Marchioness of Tullibardine, Highland Harry, Loch Carron (Pipe Major Willie Ross 1929) Bagpipes
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2014
- Pipe Major Willie Ross playing Marchioness of Tullibardine, Highland Harry, Loch Carron Bagpipes. Recording is from 1929.
Content courtesy of Jim McGillivray www.pipetunes.ca - Hudba
My Grandfather was a pupil of the late Pipe Major Willie Ross. When my Grandfather was giving my brother and me lessons would always about the piping Legends. We would sit for hours just listening to him talking about them, and answers of all our questions about the good old piping days. But one question was answered very clearly. It was when my older brother would ask about female pipers, and did Pipe Major Willie Ross have have any as pupils. We were informed absolutely NOT..! under no circumstances would he have taught any females. My grandfather kept in touch with Willie right up until his death. He told us it was one of his saddest days attending his funeral.
funny he should say absolutely NO, when it was his own mother that started. haha
I was thinking the same thing as it's quite well known that one of Ross's parents, namely his mother, had a hand in teaching him! Rather a doubtful story.
My father was taught by Willie Ross at Edinburgh Castle in the 1930's / 1940's. Father was the best in the family and played in the Edinburgh University Pipe Band. Lovely recording, boy, couldn't he shift! 😉
Cheers love the new posts full of music and interesting info great stuff .
thanks for the very nice comment, i do my best to bring new stuff to the channel
@@StrathendrickPiper And we bagpipe-freaks appreciate it! Keep up the good work!
It's amazing that bagpipe playing as come as far as it has, as you listen to this (and others of Mr. Ross) you wonder if they were uncomfortable with the fast awkward playing, and esp. the high hand notes (ugh!) are a bit flat, I just wish to reach into that recording and twist in the reed just a wee bit. I did have good respect for Loch Carron tho, very strong.
The recording was most likely from an old 78 record. I heard the late PM Donald Maclean playing the same 2/4 march on a 78 and it was fast, I also heard him play live often and his timing was what you would hear today maybe a tad faster but just a tad.
Merci. Emouvante archive
Wish I could hear the Pibroch
Barnaby Brown will satisfy your craving. In this video you must be patient as he uses lite music to set his pipes, then suddenly, it hits you... czcams.com/video/2L5i0-ru88U/video.html This man is my most fave piob master.
Ah man! My pipes! These are McPherson made with Henderson's drone.
Lost in a fire in 2014
This has got to be my favorite chune. I don't think it was sped up, though. I had the tape "Johnny Boy Goes Pipes and Drums" about 20 years ago and if it was sped up, most likely it was done with an expensive system. I noticed that some of the sheet music for M of T doesn't jibe with how he piped it. It seems like he added a lilt to it and deviated a little on the third part. Not sure.
Some Grade 1 pipe band needs to take inspiration from this rendering of "The Marchioness" and play it as their medley opener. Round it out more completely and play all four parts at a flying hornpipe-style tempo. That would be cracking.
Either way warped are not warped I just like hearing the pipes being played..wish I knew how
Ok, is this speeded up?
His pitch is very low by modern standards, well below A=440, his B-flat is around 454 (concert B-flat is 466). If he was speeded up I would expect him to be sharper.
Can't say I like this style of playing. 110 BPM for a 2/4 march? While the technique was pretty darn impressive, that wasn't a very musical performance to me. No swing, waaaaaaaaay to fast. I assume that this recording wasn't somehow sped up was it? Also, you can really appreciate Donald MacPherson's influence of tone/tuning standards when you listen to these really old recordings.
From a historical perspective this stuff is pure gold, I just don't fancy the style/interpretation.
It is extremely fast for a march, and I am not sure if it was sped up. I know recording wa an issue back then space etc etc. As a performer, would someone like Willie accept it to be sped up?
Personally, I don't think it was sped up. Many people said Willie played very fast.
His pitch is very low, B-flat around 454 (concert pitch is B-flat at 466) so if this recording was sped up it would put him at an even lower pitch.
My piping tutor was from the Glasgow area, and she began piping around 1907, being taught be her pipe-major father. Her opinion of Willie Ross's playing was that it was unmusically fast, and "chock-a-block" with embellishment. Nonetheless, the recording may have been speeded up a bit mechanically. It is not terribly musical, nor is Willie's fingering anything like the best I know from Scotland, Ontario, BC, NZ, or Australia. The doubings are all crushed, and there are no subtleties of timing. And timing nuances are a major form of expression and personal interpretation--all of which are lost at this tempo. What is it--100 or 110 bpm or what? I'd put this best in the mid-60s, and get the tachums back. I dislike hyper-fast inter-war piping like this. Willie did slow down his interpretations as he got older. Many did.
Many people have the opinion Willie played a tad too fast, in some aspects I would agree with them, but to say his doublings were crushed and his timing was off I would disagree entirely. He is playing very very fast for modern times, but the music has lost none of it's expression or timing in my opinion. He's just doing it all alot faster. I think Willie's record at Inverness and Oban speak for themselves.
But tempo can and does alter perception and even proportion. My tutor, who was a contemporary of Ross, was not the only one who thought Ross rushed and less than impeccable in his small music. Piobaireachd is another matter. Look, I am not villifying Ross--but he himself slowed down his tempos quite a bit, and not from old age since he played well until nearly the end. He himself, and other top pipers of that era, consciously or otherwise brought their extreme tempos down over time.
When one plays that fast the human ear cannot detect nuances of expression in the same way. Tempo is genuinely critical to musical expression, and no matter how clean, we no longer have the time to perceive the details of the phrases and their decorations. The wonderful doubled effect of the melody notes in the doublings do not come out as such to the human ear. Doublings become warbles. Speeding up does change perception by the listener. If one cannot hear the doubled note, the embellishment is crushed by modern standards.
Why has the hyper-fast style come and gone so quickly?
Again, this isn't personal about anyone. We must be free to critique our music, just as I allowed judges to critique me on the boards. I prefer real musicians to the iconified versions. Willie slowed down, substantially, so he heard something he liked in those slower tempos, too. At slower tempos, he WAS a virtuoso!
I agree with what you have written, but interestingly as I read your notes and even MINE, I am recalled to the unfortunate "first recordings" of me that ended up on You-Tube that I am absolutely ashamed of, who knows what Mr. Ross's "good stuff" sounded like? I know I deleted all my embarrassments! :-)
Excuse me, everyone: I am dead serious here: You do NOT know what you are missing here!!!!! Honestly, it is an absolute shame and horrible pity that almost every single person is listening to the raw, unremastered, warped and crackly versions of these old bagpipe recordings. This has to STOP! All these old recordings you have uploaded are honestly far, and I mean, FAR! from remastered. THey all still have the clicks and the warping and all that. So, in order to make the recordings obviously not so horrid, I went ahead and remastered everything and put them on my own CZcams channel, because I'm a stickler for good quality recordings. You see, I may be blind, but I could seriously make my living remastering recordings like this. I still don't understand why the College of Piping, the Piobaireachd Society, and other piping organizations don't even bother to remaster these recordings. I might get in touch with them and try to make them aware of this. You're honestly doing the piping community more harm than good! Why expose people to warpy, crackly recordings when they can be corrected?
So, all of you who are listening to these records, may I ask you to please, pretty please listen to them on my own CZcams channel? I bought Tony Langford's entire collection, which has more piping on it than what was on Ross's Music Page. I have corrected all the clicking, all the warping, and all of the things that deteriorate from the music. So please, if you don't mind?
Hi Michael, remastering won't fix what everyone is commenting about. They are correct about timing issues, crushed embellishments, and bad tuning on the upper-hand of the chanter. It is what it is, I have a lot of stuff recorded I would hope to God would never end up on-line for critique, I couldn't hold a candle to Mr. Ross. Pipers are so used to being judged that judging others is natural, the instrument is a relentless task master of disappointments and frustrations, producing in many cases a man/woman of terrible critique.