The style of GHB playing that Scottish migrants took to Australia was quite varied too. Check out Dr. Barry Orme's writings and recordings of Simon Fraser's "pre-modern" pìobaireachd style. Unfortunately, Orme and Fraser's theories about pìobaireachd get into all kinds of seriously woo-woo stuff about the Freemasons, but the music itself is somewhat interesting.ausdag wrote:Ahh...but competition piping is not 'how it's always been done and played'...unlike many Uilleann pipers on this forum who have come from a GHB Competition background, I have done the opposite and after 25+ years playing UPs have, for the past 10 years, been studying and learning to play the Highland pipes (albiet via the smallpipes/lowland tradition and now only in the past two years or so transitioned to a set of GHB), I have been very drawn to the Cape Breton tradition that pre-dates the competition tradition. When I listen to recordings of Cape Breton pipers such as Barry Shears or the MacKenzie brothers, and then hear competition pipers play the same tunes, the Cape Breton piping is far more pleasing to my ear.CorneliusG wrote: the GHB culture fiercely defends the tradition, how it's always been done and played.
The style of piping that early Scottish migrants took to Nova Scotia was quite varied and, if I understand correctly, sometimes came down to family tradition rather than a nationally-recognised "correct" way of piping. A friend of mine who grew up in the competition GHB tradition recently comment to me after I played a few tunes on my highland pipes, that he has recently come to realise that there is more than one way to play the Highland pipes nicely. If only more highland pipers would explore this concept, then they might find the transition to uilleann piping and probably every other piping tradition in the world far less perplexing.
Like other forms of orthodoxy, competitive Scottish piping projects a veneer of "maintaining tradition" when in fact it is fiercely innovative. With regard to tempo, pulse, "standard" fingering, intonation, and pitch, the instrument has changed dramatically over the past 50 years--arguably far more than uilleann pipes have. Go to Ross Anderson's bagpipe page and have a listen to 78 recordings of John MacDonald and Willie Ross playing in the 1910s-20s. Heck, have a listen to some of the videos on YouTube of leading players from 30 years ago. What you hear Donald MacPherson or P.M. Angus MacDonald playing then isn't quite the same as what you'd hear on the competition boards today. The changes have often been subtle but distinctive.
Getting back to uilleann piping, as others have already mentioned, uilleann piping is a high-wire act, and even in ideal conditions, the instrument will not do everything even the most experienced and confident player wants it to do. With archive recordings, people often complain now about squeaks and wayward tuning, but bear in mind that sometimes when some well-intentioned archivist showed up at the door with the tape recorder, the piper in question may not have played in many months. I doubt that when Willie Clancy sat down to play on some of his recordings, he thought to himself "50 years from now, hundreds of pipers all over the world are going to be nitpicking what I'm doing in this tune, and it'll end up starting flame wars on the Internet." As Geoff mentioned, pipes in those days were often not int the best of shape. I've heard it said that towards the end of his life Séamus Ennis's pipes were barely playable at all.