance music they are also considered in this group also. This later kind of pipe music is used extensively for solo and band competitions, except in recent years, light music in the form of the medley has crept into that field, so less middle music is heard from bands in competition now.
Ceol Mor is the Gaelic name for Big Music of which the Bagpipe version is commonly referred to as Piobaireachd. The early MacCrimmons are credited with it's introduction to the Bagpipe around the 16th Century AD but there is evidence that it had been in use by the Harp or Clarrsach for a few hundred years before that in Ireland and Scotland. It is an extended form of music consisting of a theme and variations and is used to commemorate or lament great events such as battles, births or deaths of notable people within a Clan. Another important use of piobaireachd is for rallying the warriors together and inciting them to battle with a type of tune called a Gathering as well as the March or Challenge. There are other types of tune but these are the most common. To the uninitiated, they all sound similar but there are some differences, mainly in the character of the tune as well as the way it is played.
Most of the tunes are in a pentatonic or five note scale, of which the pipes are able to play in three different keys. Each of these lends itself to a different flavor of music, rather like the difference between the major and minor modes in modern western music. Some tunes are in a six-note scale (Hexatonic) and others use the whole range of the pipe chanter (Heptatonic).
The Ular
Most tunes start with a Theme or Ground called Ular in Gaelic, pronounced oolar. There are different types of Ular and are categorized by the arrangement of phrases in the tune. They are given names like Primary, Secondary, Tertiary 1 & 2 and Irregular. In recent years some old tunes have been recognized as further categories but these are very complicated and have usually been referred to as irregular, most of the great tunes are in this category. The main use of noting these patterns of phases is to aid the player in memorizing the tune as the same pattern is maintained throughout the variations and as a tune can last for 15 or 20 minutes this is indeed a good aid to memory. The Ular is a melodic theme which is interrupted occasionally with the inclusion of a device called a Cadence. This alters the flow of the music in a way that makes some people think that this type of music is not metrical. In fact the music is metrical, thought it is certainly not in a strict tempo, just like other forms of classical music. Following the Ular are different arrangements of variations and are baroque in nature, following very stereotyped forms. They are not always the same but most are recognizable as one form or another, not necessarily depending on the category of the tune.
A typical tune may follow an arrangement of variations such as:
The Dithis Variation
Following the Ular is the Dithis variation, this is pronounced geeish as in Gaelic as a slender vowel such as i or e make the d sound like a letter g. Also a slender vowel next to a letter s makes the s sound like sh in English while the th in the middle of a word is an almost silent h. In this variation the principal notes from the Ular are played followed by a very quick low A after each note. After the first note the effect sounds like the long melody note is following the short low A. These melody notes are used in all the subsequent variations of the tune, so it is very important to memorize them as they are presented at this time. Some Dithis variations contain cadences while others do not.
The Doubling of the Dithis Variation
In most tunes a Variation is followed by what is called a Doubling of that Variation. In the case of a Dithis variation the short low A being substituted by a quick recurrence of the melody note that has just been played. The tempo is raised slightly and this give the variation a lighter, more frivolous character.
The Siubhal Variation
Quite often instead of the Dithis there is a similar type of variation called Siubhal, pronounced shoo-al. Instead of the second note in each pair being a low A, the arrangement is reversed so now we have a long low A followed by a short melody note, a little more round than in the Dithis variation. It can contain cadences or not, depending on the whim of the composer.
The Taorluath Variation
This word is unique in the Gaelic language other that the syllable luath which means swift. The Toarluath movement, pronounced Torlooa as the th is silent, is a swift arpeggio of four grace notes following each melody note and ending on low A, rather like the strumming of a guitar chord, or as it was initially inspired by the Harp. In this variation it is common to echo the cadences which occur in the Ular.
The Toarluath Doubling
The doubling of the Toarluath variation is made by eliminating the cadences, and increasing the tempo by shortening the melody notes a little so that each melody note is followed by the Toarluath movement in a repetitive strumming sound throughout the variation.
The Crunluath Variation and it's Doubling
This variation follows the same form as the Toarluath variation with the exception that the Crunluath movement has seven grace notes in it and ends on the note E, so the arpeggio has a rising sound rather than the falling sound of the Toarluath movement. It is usually then followed by it's own Doubling.
Finally
It is normal to end the tune by playing the first line of the Ular. By repeating the theme at the end, it has the effect of bringing the listener back down to earth so to speak and gives the tune a very satisfying ending. This is only the explanation of a basic tune and there are many other arrangements of variations in the few hundred tunes that have been passed down to us from the golden age of Ceol Mor, which was probably around three hundred years ago.