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I was aware of Ross Ainslie a bit before he came to Celtic Colours here in Cape Breton last year, but didn't know much about him really. Loved what I heard last year, with Brighde Chaimbeul and Steven Byrnes, Ross and Brighde playing smallpipes. Also saw Steven with Kate Rusby. (Sidenote: Steven looks to me like a badass Music Elf dragged out of some Tolkien trad pub, meaning that as a compliment).

I've been getting deeper into his music, and his whistle playing, especially with Ali Hutton.... their CD Symbiosis, and now I'm starting to listen deeper to Symbiosis II. I really like how pipers approach the whistle.... I know there is a thread on here that says not much in the way of technique transfers over, not GHB anyway, but their approach seems different to me. Not what I'm used to, and as a lot of the music is fast and intricate, it's challenging.

Anyway, I found Ross and Ali have been putting up slow versions of some of the tunes off the CD's on Facebook , with dots for some of them. There are at least eight pieces of sheetmusic on FB, maybe more, and there are more on Ali's website. It's a bit challenging, because the names of the tracks on the CD are not necessarily easy to attach to the tune names, without the liner notes (I'm listening to the tunes on Spotify until I get the CD's, but The Session has all the tunes listed). For example, the track Sisters is two Ali tunes named Eva's and Aliyah's (his nieces), and that tune is listed on his website here: https://alihutton.com/tunes/. There may be a lot more there.

The ones on FB are kind of hard to find.... I have a minimal and reluctant membership there (they think I am a border collie named Oengus), and I'm not great at finding them, but, if you search on there for #STEMZ or STEMZ you will find some unrelated stuff, and the videos of Ross and sometimes Ali doing slowish version of the tunes... the dots may be in separate posts, or, they may be in the comments to the videos. It's very educational to watch what they are doing in somewhat-slow motion. If this link works, it should take you to 'Kings of the Mountain' from the second CD https://www.facebook.com/rossandali/pos ... 6317698503.

Cheers.

I'm not familiar with his playing, but for sure back in the 70s when I got to playing uilleann pipes and whistle I did notice that the pipers I was listening to, for example Finbar Furey, played whistle in a distinctive way.

They played with a more ornamented style. The most interesting part was these ornaments weren't ones that they did on pipes, just on whistle.

For example double-cut rolls, that these piper's whistle playing would be peppered with, but when playing pipes they used rarely.

About ITM musicians posting themselves playing tunes slowly, or writing out their tunes, be aware that in most cases I've heard the musicians play the tunes differently when playing them slow, and write out their tunes quite differently than they play them. I'm speaking in general, I'm not familiar with the people you're talking about.

Sure, they may not play it exactly as they do at speed, but it's worth looking at.

As to who they are, they were both students from an early age of Gordon Duncan, and both came up through the Vale of Atholl pipe band. I think it's fair to say they are carrying that Duncan influence forward. They both play in multiple groups.... both in the Treacherous Orchestra, Hutton is in Old Blind Dogs etc.

This is an intro to them playing some of the tunes off the CDs I mentioned. Ainslie is the taller one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnEOMn4UHK0

Ainslie plays GHB, but also border pipes and smallpipes. He plays a lot with Jarlath Henderson (uillean pipes), and here he is on smallpipes with Brighde Chaimbeul from Skye. They were here in Cape Breton last year for Celtic Colours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8gDqZ_hW3k