Wouldn’t it be great if your band’s musical dilemmas could be solved with a ready-made packaged solution? We see this approach in popular culture for sure. Books and seminars and late-night infomercials and TV shows all feature easily packaged answers to solve all of your problems. Lose weight without exercise! Stop smoking fast! Get six-pack abs with this great machine! Shake-Weights! Sure. The fact that the Rhonda Byrne book The Secret was even on the NY Times bestseller list let alone her new book The Power making its appearance and with her face on every TV talk show should tell you something right there.
With all of these simple and quick solutions to life’s problems it should be easy livin’ for all of us by now, right? Peace among nations, everyone thin and healthy, free of stress and worry, all happily doing perfect work and making lots of money…oh, wait.
Perhaps it is a by-product of a very American mass-consumer culture to think that great piping, or a great band medley for example, could come in a can that anyone can open and digest. As if someone, somewhere has got all the answers we seek in one easy-to-use format. After all, isn’t this the allure of the many workshops and seminars we see across the continent? These days, there are more of them than ever. You know the impulse: “Attend this workshop and learn the secrets of the best! Once you’ve been given the secret, your pipe band performances will be the envy of the competition.†It also seems to be the rationale behind changes to our competition format.
With all of these accessible seminars and great instruction sessions, it should be smooth playin’ for bands up and down the eastern seaboard, right? All bands should have great tone, perfect ensemble, tight unison, all of them winning top prizes all the time…oh, wait.
Pipe bands across the eastern U.S. suffer from the malaise of imitation. We all want to sound like the latest and greatest championship band instead of sounding like, well, ourselves. Choice tunes from championship winning medleys constantly find themselves in the medleys of grade 4 and 3 bands. And this despite the advice these bands will always get in the aforementioned workshops that they should play to their strengths and leave the stuff they hear from FMM, SLOT, and SFU on the pitch of Glasgow Green.
It’s as if by playing the “cool stuff†from the Grade 1 performances, somehow these bands have opened the can of “great piping†and thus the amazing performances will start falling into place. It’s as if we’ve all bought in to what the infomercial promises. Good music can’t be massed produced like canned goods and an original, sincere pipe band medley is no different. We all know how much work goes into perfecting a pipe band performance—at any level. The trouble is that work is often spoiled by the desire for the secret or magic formula that will set the band on the right path, by that desire to mimic the latest piping trends and sounds. And spoiled further by the frustration of never achieving it.
What’s missing is the understanding (and the practice) of what pipe band-ing is about, and has always been about: creating your own musical statement. The top Grade 1 and 2 bands know it, that’s why we hear such great and original stuff from them and why the top bands of the last fifteen or so years have made such a mark. It’s sincere and personal and that is one of the reasons why it appeals. Lower grade bands may be flattering their tutors from the upper grade bands by including their arrangements and tunes in their medleys, but are they using this material to perfect and design their own musical statement? It is sincere to try and learn from the music of the top bands. It is not sincere to mimic.
Much effort and frustration can be saved, and perhaps more prizes won, if bands of all levels focussed on that goal of creating a personal musical statement instead of thinking the musical statements of others can be cooked up and served like canned soup. The best tasting food never comes in a can anyway. And a healthy diet will always be best with something homemade.
Ever since the advent of synthetic bagpipe bags, the hide bag has drifted in and out of fashion. The ubiquitous rubber drone stock grommets—even on the newest hide bags—has rendered the skills to tie in a good stock on a hide bag dead on arrival. Fortunately, there are those out there who still swear by sheepskin and still need the total skills for bag tie-in.
For those new to the hide bag tie-in, it has always been necessary to measure out and place the spots where your stocks will insert. A quarter-sized hole is then cut into the leather and the stock pushed through. The trick is always to get as round a hole as possible. The more perfectly circular the hole, the less likely it will be to tear when you push your stock through. The only way to do this well is to have an ideally sized “punch” to stamp out that hole.
The perfect hole punch for a hide bagpipe bag is made using a copper 3/4-inch male threaded pipe connector. The opening is just larger than a standard 3/4-inch copper pipe and is the same size as a US quarter. The threaded connector end provides a beefier end for a hammer strike.
“Sharpen” the opening using the method detailed in the project “DIY Blowstick Valve.” File the outer edge and run a debarring tool in the inside until you have a decent edge that will cut through leather.
The punch will need a solid base in order to strike through the leather. Slip a narrow piece of 1/4-inch plywood through the neck of the bag and maneuver it underneath the spot where you will punch your hole. Line up your punch and give it a few good whacks with a hammer. If your edge has been sharpened well enough, you should go through the leather in a few strikes. You’ll have a perfectly round hole that will resist tearing when you aggressively push your stocks through.
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