bending aluminum mesh

[ThomasPowers]

Actually bagpipes are to be found wherever  the Celts had been; including northern Spain and Turkey; there are several different types of bagpipes as well.  I once went to a pipe-in held in the concrete basement of a church: walls, floors and ceiling---all concrete.  Took a couple of days for my ears to recover.  Massed piping does better on a battlefield or the open moor in my experience.  Piobaireachd can be really eerie in lonely places at dawn or dusk.

[Frosty]

Okay, I've heard "Finnegan's Wake" and "The Sick Note" before, at the recommendation of you guys I'm sure. I'm not a fan of, "Dropkick Murphy's" just not my sound.

You know the last time I started listening to Irish folk songs I got completely lost in the rabbit holes. Just listening to different artist's versions of one song is good for an hour. 

I like bagpipes too but Deb can only take maybe a minute. Years ago there were maybe a dozen pipers at the Scottish Games and they lined up at the fence in front of the stands and played Amazing Grace. I'd walked down and was standing at the fence. It was AWESOME! There were drums to but I don't really remember them. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Deimos]

Nothing wrong with a little bagpipe from time to time, love it in Corvus Corax, In Extreme, Eluveitie to name a few. But the instrument that really gets me every time is a Hurdy Gurdy

[BillyBones]

I misunderstood when you asked if it was a drinking song. My bad. 

From my understanding the bagpipes originated in Turkey but who knows. Provably kind of like trying to figure out where the drum came from. 

We have a Celtic festival every year the just so happens to coincide on my birthday. Gaelic Storm comes and plays 3 nights for free usually. What has always amazed me is just how many people actually own kilts. 

I am not a fan of heavy metal either, one of my daughters likes that stuff. I tend to lean more towards country and western or bluegrass. Always bluegrass on Sundays. Love hearing Bill Monroe sing gospel. 

[Frosty]

The origin story I recall that was more than an oral tradition and carried some documentation has bagpipes being derived from Egyptian pipes. When exactly they acquired the bladder seems to have been about the time Rome entered the scene. It was in question whether the bag was added pre Roman influence or it was added by the Romans. 

The "reason" surmise was it was too expensive or difficult to maintain pipers in sufficient numbers that could play well together. Evidently it's pretty hard for multiple pipers to "harmonize." The addition of the bag allowed one piper to play several pipes at once and produce the desired harmony. (drone)

There have been pipes found in various archeological sites that are essentially reed pipes like those on a bag pipe. There are pictures/paintings of pipes externally the same in Minoan ruins. Some really well preserved like Akrotiri, buried in ash when Thera erupted. 

My supposition is reed pipes of this type were very common in the Mediterranean and places probably within a couple thousand miles. I haven't seen pictures of bags until we get to Rome and the Roman empire would've spread them everywhere.  

I find the story plausible enough to believe. Lords of smaller courts who couldn't afford to keep enough trained musicians could afford a Bag piper and his events could sound as cool as those of a richer lord.

Hmmm?

O'Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I love the pipes and drums. Have a good (clean) joke about a piper but not sure if I should put it here.

[Frosty]

It's been so long since I read or heard anything about a hurdy gurdy I had to look it up. Weird instrument, I understand how one could get to a guy. The below link is to a youtube video I think explains the things pretty well and goes into why droning instruments were so common. According to him bag pipes were played in Ancient Greece. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv52jaxkHPw

I like my rock and roll but dearly love blue grass. . . "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" for bagpipe and hurdy gurdy?  

O'Frosty The Lucky. 

[BillyBones]

I do not have one particular kind of music that i would say is my favorite, but there is one i can not stand. It just dont make me want to do no hippity hoppin. It depends on my mood for the day as to what i put the radio on. I will listen to about everything from big band to zydeco. My grandmother on my moms side was a piano teacher and her love was jazz. Even though she died when i was quite young she gave me an appreciation for music. Her opinion was it is all good music if it stirs emotion or just makes you feel good. 

A couple months ago i was in a Calypso phase. The guys i work with started hang pics of bananas on my tool box and the like. I would stand at my machine in my own world dancing a little and singing Harry Belafonte. 

The Hooligans did a cover of "Whiskey Before Breakfast", no bag pipes though. 

[JHCC]

When I was in college, the Tannahill Weavers did a concert in the big chapel on campus, which is world-renowned for the liveliness and clarity of the acoustics.

Some idiot decided to mike the bagpipes.

Maybe that's where the tinnitus came from....

21 hours ago, Frosty said:

You know the last time I started listening to Irish folk songs I got completely lost in the rabbit holes. Just listening to different artist's versions of one song is good for an hour. 

I have an iTunes playlist that is every recording available there of "Carolan's Concerto". Good smithing music.

[JHCC]

21 hours ago, Deimos said:

But the instrument that really gets me every time is a Hurdy Gurdy

2 hours ago, Frosty said:

It's been so long since I read or heard anything about a hurdy gurdy I had to look it up. Weird instrument, I understand how one could get to a guy.

If you like the hurdy gurdy, you’ll LOVE the nyckelharpa! It’s very similar, but played with a bow rather than a rosined wheel.  

Here’s Swedish musician Torbjörn Näsbom playing one of my favorite pieces by J.S. Bach:

And here’s some more traditional style music from Danish musician Amalie Bruun of Mykur (NOT one of her black metal performances):

 

[Frosty]

That doesn't need brass or gears to be the most steam punk stringed instrument I've ever seen. 

Next different instrument?

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Well there is always the Pandemonium mentioned in Prof Schickele's works on P.D.Q. Bach:

From  schickele.com/pdqbio.htm

P.D.Q. Bach once said that his illustrious father gave him no training in music whatsoever, and it is one of the few things he said that we can believe without reservation.  His rebelliousness was such, in fact, that he avoided music as much as possible until he was well into his thirties (as a teenager he did assist in the construction of the loudest instrument ever created, the pandemonium, but he wisely skipped town before the instrument’s completion, having sensed with uncanny accuracy, that the Pavilion of Glass was perhaps not the most felicitous location for the inaugural concert).  But by the mid 1770s he realized that, given his last name, writing music was the easiest thing he could do, and he began composing the works that were to catapult him into obscurity.

[Frosty]

THOMAS! Ouch, my eyes hurt! 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Deimos]

JHCC, both those piece are beautiful. got love a bit of classical music from time to time. (my brain is not wired all the way normal, one moment I listen to the heaviest metal possible, then go to electro swing, and then go to classical music)

This is my all time favorite piece, every time I listen to it I get goosebumps. 

This is one of my favorite Hurdy Gurdy pieces, the drone gets me to a very deep place when I meditate.

The people who invented this instrument where insane, to invent something with so many moving parts.

[JHCC]

I once had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Schikele and chatting with him in a record store (remember those?) in NYC. I bought a copy of "Oedipus Tex", which he was kind enough to autograph for me.

[ThomasPowers]

I've seen him 3 times live,  each time in a different state now that I think of it and have an autographed copy of his PDQ Bach Biography.

[Will-I-am]

That Gurdy guy jams.  He is the joe satriani of that instrument.  I played guitar since a teenager and appreciate his skill.

[BillyBones]

Weird instruments.

Since we talked about Mickey Hart earlier i will bring up "The Beam". A 12' piece of aluminum c-channel strung with piano wire. Played as a percussion instrument. All the string are tuned the same but in different octaves.(i think that is the terms, i like music but i aint no music scholar) Gives a very low resonance. 

And since we like to play with fire dont forget the Pyrophone. And organ powered by combustion. 

[Frosty]

I agree, that hurdy gurdy piece would be good to meditate too Deimos, I listened to it and just came back. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Will-I-am]

Yes Mr Bones, the beam!  I saw them with their new band at the gorge amphitheater in washington a few years ago with the new kid taking Jerry's spot; excellent.  The beam was always in the "space" section of their concerts, very cool sound.