 Mike McQuary practices a piobaireachd.
By Mike McQuary
The term "midlife crisis" is often used in Western societies to describe that period of a person's life during which self-doubt can creep into the "middle years" of life. It's most often a result of sensing the passage of youth and impending old age. We've all heard about the myriad supposed "cures"--motorcycles, sports cars, women, plastic surgery, triathlons, brewing beer and starting newspapers—but there are others less common.
Since I have played music of one kind or another my entire life, and dabbled in various instruments, I figured that learning a new one would be a great and interesting way to usher in post middle age. AND, the effort might contribute to keeping the mind somewhat sharp. (What did Robert Burns say about the "best laid plans of mice and men"?)
I am able to read music. I understand a little about theory, and can tell most of the time if something is out of tune. AND, I have a great appreciation for all things Scottish. So, naturally, the instrument I chose was the bagpipe. How difficult could it be?
The Highland bagpipe, and its cousins, the lowland (small) pipe and shuttle pipe, have a range of only nine notes. The bagpipe scale is "approximately" in the mixolydian mode, from low G to high A. So, it's just a matter of learning the fingering for nine tones and voila! Music is born. Right?
Wrong. I might as well have tried to switch from being right-handed to left-handed. Performing brain surgery on myself with mirrors might also have been easier. After nearly three years of pretty intense practice, I have made progress, sure. Now I am at the level of an average 10-year-old that first picked up the pipes two weeks ago. It could be said that the phrases "beginning piper" and "57-year-old" should not be used at the same time. It has been a steep climb.
Yes, there are only nine notes on the bagpipe chanter, but that is where simplicity ends. For nearly every note in a tune, and certainly for every phrase, there are embellishments. These are pipe equivalents to piano trills and grace notes. They must be played so fast that the individual notes are barely perceptible. Too much for the brain to do. Embellishments must be practiced until the fingers do the thinking. (This is actually good because 57-year-old hands think better than 57-year-old brains.) When performed correctly, they sound a little like a bird chirp and add much color to the piping tune. (They can also sound a lot like the gasping and wheezing of the beginning middle-aged piper.) Pipe embellishments have impossible names like: strikes, throws, grips, birls, cuttings, tachems, shakes, chedres, edres, lemluaths, crunluaths, and my favorite, taorluaths.
The nine-note scale and embellishments make up the melody of a pipe tune, played on the chanter. Unfortunately, the chanter is attached to a bag that also feeds air to three other pipes called drones. Two are tenor and one is a bass. All have reeds much like an oboe. These provide a steady accompaniment to the tune. All four pipes are driven by air pressure that the player creates by blowing into the bag. It can be a very physically demanding exercise, causing near-unconsciousness to over-middle-aged beginners. Did I mention that the blowing and bag pressure must be constant and steady or the drone reeds (which are extremely fickle) will fall out of pitch and sound like a cat fight?
I won't even get into tuning a bagpipe. Just imagine Sisyphus in Greek mythology struggling to muscle the boulder up the hill almost to the top, only to have it roll back down again. Over and over. That is a fair example of how tuning a bagpipe is for a beginner.
If all this sounds a bit complicated, it is. The Highland bagpipe is a very difficult instrument to learn, and they say the learning takes a lifetime. I'd just like to know how long that is? There's more. The tunes. There are slow airs, airs, laments, slow marches, marches in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, and even 9/8 time. There are reels, strathspeys, jigs, hornpipes, and reels that are really hornpipes. Don't ask. Then there is the classical bagpipe music called Piobaireachd (pronounced pee-brick.) Thousands of tunes and so little time for a 57-year-old beginning piper.
Did I mention that the tunes must be memorized to be comfortably played? I cannot memorize phone numbers. I'll keep at it, though, because nothing sounds sweeter than a Highland bagpipe in the right hands.
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