Random Piping Video

A search of YouTube for the word "bagpipes" turns up thousands of hits.  If you sort the results by date posted you'll find dozens of new bagpipe videos posted just within the last few hours.  There's a bunch of crap out there, but there are also some real gems.  This post is not about one of the gems. 

Below is a random piping video.  Watch it, then read below for my comments.



This guy is actually not a bad piper for a street musician.  There's many who are terrible (like this one), but this guy's technique is actually pretty good. I didn't recognize the first tune, but the second tune (starts at 0:16) is a standard 6/8 march called The Piobaireachd of Donald Dubh.  He plays it pretty quick and his expression is a little round, but his technique is solid.  What bugs me about this particular piper is his transition between tunes.  It sounds like he stops the first tune in the middle of a part and plays some birls and stuff (with a big choke) before launching into the second tune.  I hate it (hate it, hate it, hate it) when pipers just stop in the middle of a tune; if you don't know the tune, you shouldn't be playing it in public!  That's one of my primary  pet peeves about piping in public places: play passable passages between pieces (wow, that was alliterative).  If you're playing in public, you should have enough foresight to pick a tune to play after the one you're playing now, and you should be able to pick it a part or so in advance. 

So on the overall, nicely done piper fellow, just make sure you finish those tunes and work on decent transitions!