The Piper's Companion

[Bryan Creer]

Derek Hobbs, author of The Piper's Companion series tells me -

In my quest to encourage duet and trio playing of Northumbrian pipes I have prepared demonstrations of all 240 arrangements in the Piper's Companion series and hope that this might be an easy way to get some idea of how the arrangements might sound.

Although these arrangements were first conceived for Northumbrian pipes, they are very suitable for other instruments - I have heard from quite a number of concertina players who like to play the duets in these books.

http://derek367.wix.com/rossleigh-music

I've used them a lot myself.

Bryan

[cboody]

Cool stuff, and good for lots of instruments. It does put the tunes in Northumbrian keys (written G major and sounding F major) which means some of the tunes will not be in the "common" key. But really nice looking and sounding stuff! Thanks for this link.

[Roger Hare]

As a musical illiterate, may I ask whether these tunes are presented in the key of G or the key of F?

I know nowt about piping, so the comment "written G major and sounding F major" has left me a bit

mystified.

 

As it happens, I've already got a couple of the simpler of these tunes under my belt, and am encouraged

by the fact that I seem to have got 'em almost right, so I'm looking seriously at learning more - thank you

for posting the details of this collection.

 

Roger

Edited June 20, 2015 by lachenal74693

[Wolf Molkentin]

Roger, the acknowledgement you're referring to is saying that the tunes are written in G but meant to sound in F because the pipes are transposing instruments (as is f.i. the sax as well). If you don't mind to let them sound one tone higher, go for it and play them just in G. That's at least what I would do for ease of access. However you could transpose certain selected tunes to any key if you should wish so.

 

In short: notated and playable in G.

 

Best wishes - Wolf

[Roger Hare]

In short: notated and playable in G.

 

 

Exactly what I hoped to hear - I hadn't realised that this was what (Northumbrian?) pipes did. Thank you.

 

Roger

 

 

Edited June 20, 2015 by lachenal74693