This is a great 6/8 pipe march composed by Pipe Major Donald Shaw Ramsay and dedicated to Mrs Lily Christie, wife of PM Jim Christie of Wick. PM Ramsay originally wrote the tune for Jim, but learned that there was already a tune for Jim, so Mrs Christie became the recipient of the tune! My version is on my octave with guitar backing.
Very jaunty, making the pipe band skip and hop over swords sticking out of the ground in a somewhat licentious manner
I never cease to wonder at the verbal gymnastics you regularly perform in your comments, Bertram. This one is no exception, being jaunty and licentious. You brighten our days! Thanks.
Nice tune, John, and I like it played on the OM. Following Bertram’s comments, from here on I shall be imaging sword dancing pipers when I listen to ‘Scottish’ tunes.
Fine musical interpretation with good continuity and flow. I can imagine you giving a very honorable performance of this tune at a session, John. No need for swords there.
You are the master of hammered on grace notes. John!
Thanks, all. The octave gives more scope for using hammer-ons and its better sustain helps with the pipe tunes,as the bagpipe notes sound for as long as they are being fingered and the drones are a constant backing sound.
You make the tune sound as if it were never intended for anything but the mandolin family.
Thanks, Dennis. Much appreciated. Hope you are fully recovered from your Covid isolation now.
Fun tune with hammer ons for days! Love it!
Thanks, Frank. Glad you enjoyed the tune.
Very fine John. I could march to that, with maybe a little hippie interpretive dancing thrown in when no one was watching. No swords though.
Thanks once again, Don.
Great tune indeed and so nicely played by ye John!
Many thanks, Jill. Looking forward to your own next posting.
A fiddler asked if I knew this at a session the other night, and I said I'd heard someone play it recently but didn't know it. He was quizzing me as to who that was, since he'd learned it at a fiddle workshop somewhere and hadn't come across anyone in Aberdeen playing it, and I couldn't for the life of me think of who at the sessions was playing it. Then just now I realised it was John on here!
Bren, this is just like the man who dreamt he ate a giant marshmallow, and when he awoke his pillow was gone... Such is musical memory, and it explains why so many tunes carry the name not of the composer but of the person you learned them from.
Bertram and Bren, this is a very common phenomenon with lots of us. The first time I heard that great 2/4 march The Balkan Hills it was played to us by one of our session regulars who is a piper and accordionist, and for a week or two we just called it Gordon's tune as he brought it to our attention. Link to it here: https://youtu.be/tPogXXE2EvA It is interesting that we all have certain tunes we know well and have memorised but somehow the title evades us. Maybe we can blame advancing years, though in my case it has been there a long time!
There is a saying in our sessions: if you can remember the names of tunes, you're not playing enough of them yet. I once met a player who completely had given up on naming, refused to answer questions like "can you play Swallowtail Jig?" and would say "just start playing".
My example is another facet really: can remember the name of the tune, and having heard it and liked it - but not how it goes or who played it. Also how you fictional internet people are intruding into memories of real life. :-) Or ... can it be ... you are real?
Bren, all fictional characters can appear in real life. I once saw Beavis and Butthead in a hotel bar in Denver, Co.
Therein lies one of life's great philosophical enigmas, Bren and Bertram. As Descartes put it (originally in French) Cogito, ego sum - I think, therefore I am. In our case we post, therefore we are. Or are we? How did a pipe march develop into this thread?
It's like a Flann O'Brien novel.
I wasn't aware of Flann O'Brien , just ordered one of his books, might be a brother in spirit. Thanks for the hint, Bren.
I also love that Descartes originally in French is speaking Latin.
Indeed, Latin could steer us back to Scotland in the Scottish kings' motto "Nemo Me Impune Lacessit" ("you better save your ass, 'cause I won't)
When shall we three meet again, B and B? Just bringing in Macbeth here after Bertram's quoting of the motto of the Royal Household of Scotland. I believe our friend René turned from "Je pense, donc je suis" to Latin to add more gravitas to his proposition. Bertram, I love your translation of the Scottish motto. In Scots we have it as "Wha daur meddle wi me". Amazing where a pipe march can transport us to in the SAW Group. Time for this thread to expire gracefully?