We are pleased to announce the long-awaited APC Guide to Pibroch. It is the culmination of all the work done here at the website, and now available for free download in AppleBooks here.

You can also download a standalone version, as well as a PDF of it, from here.

It can be viewed on an iOS device with Apple Books on iOS 12 or late or a Mac with OS X 10.9 or later.

For Windows users, you will need to use Firefox and EPUBReader.plugin.

In it, we:

• advocate for the musical and interpretive insights and advantages of encountering the primary source materials, allowing them to show the breadth and depth of expression and interpretation that exists in the tradition
• provide a survey of all primary source collections, including non-piping sources, from before 1854
• elaborate on “APC Rules” for interpreting pibroch as a means by which to get at the “music behind the score”
• show and explain in detail all the embellishments and motifs that exist in the primary source materials, including examples of all variants from the major collections, and develop exercises on how to perform them
• offer insights into the editorial process undertaken in the Piobaireachd Society Collection, demonstration how these scores are tertiary sources, not primary
• give an example of how to recover a “damaged” urlar, by finding the song* behind the staff notation
• take you through an interpretive example, from the Hannay-MacAuslan, where we allow the unique aspects of the score to teach us a new approach to a familiar tune
• also lay out a possible approach to translating and performing a tune only found in the Campbell Canntaireachd

The first of its kind to utilize the advances of eBook publication technology, the book contains embedded sound files, image clips from original sources, videos and interactive scores. With future improvements and elaborations already planned, the eBooks format allows you to download updates without having to worry about being stuck with an out-of-date version.

Beautifully designed, this 131-page volume is intended for advanced players who are familiar with pibroch tunes and embellishments, but are looking for ways to ease into reading and performing from the original source materials.