Part three of this interview can be found here.

 

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WMcC - But to get back to music: We don’t always talk about music. What is musical to one person might not be musical to another. And sometimes that’s conditioning as well.

JDH - A lot of it is conditioning.

WMcC - You’ve got to be real really aware of that conditioning when you’re listening to people playing and that you’re not being biased because you don’t play that way yourself, or you weren’t brought up to play that way. You’ve got to be very careful when you’re assessing, listening, trying to enjoy somebody else’s playing.

JDH - I would think it’s almost a learning moment.

WMcC - Aye! It is! Some days you hearing somebody playing and there’s one variation and you think, “Ah. I like that. How different is that from what I do?”

You know, sometimes you’re struggling with something, and you’ve nearly got it, but it just doesn’t feel right. And you hear somebody playing it, and you go, “Now I know what I need to do!”

That’s part of the learning process.

And even if you think you’ve gotten something right, you hear somebody else you and you, “I really like that!” Then you go, “What was it I really liked? What were they doing that I’m not? And if I try it, will it be better?” And sometimes you try it, and you realize, “Ah, that didn’t work for ME,” or “Aye, I’m keeping it like that!”

JDH - It’s alive.

WMcC - It’s gotta be. I mean, there’s certain rule, overall rules in music, in pibroch, that have to exist. That’s the way I look at it. But within that is a lot of scope.

What I don’t like are things that are programmed. People can get really rigid about how they would play a phrase or variation. And when you hear that sometimes it leaves you cold. They’re trying to do something with the phrasing, and it ends up almost mechanical. And I hear that sometimes, it doesnt’ work, because it stops the flow of the phrase. I hear a lot of that. People are trying to do something, or are overdoing or not really understanding.

But some people think that’s the way it should be, and if you don’t do it that way, they don’t like it.

JDH - There’s that almost everywhere. I think what worries me is the predominant sense of a lack of inquisitiveness when playing pibroch.

I can hear people who are just not inquisitive. I’ve been to games recently and was listening to grade one pipers, and maybe one out of the seven I heard play at that games did so in a way that suggested she had thought about it. You could hear it in her playing. It had nothing to do with technique. It was something else.

WMcC - She had the song in the music.

JDH - Everyone else just played by the numbers.

WMcC - I think sometimes the tune is leaving you cold because there’s no flow, no color in the variation. Not that you want people to do anything way out, but you want them to see something in the tune and have a plan of what they are trying to do. Some of them are just starting a tune and moseying their way through it, but there’s no real overall plan. And they get to the end of it, but in between times there’s not been not a lot of thought about what they’re trying to put across in the tune.

Maybe they just don’t switch on from the start. That’s quite common.

JDH - The thing that I’m doing isn’t to go wild in pibroch, but to use these primary source manuscripts as evidence of an idiom that was broader than what we are hearing today.

WMcC - I understand exactly what you’re doing, and there’s a huge value in that.

What I like doing when I’m looking at a new tune, or some tune I’ve never played. I usually try and find out all the sources. Because sometimes you might look at the one that printed in the PS Book, and you think, “Okay, that’s good, but that note there they’ve written out as long, I’d like to play it short.” Or might think, “Ah, but everybody plays that long, but if I played that short and made the next note long, it’d make musical sense.” And what I’ll do I’ll maybe get some of the manuscripts out and I’ll look at what Angus MacKay’s manuscript was, what Donald Macdonald’s manuscript was, what Daivd Glen’s book may have. I’ll get as many of these and lay them all out and look and maybe I’ll see, “Ah! He does that as well! What else does he do? Maybe I’m only taking that phrase. What does he in the next phrase? Yes, he does that in the next phrase as well.” And it might amount to two or three notes in a ground, but then I can see it makes sense.

Or might not have a clue what to do. I might look at the book and look at the setting, and go, “I can’t make anything of that.” So I’ll go and look at the overall color of what Macdonald or MacKay or William Ross: how are they doing that as timing? Was that what they really wanted to do? So they’re playing a phrase, and that’s different, and that’s different…that makes sense.” Because you can see the phrase right though to the end.” So there’s a value to that, and sometimes that gives you a starter.

And there might be other tunes where you look at the setting itself and notes of the setting, which may be different the ones in the PS book, and you think, “That’s so much more musical. I’m going to play that setting.” Sometimes I’ll play the setting, but not play all the wee individual timings of the individual embellishments. That’s not always important. The setting may be better. The individual variations might be nicer, might be different.

So I think for me, quite often that’s what I like to do, without going the whole hog. I mean, I’ve gone whole hog before, at the Donald MacDonald competition. And I like doing that. It’s all part of broadening your approach. You know, if I never played in that competitions, I’d have been much poorer for not doing it, because it did open something that I’d never really considered at all.

I mean, I’ve looked at the notes in the PS Book about Donald MacDonald, but I wouldn’t have really given it another thought, because quite often the notes in the PS Book don’t really convey what Donald MacDonald’s manuscript or book was telling you. There’d be “this was an E and that was a…” but it didn’t really make much mention of the rhythm of the movements. So, because it didn’t do that, you didn’t really think much more about it. There’s a wee number above the note, “What does that mean? Oh, right, okay…” and you’d just ignore it.

So, I think looking at the other settings has been good. I really like that.

It was David Murray that contacted me first before playing in that competition. Really really helpful in sending me stuff and wee hints about what this was about and wee bits of information that really helped.

He’s great man of piping. Very much admired within the community. Every time I’ve ever met, he was really really good to me. He always had stuff to say that was of great interest.

I like to do that. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

JDH - What turned me on to your playing was when I picked up the Sister’s Lament (PS 023) in Hannay-MacAuslan and was wondering what to do with it. I went looking around for a recording and found yours, a CD from the “World’s Greatest Pipers” Series . At about the same time I became aware of your win at the Macdonald Quaich.

The Sisters Lament ‘s such a unique pibroch. 5 movements, no taorluath or crunluath. Wonderfully different. Unexpected. That’s when I came to realize, there was a lot more to pibroch than I (or many others) had any idea about.

WMcC - There’s a wee story about Sister’s Lament. Originally I played that tune at the Donald MacDonald Quaich as it was written out by Donald MacDonald. ( I wish I had a recording of it, because it was one of these ones that went really really well.) So, the first time I played that setting, that was exactly the way I played it.

And then when I did that CD I recorded it and I didn’t really like it. And the other tune I recorded was The Finger Lock. I just didn’t like the sound of it. I didn’t like my pipes. I didn’t like the mix of the drones and chanter. It couldn’t be fixed. It was just was recorded all wrong. It took two days and scrapped it. I just didn’t like it, and it never went out. I don’t play that way, and I don’t like to play that way. So, I binned the whole thing and did it again.

And so, somewhere in the house there’s a Sister’s Lament with original timings. I’m thinking it was original timings as per Donald Macdonald. So at some time you can nag me.

When I went back, I did it in one day, almost the whole thing in one take. Because I was determined that it was going to be better. And the pipe was better, and I was trying to be fresh with everything in terms of playing the right way the first time, no messing about. I think, sometimes when you do a recording and you have to do it two or three times, there’s no music left.

So, the first recording might be there somewhere. I’ll have a wee look.

Sometimes you have a cupboard. Everybody’s got a cupboard in the house where it’s full of old cassettes and CDs and all sorts of stuff. I have recordings off the wireless before Pipeline: sometimes it was Seamus MacNeill, sometimes it was Fred Morrison Sr. It was great stuff. But the quality was really really poor on these cassettes, because the recoding equipment wasn’t great. I always remember that, Weds night at 6.

I learned tunes off these cassettes, you know. When I didn’t have the music for them. Not pibroch so much, just light music. And I would learn stuff, because I really liked what it was. Didn’t have any manuscript.

So I’ve got loads of these cassettes. It’s just a case of one day I’ll dig through them and send them.

The best pibroch I ever heard in my life was Sister’s Lament. I know we talked about Unjust Incarcertation, but in 1986 I was in summer school. It was the first year I was playing in the Gold Medal, so I went there to try to beef up my medal tunes. The instructors were Hugh MacKay, Duncan Macfayden, Donald Morrison and Cpt John Maclellan. So I got lots and lots that week.

Then they had a recital on Thursday night, and Hugh played the Sister’s Lament (Angus MacKay’s version). It was stunning. And when he stopped, there was just silence. It was so emotional.

Donald Morrison said at the end, “Doesn’t that just make you want to cry?”

JDH - A lovely way to end this. Thank you for your time!