On with the "Amazing Grace Project" (your name, Bruce!) :) 

Here's the Scottish Smallpipes wiki subject at WUaS - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Scottish_smallpipes_and_borderpipes - before we move to a new wiki, with further resources, to which we can all add, as well :)

Off to play bass lines on a keyboard at a Scottish Country Dance in SF shortly here ..

Musical cheers, Scott

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Hi All, 

From my end, besides GHB Stuart LIddell and Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell being far-reachingly great musician - and inspirations for me in many ways - Maddy Prior, the lead singer in the folk rock group Steeleye Span, singing since the 1960s, is another great for me - http://www.pandora.com/station/play/2741705303108037 .

Musical cheers, Scott

Curious what the musical instruments of SSPs, voices and group video can do in creating a new genre or group or similar 50 years out, which people would choose to listen to again and again (comparably to a Pandora - with its "genome" or themes of each channel - or Spotify channel today of music from 50 years ago; what can we learn from such "musical genome" thinking too from which to build?). 

And how might we shape something novelly beautiful (yet somehow classic and riffing too with tradition) ... and even together in group video (as a kind of instrument - go figure:)? ... I listened to Tommy Makem of some of the folks you've mentioned in the 1970s, Alan, because I was drawn somehow to his music; haven't been drawn as much to the other folks you've mentioned. And group selection of beautiful tunes to make music with (e.g. many OpenBand musicians on a Monday evening at SCD would agree and say they like these 2 tunes better than the other 8 tunes of the evening ... in comparison with, say, I, Scott, or you, Bruce, finding this one SCD tune really beautiful on this Monday, even though everybody (including or not us) finds those other 2 tunes beautiful ... has to do with tastes, but I think it's great when Deadheads, for example, emerge en masse, and all like the same tunes again and again because of how the Grateful Dead played uniquely them). What's GD inspired SSP music? :)

Some quick riffs with your emails Alan ... 

See you Monday at OpenBand, Bruce and Rees? And when, Bruce might we meet to get you and I connected in group video? 

More later :), Scott

Found this version of Lindisfarne as well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJJ_-u4htQc - with organ. It seems to be a Kathryn Tickell signature tune on Pandora too which channel also seems to begin with her "Northumberland Collection" album, and sometimes with its version of Lindisfarne. Nice to tune - with nice harmonies.

Email as conversation > into our own individual and group recordings of piping and singing (and other instruments) > into generative musical conversation with each other (as developing method for music generation)? 

What I appreciate about Stuart Liddell, Kathryn Tickell, Maddy Prior/Steeleye Span is their skill in playing (to my ear), the sound of their instrument/voice ... and their vision (Angela Farmer and Victor van Kooten yoga teachers, the Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers, musically, before 1980) ... how to explore vision as group conversation and our own individual visions for music-making?

In planning to take lessons with Stuart Liddell beginning next month online, I hope to explore a generative face-to-face interactive learning conversation ... and especially re the beauty of the tunes he plays - and the way he plays tunes (out of the Green CoP Tutor, for example, too, interestingly ...).

And re the Monday night OpenBand tunes and Scottish small piping, and beauty of tunes - say from the pink and blue books, or the loose music shared via email - there are only typically a few tunes in D with 2 sharps in the range of the SSP chanter (in the key of A), (and while tunes in A can work too, the 7th can be off - due to the mixolydian scale of the bagpipe, where the 7th is natural )- and I haven't explored the tunes in G for the wee D SSP chanter. Bruce, have you explored playing tunes in G on the wee D SSP chanter? 

Group video as musical instrument, too? :) For example, how to engage the lag of internet streaming musically ("Embrace the lag" vis-a-vis conductor and composer Eric Whitacre?)

How to extrapolate from the Amazing Grace version we have on sheet music to writing 4 parts for SSP sheet music with harmonies ? Bruce - might you give us a hands-on-in-video partial lesson in the MuseScore technologies of this ? And Barbara - might you be able to give us a lesson in group video on harmony writing even? (Wonderful Barbara Salisbury, originally from England and living in Berkeley, was playing in the OpenBand until this spring until she developed a back issue :( ). 

 

See you Tuesday night at 8pm, Alan, Pacific Time with you in NZ? And see you Bruce and Rees, Monday night at OpenBand at St. Clement's Church at 8pm PT perhaps? 

Hi Alan,

How about a) Scots Whae Hae (first tune in CoP Green Tutor which Rees and I know), b) Amazing Grace with its 5 part harmonies on sheet music already (and words!) - I'd like to take advantage of singing harmony with SSP given the new-ish for me bellows (and A.G. is not fast, is pretty, and I know it) -  and c) Lindisfarne? (A.G. is beautiful and "old" - a little like "Gaudete" -  - for Steeleye Span?)

Appreciating the interesting ideas you're sharing.

It's Steeleye Span's corpus of old Scots' and related tunes that OpenBand's sheet music on SSP could come into conversation with :)

Recording of that Ur-Scots' song, Robbie Burns' too - Scots Whae Hae here too - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Bagpipe_Tutorials

I'd like Music Playing Spaces to be for independent playing/practicing especially, yet socially.

And, depending where you'd like to head with PLAY with SSP, I'd encourage you to seek out a piping teacher and lessons, too, Alan, per these Guidelines on practicing http://scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingMusicalInstrument.htm too .. and outside the Music Playing Space. Bruce or Rees, might be available to give lessons, since Alan is new to piping? Is there someone in NZ who comes to mind as a piping teacher? (We could talk more about piping lessons as well).

Group video is actually very helpful for piping lessons on the practice chanter (and potentially SSP) because people aren't playing in unison typically (yet). (It's for playing together that I hope something new from Google will emerge  for example - cell phones with Hangouts but not to NZ could help).

I'm going to try recording myself playing or singing A.G. for practicing of learning how to sing with my SSP :) - (a good suggestion from my current teacher Lorne MacDougal in Glasgow and Carradale).

Cheers, Scott

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