Traditional Irish Instrument

Archive for the ‘music instrument’ Category

Bands that Use the Bagpipes in Their Music
Bagpipes are used across the musical genres and by many mainstream musicians. Some songs and artists are recognizable; others are just waiting to be discovered.

Bagpipes aren’t just for funerals, mass bands, and pub crawls. They can be a powerful compliment to a rock band and a surprising addition to a pop artist.. Bagpipes make a band and its’ sound unique and more fun to listen to.
Rock and Roll Bagpipes
There are many different options for rock and roll music and bagpipes. A good song to start with is the classic AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to the Top (If you Wanna Rock ‘n Roll). Here are some other bands that more regularly incorporate the bagpipes into their songs:
• Black 47-This Irish rock band was formed in New York in 1989. They use the Uilleann Bagpipes which are Irish small bagpipes. They Uilleann Bagpipes have a different tone than the Great Highland Bagpipes, but are equally enjoyable to listen too.
• Dropkick Murphys-This American Celtic punk band was formed in 1996. They’ve put out 6 albums since than. Their truly unique rendition of Amazing Grace is definitely worth a listen.
• Red Hot Chilli Pipers-This Scottish band formed in 2004 and is made up of world class bagpipe musicians. Their cover of We Will Rock You sets the standard for full incorporation of the Great Highland Bagpipes into mainstream music. Read the rest of this entry »

Question: Why are bagpipes a part of funerals, especially firefighter and police funerals?
Answer: The history of funeral bagpipes is a fairly simple (though very sad) one. In traditional Celtic cultures, including both the Irish and Scottish cultures, bagpipes were an important part of a traditional funeral. After the Great Potato Famine of the mid-1840s, Irish immigrants came to the United States in huge numbers. Due primarily to racism and xenophobia, Irish people were often allowed to apply for only the most dangerous and difficult jobs, including the jobs of firefighter and police officer.

Work-related deaths for firemen and cops were not uncommon, and when one or more of these deaths would occur, the Irish community would hold a traditional Irish funeral, including the mournful bagpipes. Over the years, this tradition spread to firefighters and police officers who were not of Irish descent.

So if it’s an Irish tradition, why are the Scottish bagpipes used?

In short, it’s because the Scottish highland bagpipes are significantly louder than the traditional Irish uillean pipes. Though it’s likely that either or both types of pipes were used at funerals in the 1800s, the Scottish highland pipes are now almost universally used.

Where do they find bagpipers to play at firefighter and police officer’s funerals?

Fire and police departments in most major cities have a special brigade, usually as a division of an Irish fraternal group called The Emerald Society, who learn to play bagpipes and drums for the very purpose of honoring their fallen comrades. In some places, civilians may be members of the pipe and drum band, but generally, the members are active or retired firefighters and police officers.

I think of Celtic music as having four main branches: the dance tunes played on the fiddle, whistle, accordion, and other melody instruments, the harping tradition, songs, and the music of the Highland pipes. Although fingerstyle guitarists have drawn extensively from these first three categories in creating arrangements, the ancient and powerful bagpipes have been largely overlooked as a source for fresh music. In the course of adapting over 250 Celtic tunes for solo guitar, I’ve come across a way to make the six-string actually sound like a set of pipes. So for this issue’s solo, I’d like to offer you a bagpipe arrangement, tell you how I worked it out, and briefly describe the Highland pipe tradition itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Going home after the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s sold-out all-Haydn programme at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London last night, I heard the unmistakable drone and skirl of a bagpiper busking at the bottom of the escalator on the way to the Northern Line in Waterloo. An elderly woman flurried past me in a purple headscarf and a lot of makeup, quickening her pace as she tried to get out of earshot of the pipes. “That’s the last thing I want to hear,” she said to me, “I’ve just been to a Haydn concert”, as if Haydn symphonies and bagpipes belonged to different worlds of human experience, the one rowdy and folkloric, the other rarefied and refined. Read the rest of this entry »

My life has changed. In Shotts, half-way between Glasgow and Edinburgh, I confronted the ear-bleeding intensity of the House of Edgar Shotts and Dykehead Pipe Band in rehearsal. It’s one of the most technically impressive, and loudest, musical experiences I’ve ever had. I used to think pipe bands represented a sort of anti-music, a way of life that was all about competitions, accuracy, and awards, in which so much as single grace note out of place in a jig makes the difference between success and failure, and where the only index of musical value is absolute fidelity to a pre-existing canon of traditional tunes, memorialised and ossified over the centuries into the musical equivalent of a beauty contest: music as surface and commodity rather than novelty or inspiration.

Aye well, I learnt my lesson at the hands of Pipe Major Robert Mathieson, who’s led the Shotts band to a handful of world championship titles over the years (I interviewed him for this week’s Music Matters on Radio 3). Shotts is a band that’s formed in Robert’s image – well, his and Drum Major Jim Kilpatrick’s. Robert and Jim are writing completely new melodies, medleys and arrangements for this year’s competition season, which gets going in May. Read the rest of this entry »