Quote:
Originally Posted by OleMik
Hi Nick - thanks for helping - but I still don't get it.
I am aware of transposing instruments, and I have often played with trumpets and saxes - but I am still puzzled.
(In the following, I'm referring to the score posted earlier in this thread:
http://www.magle.dk/music-forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=311&d=1179903147)
If the bagpipe is in Eb, a C in the score (not a D) would sound like an Eb. But the sounding Eb in the melody (the key note/tonic) is written out as a D - why?
Also, if the key note is written as a D, aren't they missing two sharps? If you play the melody line as written on a piano, the melody comes out in D-minor - and the melody certainly sounds better in major.
In other words - it seems to me, that all the notes are written "one too high"? I'm not saying there's an error in the score, I'm just puzzled 
I agree with you on the chords, by the way, but that's another story.
Best regards
Ole |
As the name implies, I'm a bagpiper's mom but not a bagpiper. When the "wee one" started playing in 5th grade, we went to a tattoo with a lot of bands from the greater New York metro area and heard Highland Cathedral for the first time. It was presented with 3 brass bands and 4 Fire and Police Dept bands. Naturally, he wanted to add it to his repertoire. Now that he's 20 and not 12 anymore, he's back to practicing the pipes to play at his older sister's wedding.
As far as trying to "use" the bagpipe sheet music to develop a score for another instrument, you're almost better off just searching out a score of the song for the instrument you intend to play it on. The music director at my son's Grade 7 to 12 school -- who was eager to make use of the newly arriving little piper kid upon his enrollment after a couple years of instruction (and membership in a pipe band) -- found that transposition from bagpipe sheet music to conventional instruments was utterly impossible. After a lot of frustration in trying to figure out pipe notation, he used to just have my son play the relevant song on the bagpipe, he would match the melody line by ear on piano or the school's pipe organ, and then he would proceed from that point to develop the score for other instruments in bagpipes-with-organ or bagpipes-with-brass-choir arrangements. We also had some success in seeking out better-known songs for which police/fire bands had pre-scored arrangements. The only difficulty was with the lesser known bagpipe tunes which sometimes caught the school music director's fancy.
Another point is that when bagpipers are playing with other bagpipers in purely pipes and drums corps, my son's bagpipe instructor (and Pipe Major) mentioned that the tuning is more toward an F# whereas if they are playing with other instruments, they have to alter the reeds toward an Eb. This situation set off a bit of a commotion for us during the height of the son's musical morphing (grades 7, 8, and 9) as he would have his reeds "flattened" for after-school practices 4 days per week when he played with other instruments, but then show up for his Tuesday night session with the bagpipe band needing considerable re-tuning to be on pitch with them. That would be good for getting yelled at the next day when he returned to the school practice and was off-pitch for those instruments. Final straw was when the music director at the school went and used Krazy Glue to "fix" the reeds in the position HE wanted them in, and they couldn't be dislodged! The following Tuesday I went into the Pipe Master's shop (he taught, sold equipment and ran a band) and just bought another better-quality bagpipe for use with ONLY the piping band.
A final point is that the number of "notes" which are true notes for the bagpipes are somewhat limited vis-a-vis other more traditional instruments and an approximation of notes that one might find on regular instruments is achieved, on bagpipes, by grace notes or trills.
http://www.bagpipejourney.com/articles/finger_positions.shtml
That's yet another reason to try to work out the melody of a tune for a non-pipe instrument in a way suited to the instrument, because in the various arrangements my son played over the years with his school's musicians, they would play a true anchoring note or chord consistent with the tune while his bagpiping used the multi-noted fast-fingered "approximation" that bagpipes must perform so that the listener "hears" what (for another instrument) might be just one note.
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