strathspey@strathspey.org:11741

Malcolm and Helen Brown

Re: Dancing to pipes - or not!

April 22, 1998, 11:08 p.m. (Message 11741, in reply to message 11692)

Greetings Ron - Dad replying as Duncan was only home for the weekend!

I suspect that when we hear recordings with overpowering drums it
is caused by the recording engineer more than the musicians.

I remember one evening when Peter and Pat Clark came round to make
a recording with Alasdair and Duncan for use with Boughs of Holly - 
i.e. a 32 bar set of Christmas Carols/Songs - we finished up with
Duncan in the hall, with the others in the lounge just to reduce
the drum level, and he was only using the normal dance band type
side drum on a stand (& not his pipe band snare drum!). 

We were all strongly influenced by the Border Reivers dance band
nearly 20 years ago (we went to France with them), and at the
time they had a young drummer called Gordon Smith - he is on several
recordings with other more recent bands. He had learnt his drumming 
in a pipe band, and had sufficient control to play along with the
tune.  As a consequence this is how Duncan likes to play - you need
to have skill, and to know the tunes, but then you have an additional
instrument in the band, instead of a metronome.

Anyway, to get to the more important part, Helen, Duncan and I are
planning to spend weeks 3 & 4 in St Andrews, but we will have to wait &
see whether your room will be big enough or whether we need to book the
party room! (I wonder why the others are going weeks 1 & 2 - are
we missing something?)

   
Malcolm

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