tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54496242009-08-25T12:02:31.390-04:00Peter Walker, Highland piper and Scottish FiddlerPeterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.comBlogger150125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-9223602429347762842008-09-16T09:58:00.002-04:002008-09-16T10:19:10.115-04:00

Well, it's been slow posting here at the Boghadubh Blog. I've been mostly focusing my efforts on The Devil's Tailors (who have a blog now, if not yet a site). We've changed our lineup, are doing more songs, and are basically having a blast.I've started teaching a lot over the summer, both bagpipes and fiddle, and did a few solo gigs, in addition to Celebrate Fairfax! with The Devil's Tailors. The

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-43094408268287358302008-04-18T10:15:00.002-04:002008-04-18T10:27:27.334-04:00

We're now confirmed to play June 7th at 6:30 PM on the Folk Stage at the Celebrate Fairfax! outdoor festival in Fairfax, VA. They're also trying to get us to play another time-slot the next day, Sunday, June 8th. It's a big festival, and should be loads of fun.

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-71867902525992983092008-04-08T07:30:00.005-04:002008-04-09T10:16:16.209-04:00

I listened to the tape last night. Now, it's important to remember that the mixer tape out isn't necessarily what the audience heard.But that said, the levels were all off, except on the pipes+fiddle sets. The vocals, bodhran, and cittern were way too high. The gain on some of the vocals was probably too high too, meaning distortion. The fiddles and guitars were too low; although if the cittern

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-15245116164133427352008-04-07T09:32:00.002-04:002008-04-07T10:01:27.992-04:00

Well, it was officially our second outing under the name "The Devil's Tailors", but it felt more like our first real debut. This year, we had a full band and a nice long set.I spent the morning setting up, and then played for the Alexandria branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society with Julie Gorka. Then it was time for us to get going. Rhianon had to cancel, because their singers all

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-58817539690809714292008-02-19T07:51:00.006-05:002009-04-07T15:46:29.565-04:00

It looks like the Devil's Tailors is back on track here. I secured the National Tartan Day gig, and managed to put together a band for it. Anders will be available again starting in May, but even with the distance small gigs might be out of his reach. So I've brought on board Jim Stimson, the lute player in my in-the-works Scottish early music ensemble. Jim will be positioned to fill in for

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-39428285782200628262008-02-07T08:22:00.000-05:002008-02-07T12:12:44.568-05:00

Well, where to start?My personal schedule has screwed with my practice in a terrible way, but I'm hoping to get back into it soon. So I'll break it down by topic:Bands:The Devil's Tailors has a new repertoire. Now I just need to track down its guitarists! Chris appears to be out of pocket, probably doing research in upstate NY, and Anders and I finally tagged up - it looks like he's going to be

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-53692910526473037522007-12-03T11:00:00.000-05:002007-12-04T11:02:40.830-05:00

From the comment(s) on the previous post:frustrated piper in hiatus who used to read your competition posts writes: No updates lately?You're right. I should get on that! New general update coming soon, maybe this afternoon - along with Xmas walk pics of my unit.[Update: Okay, maybe this weekend. I'm behind on my session blog too, I'll try to get caught up across the board.] I don't know if

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-73756037601566455922007-04-10T08:18:00.000-04:002007-04-10T09:32:35.382-04:00

Piping:My playing has become a bit sloppy. I have to work on my taorluaths a lot, and clean out some crossing noises. Other than that, my competition march is coming along. The strathspey is pretty good too - the main issue is to point the dot-flag pair before a triplet, so the flagged note is consistently smaller than the first two notes of the triplet to follow. And open up doublings that

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-35502427069670392362007-04-09T12:14:00.001-04:002009-04-07T15:47:03.636-04:00

The Devil's Tailors officially performed their first gig at the National Tartan Day celebration at Market Square in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, on April 7th, 2007 (a day after National Tartan Day proper. The line-up for this gig included myself, Chris Lindsay on guitar and bodhran, and a virtual Anders Johannson on guitar for Cairn o' Mount (courtesy of a 2005 recording, iTunes, and my Mac

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-58644667632400739062007-03-07T12:28:00.000-05:002007-04-09T12:54:54.868-04:00

After finishing studying harmony and backing with Elke, I've been sent to the woodshed to practice the techniques for a while. Elke and I have moved on to the Grand Northeast style, using the Hunter Collection. It's an interesting and very counter-intuitive style of playing. On pipes, it's been mainly a struggle to just keep up with all the band and solo competition stuff coming down the pipeline

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1168012281856773242007-01-05T10:37:00.000-05:002007-01-14T14:10:29.666-05:00

During my trip to Houston, my friend Jay, a professional photographer with top-of-the-line camera and a mini-studio in his living room, took a whole bunch of extremely high resolution pictures of my baroque violin, my new pochette, my 18th century Highland pipes, and my Scottish smallpipes. The pictures are pretty gigantic, so I'll have to shrink them a bit before putting them up on the site, but

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1168008562756144192007-01-05T09:31:00.000-05:002007-01-05T10:15:02.796-05:00

I've spent the last semester with Elke studying how to back tunes. We first started with chords, then worked a bit on arpeggiated backing, then dabbled in close harmony. I'm still only at the basic level, and it takes me a half-dozen times through a tune - and then only in the most accessible keys - to begin to get the chord progression. So it'll take a lot more practice for this to be a

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1166832201526232412006-12-22T19:02:00.000-05:002006-12-22T19:03:21.543-05:00

I've been studying chords and backing with Elke. More on that later, but it made me especially enjoy this:

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1165837851848351092006-12-11T06:37:00.000-05:002006-12-11T06:50:52.010-05:00

We had a great time at the Alexandria Scottish Christmas Walk, despite the fact we had light turnout with the Appins, as some people had to cancel due to illness. We retired to Murphy's afterwords, where I was plied with booze and, at the request of some WWI reenactors, piped for the ancient and honorable Highland plastic butter-knife dance (similar to the Argyll Broadswords - but without the

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1164640376058990062006-11-27T10:03:00.000-05:002006-11-27T10:12:56.070-05:00

It's been a busy month, but mainly a month of home improvement, rather than music. I have done a wedding gig, and played the Lyceum Scottish Preview event last weekend.And I now know how to wear my blue bonnet. I've never been able to get it to look like the others' - it always looked more like a renaissance floppy hat rather than a bonnet. When I arrived at the Lyceum, one of my fellow

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1162687697143444982006-11-04T19:43:00.000-05:002006-11-04T19:48:17.156-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Things have been busy on all fronts.I've been gigging and teaching more, so that's good. The pipe band won in Anne Arundel.I bought an AWESOME set of 18th-century pipes (pictures coming soon) for 1/7th what I would have paid for the set I was looking at, and my set really is one of a kind. Might need to get a matching koranda-wood chanter for them,

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1156172792314509502006-08-21T09:05:00.000-04:002006-08-21T11:06:50.816-04:00

Well, it was a light weekend for music & reenacting. I've been working up a number of alow airs and slow marches for this upcoming gig at Arlington Cemetary on Sunday morning. Here are the ones I'm looking at, starting with the ones I already know:Slow March of the 74th HLIMy Dearest DearHector the HeroBells of DunblaneAmazing Grace24th Guards Brigade at Anzio (played slowly)Flowers of the

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1155565972188082232006-08-14T10:28:00.000-04:002006-08-14T10:32:52.190-04:00

Well, Chris was MIA for the rehearsal; dunno why (though I'm guessing he was called out of town for work). So Rosemary and I spent 4 hours getting caught up, both personally and musically. We did 5 sets that we had a guitar track from Anders for, and looked at Hector briefly.At one point, Rosemary exclaimed after going through The Devil's Reels, "Wow, the Scottish and Irish styles are really

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1154711006317690282006-08-12T20:02:00.000-04:002006-08-16T09:38:41.266-04:00

Okay, so this is turning into a real series.I made myself a new sword belt. The old one, which was just a simple baldric of two 2" belts stitched together, didn't support the sword, so the basket would tip upwards, the scabbard would flop around and collide with my legs when I walked, and the whole thing tended to fall out of the belt a lot. That, and the buckle was riveted on, which is

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1155298964136237222006-08-11T08:17:00.000-04:002006-08-11T09:30:50.056-04:00

That's the bad news. I've almost inverted the long and short notes. So I'm going to have to learn the high hand throws the old fashioned way, just like I learned the low hand ones so long ago.Other than cutting short some phrase endings, my teacher liked the rest of the ground of the piobaireachd I'm trying to nail down; though he suggested I view a connecting note figure as a tachum instead of a

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1154376201538148452006-07-31T16:01:00.000-04:002006-08-04T12:41:58.433-04:00

So I finished the dirk, except for the end nut (which I will make myself) and the butt plate (which will see some decorative carving):Not bad at all. Next time I do this, I'll make the grooves deeper, and carve in wooden "studs" at the intersections between knots. The nut isn't quite centered, so when I file down a castle nut from soft steel or iron, I'll try to hide that fact by leaving the tang

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1154376014426295082006-07-31T15:56:00.000-04:002006-07-31T16:01:09.486-04:00

I finally got pictures from the 2005 Scottish Christmas Walk in Old Town Alexandria. As fellow reenactors Gerry and Susan were bar-hopping after the event, we noticed that a photography studio was taking free pictures of parade participants. So we eagerly took them up on the offer!Click on the thumbnail for the bigger version.

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1153430455176981632006-07-20T17:18:00.000-04:002006-07-20T17:20:55.176-04:00

The dirk handle is coming along:Very nice, if I must say so myself! Just 4 more Triskelion patterns to go on the haunches (one on this side, three on the other). The wood burning tool really did wonders to cover up my weaknesses as a carver. I also completed the replacement chape for the scabbard, and began cutting out the butt plate for the dirk handle.

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1153155820857920782006-07-17T12:32:00.000-04:002006-07-17T13:03:40.950-04:00

The music front proceeds as usual. The only interesting tidbit is that everyone in band has tapped the reed seats on our chanters with a 12-24 tap. The screw threads allow for extremely precise adjustments to tuning. Why didn't someone think of this a decade (or more) ago?I'll probably also be using a tap soon to make my own end nut for the dirk. I need to find me a length of soft steel or iron,

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449624.post-1152632472414453152006-07-11T11:33:00.000-04:002006-07-20T17:18:32.716-04:00

Well, it's been kinda crazy around here, hence no posting.On solo pipes, I'm looking at MSR sets; my competition one for next year will probably be Charles Edward Hope Vere/Susan MacDonald/Colonel MacDonald, but I'm learning others to develop my acumen in the idiom. I really need to spend some time with piobaireachd again, though.In the pipe band, we've had our ups and downs. Some busy weeks for

Peterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12425550507135906000noreply@blogger.com0