Scotland Post Olympics Update

The Beijing Olympics are over...I love the Olympics so much I am in mourning. Sad, sad, Piping Girl. So very sad.

BUT I was so pleased to see how prominent Scotland ended up being at the Beijing Olympics. And I don't mean just the athletes.

Opening Ceremony-What's That Sound??
I was watching the Opening Ceremony marathon and started when, as the first of the European athlete's marched in, the bagpipes struck in and began playing Scotland the Brave. About every 15-20 minutes they'd come in again and play a bunch of tunes. The silly American commentators never said a word about them, and there was no footage of them either, so I thought, maybe this was where China decided to save a dime and it was a recording.

But later, I was excited to find out that it was an actual bagpipe band. And an amateur band at that! And those stupid commentators went on and on about all sorts of random facts, you'd think they would've commented on the awesome musicians playing their hearts out on the biggest stage in the world. At the very least, they could have given them a little camera love.

It turns out it was the Mains of Fintry Pipe Band from Dundee, Scotland.

It turns out the Chinese were looking for music that represented Europe and they decided on the bagpipes! They heard the Mains of Fintry Band in France and were impressed enough to invite them to play at the opening ceremony. Apparently, at first they thought it was a joke, so they didn't reply to the invitation at first. But when they accepted, they were sworn to secrecy for the past year. What a secret!!

I found this story to be particularly inspirational because I play in a very amateur band. It's good to see these kinds of bands get their chance to shine in the sun too. Granted, the Olympics were very close to World Bagpipe Championships, so perhaps a higher graded band would've turned down an invitation, but I have yet to read anywhere that the Chinese extended an invitation to a higher grade band. Good on you Mains of Fintry!!

Scottish Athlete's Find Success!!
So, the athlete's that I featured in my previous post fared really well at the Olympics. I did watch some of the cycling events, and Chris Hoy found great success. He won a gold medal in the Sprint, Team Sprint, and the Keirin events. In fact, he was so successful that he was honored by the British contingent at the Closing Ceremony where he carried the flag for the most successful British team in 100 years.

Lee McConnell also did well. In the 400m she made it to the semifinals where she ultimately placed 19th in the semifinal round.

Other Scots who fared well were:

David Florence: earned a silver in the Slalom Canoe event.

Katherine Granger: earned a silver in Rowing Quadruple Skull.

ALERT! ALERT!
One of the best Olympic-Scotland stories I've run across is about a guy named Andrew Aitkens who was practicing his bagpipes outside an (unbeknownst to him) secure area in Beijing. He was practicing up for a charity walk along the Great Wall. A small crowd gathered around him and than all of a sudden a bunch of police cars pulled up. The poor guy almost got arrested because the Chinese thought his bagpipes were a weapon! Thankfully a bystander stepped in and explained that it was a musical instrument, and (at least in this moment in time) not an instrument of war. I guess they don't have too many bagpipe players in China!

Pipe on!

Scotland in the 2008 Beijing Olympics

I dearly love the Olympics, I should've put an olympic countdown clock up on this blog now that I think about it. So I thought it would be interesting to do a little digging into the history of Scotland's Olympic athletes and look at their prospects for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

The Summer Olympics started in 1896 but the first Scottish medals didn't come until 1900 when they won silver and bronze in...golf of course. (Golf is no longer an Olympic sport today by the way.) Their first gold came in a big way in 1908 when 5 Scots brought home the gold in steeplechase, 400m, coxless fours (a rowing event), water polo, and 12 metre class (sailing). And home wasn't far away as the 1908 Olympics were in London.

Since than, there's been a Scot who has medaled in just about every Olympics. The only one's they didn't medal in were 1932 and 1936. There were even some Scots on the 1920 tug of war team that brought home the gold...obviously no longer an Olympic sport, but it brought a smile to my face :)

There are many notable Scottish Olympic athletes. Track star Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame of course. Shirley Robertson picked up 2 gold medals for sailing in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, the only Scotswoman to have ever won 2 gold medals. And Rodney Pattison is the most decorated Scottish Olympian, winning 2 golds and 1 silver medal between 1968-1972.

Scotland has always competed as part of Great Britain's Olympic team. But it seems there was some effort by Scotland to bring their own seperate Olympic team to the 2008 summer games. They do have their own parliament after all but they are still not entirely independent from England. It seems that the issue was brought up because Scotland's Football (aka. soccer) Association didn't want to participate in a British soccer team for the Olympics.

Former British Olympic Association chairman Sir Craig Reedie had this to say about the whole situation, "The International Olympic Committee charter says that to take part in an Olympic Games you must have a national Olympic committee. You only get a national Olympic committee when it's granted to you by the IOC. When Scotland is an independent nation, I am 99.999% sure the IOC will grant them an NOC, but not before then. Until then, no Scottish athlete is disadvantaged by the current situation."

The official website for Great Britain's 2008 Summer Olympic team is a bit confusing. You can search their athlete's by country, but the results include both country of birth and country of residence. So while they list 25 athlete's as being from Scotland only 18 were actually born in Scotland. Two were born in other countries but basically grew up in Scotland. Mostly men (there are only 5 women) Scotland is represented in swimming, canoe, rowing, shooting, cycling, steeplechase, track, tennis, kayak, triatholon, and field hockey. Their dominant sport is swimming where they have 5 athlete's competing.

Scottish athlete's to watch for seem to be Chris Hoy, 9 time world champion in cycling and Lee McConnell who runs the 400m has also picked up a lot of press.

I'll mostly be cheering on Team USA but the beauty of the Olympics is the international stage and being able to cheer on international players so if I recognize a Scot I'll definitely give them a shout out.

Pipe on!

Carillon Piping

I'm afraid I haven't done quite as much bagpiping this summer as I'd like. Certainly not as much as I did last summer. Various things just kept getting in my way. Remember that my band isn't a competitive band, we're a hobby band, so we play in a lot of parades and charity events and most of these are in the summer when the weather is better.

One neat thing my band did get to do was play a concert with a carillon. The World Carillon Federation defines a carillon as, "A musical instrument composed of tuned bronze bells which are played from a baton keyboard. Only those carillons having at least 23 bells be taken into consideration". And Wikipedia says it's the heaviest instrument because the bells can weigh several tons. So it's basically a huge set of bells in all shapes and sizes and it's very loud. The picture at the top of this post is NOT the carillon we played with, but it gives you a sense of what one looks like. There are all differents types and sizes of carillons.

The carillon player does various concerts and I guess he decided a bagpipe band would be a nice compliment to his carillon. The carillon we played with is at the top of a tall office building. We went up 14 flights on an elevator, up 2 flights of regular stairs, and than up about 2 flights of a spiral staircase. I'm afraid my poor drones suffered a few nicks in the tight quarters of the spiral staircase.

At the top we found ourselves standing on a narrow ledge with a fantastic view, but no worries, there were solid concrete waist high walls so even though we were high up, we felt secure.

We were going to be playing "Amazing Grace" and "Highland Cathedral" with the carillon. The carillon player picked the tunes and while we know AG, we didn't know HC. So, because we weren't playing in front of a very visible audience, we cheated and taped the music up to the walls.

It was not our greatest performance. We had to stand in single file and I was stuck in between two of the biggest guys in our band, so it was impossible to see our pipe major. We had 10 pipers and amazingly, when we were playing with the carillon, we drowned it out. So it was impossible to tell if we were playing with it...and more often than not, we weren't because the carillon plays a lot slower than a hyper charged up bagpipe band.

Afterwards, we went down and played a nice concert in a park at the base of the building. We could all see each other and we were sans carillon.

Pipe on!

Piping, Piping Girl, Where Are You?

You've got a blog to write now! (sung to Scooby Doo song)

I know, I know, I've been so neglectful of this blog. Blah, blah, blah, busy life, same excuses as every other blogger out there who lets so much time elapse between blog entries. And grrrr, it's so hard to get back into a blog once you've left it for a while.

So what has Piping Girl been up to in the world of bagpiping. Well of course St. Patrick's Day was a blast. I took the day off, slept in, and took my time getting ready. My new special bagpiping jacket arrived just a few days before St. Patrick's Day and I put it to good use. It was cold outside and I actually wore it a lot inside as well. After tuning we went off to our first two gigs, than we got onto the bus we had hired to drive us around from 5pm on. We played several sets at each bar, probably 15 minutes. The best part of the night was when the youngest piper in our band, a college kid, jumped up on the bar and led the rest of us in playing along with ACDC's It's a Long Way to the Top. Towards the end of the night I confess that I had to cork some of my drones, but after 6 hours or so of playing who can blame me.

Since than I played at a cancer charity event with the band and at this neat event welcoming veterans back from visiting war memorials in Washington D.C. I also had the opportunity to play in a massed band setting at a local Scottish fair. Playing in the massed bands was awesome! We marched forward and than, spinning on our heels, marched back through the lines behind us, I think it's called counter-marching. It was amazing!

Well, I hope to be a better and more consistent blogger.

Pipe on!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!!!!

I'm off to my pub crawl today, but what kind of a Piping Girl would I be if I didn't post on the technical date of St. Patrick's Day. I know a lot of you might have celebrated this past Saturday but for me, St. Patrick's Day is today.

Just a couple of quick reminders, if you didn't make it to a parade on Saturday, chances are pretty good that you can still find one today. And don't forget that the New York City St. Patrick's Day parade is streaming their parade live at 11am Eastern Standard time of course

You can also check out Dublin's St. Patrick's Day webcam or check out a bunch of other webcams of Dublin.

Here's a video from last year's festivities in Dublin:


Here's another good video of a bagpipe band playing in a parade in Cork, Ireland 2007:


If you're after other St. Patrick's Day events like finding pubs that are celebrating or creating a tune list for your own party, don't forget to check out my St. Patrick's Day Preparations Post.

And if you're looking for some history on just what it is we are celebrating, check out my post from Saturday.

Here a couple of other amusing videos I found to get you in the mood for whatever it is that you do on this St. Patrick's Day. First, a video from the Oregon Zoo last year demonstrating that even Polar Bears celebrate St. Patrick's Day:



Finally, did you know that the beer company Guinness is lobbying to make St. Patrick's Day a federal holiday? They have an online petition and their grassroots effort has been titled Proposition 3-17. They have over 250,000 signatures so far.

I'm not a particular fan of this brew of beer, but I find the proposition interesting and this commercial amusing:

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!!!!

Pipe on!!!!

Getting Ready for My St. Patrick's Day

So tomorrow is my band's big St. Patrick's Day pub crawl. There's also a deeper significance to tomorrow, it marks my one year anniversary of playing publicly with my band. I played the practice chanter for a year, than was a year on the pipes, and than made my debut with the band last year.

St. Patrick's Day is also important for my band, because, while we aren't a competitive band, we march in parades all summer long, and St. Patrick's Day is the unofficial start of our parade season too.

Last year St. Patrick's Day was on a Saturday, this year due to leap year, it's on a Monday. It will be very interesting to see what a St. Patrick's Day pub crawl is like on a weekday.

So what have I been doing to get ready for St. Patrick's Day?

1) Practicing

I got a bad cold last weekend and wasn't able to practice for several days, so I'm trying to get a bit of my playing stamina back. I also figured out that my bass drone reed was really loose, making it really tough to play too. Stuck into the bottom of each of the long stocks that stick out of the bagpipe bag is a drone reed. This fell out of my drone and into my bag. Well when I figured out how to get it out of my bag, it became loose again, this basically prevents an airtight seal from taking place and me feel like I was hyperventilating when I was trying to play my bagpipes.

Now that my drone reed issue is resolved and I'm feeling better, I've had some super good practice sessions over the last coupe of days so I feel a lot more confident about playing tomorrow.

Here are the sets that I've been focusing on, and that I'll be playing tomorrow:

"Scotland the Brave"-"Murdo's Wedding"-"Wings"
"The Green Hills of Tyrol"-"Balmoral"
"Bathgate Highland Gathering"-"Suo Guan"-"Tenny Penny Bit"-"Lady Carmichael"
"Argyll's Crossing the River Po"-"Battles O'er"
"Amazing Grace"
"Gardens of Skye"-"Leaving Liverpool"
"Cockney Jocks"-"Bonnie Lass O'Fyfe"

There's a quartet of pipers in my group that will be playing an Irish set that includes "Oh Danny Boy","Minstrel Boy" and "Wearing O' the Green".

2) Getting my uniform in order.

St. Patrick's Day last year was also the debut of all of my cool bagpipe uniform stuff. I have a white dress shirt, kilt, sporran (black purse like thing that hangs around my waste), belt, hose (socks), glengarry (hat), flashes (little bits of cloth that hang off the socks), kilt pin, hat pin and sgian dubh (little ceremonial dagger tucked in my sock).

Tomorrow I'll also be wearing my new ghillie brogues, these are special shoes my band decided would be part of our band uniform. I did wear them at our Burns Dinner back in January, but that was just for a few hours. So I'll be curious to see how they hold up to pretty much a whole day of wearing and moving about.

I'll also be wearing my brand new argyle jacket. This is something else my band decided to add to its uniform and at the Burns Dinner, I realized I was just about the only one not to have one yet. So I ordered it about a month ago, it was on back order, and it came in the mail on Friday! More importantly, it also fit. The weather tomorrow isn't supposed to be the greatest so I think it will definitely come in handy.

3) Making Sure My Bagpipes Are Ready

I already talked about my bass drone reed, but there are a few other maintenance type things I've been doing like taping up my mouth piece, my chanter, and my drones. Over time they can get loose, so I use tape (hemp can also be used), to make sure they're all set. One time at a practice last summer a piper in my band had their chanter literally fall out of their bag when we were marching, it was too loose! And it scared me, because chanters can pretty easily crack and break. I also bought a new cord for my bagpipes, this is the bit that holds the drones all together, I haven't replaced this yet, but I still might do it yet tonight...we'll see.

And that's about it. My band is meeting at 2pm tomorrow to tune and than we'll hit our first bar at 3pm. We'll make 9 stops total (although some of those are repeat stops at the same bar), and our last scheduled stop is at 9:30pm.

We're all going to ride around on a bus together for part of the pub crawl too. We were able to have the bus the whole day last year, but we won't be catching it until 5pm tomorrow. The bus totally made the experience perfect last year, we didn't have to worry about getting quickly to the next bar, finding a parking place, and waiting for everyone to trickle in. With the bus, we could all be together and than make our grand entrance.

I probably won't post on the pub crawl until later on in the week, I suspect it will take me a few days to recover!

Pipe on!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! (If You're Celebrating Today)

Well Happy St. Patrick's Day! If you're celebrating today that is. Many pubs are celebrating all weekend long and into Monday, and there were plenty of parades today as well.

If you're looking for information on the history of St. Patrick's Day, you can't go wrong with The History Channel's website. We all know that St. Patrick's Day celebrates the life of St. Patrick, actually, it really celebrates his death, which was supposedly on March 17, 460 A.D. For an entertaining version of what we do know about St. Patrick's life, check out this Veggie Tales version of events:



I'm not really celebrating today...I know, I'm such a die hard purist! Monday from about 2pm-9:30pm I'll take part in my bagpipe band's annual pub crawl. And I'm sure we won't be the only one's celebrating St. Patrick's Day on the 17th.


Pipe on!

St. Patrick's Day Preparations

St. Patrick's Day is Monday, March 17, but due to conflicts with Holy Week, many of you might be attending St. Patrick's Day festivities on Saturday, March 15. That's the day that the Catholic Church designated as St. Patrick's Day this year.

From the advertisements I've heard on the radio in my own town, it sounds like local businesses are taking advantage of the confusion and celebrating St. Patrick's Day Saturday through Monday. I might take in some of the events on Saturday, but for me at least, the big show is Monday.

But for those of you that will do most of your celebrating on Saturday, I thought a St.Patrick's Day preparation post was in order.

Blogging is a very good way to work off my own nervous energy for my band's pub crawl on Monday, so expect the posts to come with a fury this weekend. And really, a true celebration of the day can't be done in just one post.

So, what to do? Where to go? Go and take part in the festivities at your local pub, many are offering live music and free stuff! But you need to find a St. Patrick's Day celebrating pub first. I was easily able to find information in my own local and regional newspapers. Many places are celebrating all weekend, but it also seems like many are reserving special features like serving a special Irish menu, for Monday. There's probably a pub with an Irish connection in your community, after all, everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day!

If it's a parade you're after, there are plenty of those as well. In fact, if you're in Hot Springs, Arkansas you can attend the "First Ever Fifth Annual World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade" which is some kind of strange oxymoron, but it really is the shortest parade. Apparently in the 1940's Ripley's Believe it or Not named Hot Springs' Bridge Street the shortest street in the world. And apparently the largest parade is held in New York City. NYC's parade is Monday and it's going to be streamed live, so even if you can't attend a parade you can watch the biggest!

Here's an amusing video of last year's NYC parade, done in a record 3 minutes, you have to see it to believe it!

But maybe you want to stay at home and host your own St. Patrick's Day Party. Not a bad idea after all; the police typically step up enforcement around St. Patrick's Day so celebrating in your own home is not a bad idea. Here are some good recipe ideas:

But really, you can probably make about anything, throw in some green dye, and you're good to go! In terms of setting up the tunes, there are a lot of great classical tunes including:
"Wearing of the Green"


"Minstrel Boy"
"Irish Washerwoman"
"Danny Boy" aka. "Londonderry Air"
"When Irish Eyes are Smiling"


Some good groups that you might check out are: The Chieftans, The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, and Gaelic Storm are all good ones. The Irish Rovers are also a good group, they sing a great song called The Unicorn Song:


I personally LOVE The Proclaimers and even though they're Scottish you can't go wrong with Irish Girls are Pretty, 500 Miles and Sunshine on Leith. I also recently found out that John Mayer sings a song called St. Patrick's Day:


I'm sure I'm leaving out plenty of good groups and tunes here, any other recommendations?

What are people out there doing for St. Patrick's Day??

Pipe on!!

Oh Danny Boy also known as Londonderry Air

One of the most associated songs with St. Patrick's Day is Danny Boy.

Many people love this song, but to some people this song is depressing and overdone. In fact, there's a pub in New York City that is holding a pre-St. Patrick's Day karaoke night, and the bartender is paying its patrons in Guinness NOT to sing Danny Boy.

Danny Boy is also known by another title, Londonderry Air. The fact that it's known by 2 different names speaks to the interesting history of this tune. Its history is also very complicated. If you are intensely interested in learning more about the history of the tune than Michael Robinson's Danny By-the Mystery Solved! looks to be a good site, as does Jim Hunter's The Origin of Danny Boy.

Based on what I read on Michael Robinson's site, Danny Boy refers to the lyrics. The lyrics were written by an English lawyer named Frederic Edward Weatherly in 1910. He wrote the lyrics that we know today, but they were set to a different melody. He called it Danny Boy, but the lyrics weren't successful with this melody. He never set foot in Ireland, nor did he probably have any interest in Irish tunes. So it took a letter from America to give him a melody for his lyrics.

In 1912 his sister-in-law sent him a melody called Londonderry Air. His lyrics matched with this new song, and, voila, Danny Boy was born.

Jim Hunter spends more time on his site talking about where the tune itself came from. According to his site, the melody shows up in 1851 when Jane Ross bought it from a blind fiddler named Jimmy McCurry who was playing at the docks of in the County of Londonderry, Ireland.

According to Wikipedia, the song was first recorded in 1913 by Ernestine Schumann-Heink, a German opera singer. But it seems that we can thank English opera singer Elsie Griffin for making it so popular. Weatherly gave it to her sometime after 1913 and she went onto perform for the troops in France during World War I. Although I didn't read this anywhere, I think it's safe to assume that in the midst of World War I, soldiers far from home, would take to such a moving tune:

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow

Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

Some sites claim Danny Boy is thought of as an anthem for Ireland, that it was supposed to be a song that brought everyone together during a very tumultuous time in Ireland's history. But than other site's say the song is rarely played in Ireland, and that they aren't as obsessed with the tune as Americans seem to be. Anyone out there care to comment on that??

Wikipedia has a very comprehensive listing of all the people who have recorded it, as well as its use in movies and television. Like I said initially, a lot of people love this song, including me, so there are tons of recordings of it on youtube. I tried to pick out what I thought were the best ones:

We'll start with something light, the Muppet version:


Next is Michael Eskin playing it on the Uilleann Pipes, the toughest small pipes to learn I've heard:



Here's a beautiful duet by Cliff Richard and Helmut Lotti. Richard is an English musician and Lotti hails from Belgium.


Country Western singer Ray Price sings it here:


The punk rock group Darkbuster puts their unique spin on it here:


Finally, a young British singing sensation by the name of Declan Galbraith gives a beautiful rendition:


I know there are lots and lots of other singers who have covered this song, Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby to name a few. I don't really have a favorite version, but please leave a comment if you do.

As for myself, I have run through this tune a few times on my practice chanter but I've never taken the time to memorize and learn it on my pipes. This is probably due to the fact that my band is a primarily Scottish based, and once a year, in the weeks leading up to St. Patrick's Day a few of the pipers who know this tune start practicing it. I will probably learn it sometime as I'm sure it's one of the requested tunes that pipers get. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy getting a breather and listening to it on St. Patrick's Day.

Pipe on!

Wii Girl

This blog is focused on bagpipes and Scotland, but from time to time I thought it might be interesting for loyal readers of my blog (at least give me the illusion that are some of you out there!), to learn a bit more about Piping Girl. Being a bagpiper is kind of like leading a double life. It’s not a hobby that people traditionally associate women with, and it’s definitely a niche hobby, there really aren’t a lot of pipers out there. Readers of this blog see the one side of my life that is pretty unknown in my day to day life, so I thought maybe you'd enjoy looking in a little bit on the other side of my life.

So, when my fingers aren’t flying over my bagpipe chanter, I really enjoy playing the Nintendo Wii. It’s actually not my Wii, it’s my husbands', but I play it a lot more than he does, so I think it’s really mine, but don’t tell him that! As you know if you’ve tried to get a Wii, they are still SUPER tough to find. We’ve had our Wii for over a year, and they are still hard to find. You can sign up for different alerts from companies that sell them online, stake out your local Target, or find an inside person who can tip you off when a new shipment comes in. But even all of this really comes down to plain old simple luck.

I ran across an opportunity where you could potentially win a Wii, and I thought I’d pass it along to the rest of you. It’s being offered by Charter High-Speed Internet. They are offering this opportunity to you if you pre-register for their High-Speed Internet for Life Auction.

This opportunity is offered to legal residents of the 29 states in which Charter Communications provides Internet services, and you have to be at least 18 years old when you enter. So you do have to qualify for the offer by living in an area where Charter services are offered.

Once you do qualify, you can pre-register for the auction now, never place a bid, and still be entered into the contest for the Wii. So you don’t even have to bid if you don’t want to and you’ll still be entered into the contest.

But, since you’re there, you might as well read up on the auction itself because that too sounds like a fantastic opportunity. Internet for life! How awesome would that be! While you can pre-register now, you can’t bid until the auction starts which is on March 12, 2008. Bidding starts at $10.00 and the auction ends on March 26.

Like I said, it does come down to luck, and with St. Patrick’s Day coming up, maybe a bit of extra luck will shine down on you! So, Click Here for a Chance to Win a Nintendo® Wii™!

No worries gentle readers, this blog won't become Wii Girl, but once in a while I figured it might be good to let you into the other side of Piping Girl's life.

Pipe on, or maybe I should say Wii on!