I saw this as a topic on IrTrad & thought it would be good for thesession.org too.
When I first was learning fiddle I took some lessons from some people who in turn learned from folks from Co. Sligo. These first lessons were formative. I do branch out & learn other tunes from other styles. When I do it's usually something I learned at a session or a recording. I don't learn it note for note & be a perfectionist about the whole thing, I let it settle into how it comes out of me.
I have caught myself trying to ape the playing of certain heros & I try to nip it in the bud. It's a fine line between being influenced & aping. For example I went to a session where they played the first Bothy Band album through. It was kind of annoying - than they went for the second album - that was way too far. If i wanted that I would have sat home bought a six pack & played along with those albums. That's the biggest extreme of aping I've ever seen or heard. Granted it's usually not taken that far. Where is that line between playing some Bothy Band or Coleman sets & just aping someone?
Good heavens. Sounds like one of those things that's a great idea if you're well on into the pints -- then you wake up the next morning and go, "what the ---".
Well, I have to say that I've done my fair share of slowing down recordings to figure out exactly *what* some fiddler was doing. I learned a lot from doing it. But everyone should gradually develop their own style, of course.
I guess if you don't put anything of yourself into the tune, then it's aping. Hmmm. I'll have to think about it.
..... leads straight thru aping (.. but I agree: If a hole session replays records note by note with rolls and trebbles and grace notes and all something went wrong!)
... I really fell in love with the tunes, when I heard the set "Bucks of Oranmore/Eileen Curran/Jimmy over the moor" by Hayes/Cahill the first time. I started searching the tunes as sheet music. The first and second was easy to find, but playing them as noted was boring in many aspects. So I burned a slowed down Hayes-file and practised playing exactly like him (and started transcribing the third tune, which I couldn
Gee, if you're gonna do it, the Bothy Band ain't too bad a chimp to ape....
It can be fun to play a set or two, spread over the course of a night, along the blueprint laid down by some great player, but I can't imagine doing a whole album that way, at least not in public. Kind of like those Japanese bands that imitate the Beatles (or, to get really ugly, Elvis impersonators).
But as a learning tool, in the privacy of your own living room, I think it helps a lot to learn a tune note for note the way some "better" player does it. Once you've got it, you can add your own ideas, but you'll be a more "informed" player.
I guess the other question this raises is WHY you're aping. If it's to learn, or because you absolutely love someone's particular version of a tune, no problem. I'm not so endeared, however, by people who haul out Coleman note for note just to show off that they can do it. At a session, I like it when the focus is on the music, not the musicians. And in a performance, I'd rather hear the artist play like themselves than try to impress me by rehashing someone else's ideas.
Some of the better players are quite good at imitating the other A-tier players, but they know not to do it on stage. At Kevin Burke's workshop last fall, he imitated himself (sort of exaggerating his trademark rhythmic pulse), then played the same tune a la Martin Hayes (and if you closed your eyes, you'd swear Martin was in the room), and then sawed into a Donegal John Doherty style, all just to make a point that bowing matters.
I'd love to be able to ape. I'm good with the notes, but find it next to impossible to mimic bowing patterns. Even if I nail it for an afternoon a stiff wind could blow it all out of my head and I'd be back to playing like myself again. better, but still myself.
Kerri, I was thinking the same thing yesterday...that when I hear a tune played exceptionally well I often think, "I could die happy if I could learn to do it like that." As a recreational player, I'm happy just to learn another good tune. I'm ecstatic if I can get it to sound half as good as the hotshots on their recordings. If it takes a little aping to get there, why should I worry? I learned the Silver Spear from Kevin Burke years ago and I still play it with all of his little variations, triplets and rolls where Burke puts them. I tinkered with it at one point, but it sounded better to my ear the way I first learned it. So I do it that way--I just haven't heard a nicer version.
So aping is a good thing when we use it to reach for improvement or when, as amateurs, it suits our tastes better than anything else. Of course, in the long run most of us are going to end up sounding like ourselves--for better or worse--anyway.
Will, I've just lately reached a new level where I'm able to slightly vary a tune with each cycle through without thinking too much about it. It's amazing. At the moment, most of them are just narrowly averted mistakes, but finally I don't have to think "OK, bow goes up, bow goes down, bow goes up, bow goes down, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand triplet." I more get to just listen and think "Hey that was neat! What did I just do there? Oh well, no matter. Here comes that long, drawn out d - let's see what happens to it this time." I think this is musical nirvana for ITM. Just pop a tune into your head and press play and the tune never comes out the same way twice.
Oh, right, what does that have to do with aping or influence? well, good question, Kerri, let me explain:
Through years of mimicry and emulation I've amassed a big mental file of notes for my left hand and another of rhythm and ornamentation for my right hand. My brain tells my hands "OK, now we must do THIS! Work together now, we are trying to make THIS sound. OK hands, the eyes and ears are telling me that's not quite right." Rarely, but with increasing frequency, there are shining moments when my brain can go for a coffee while the hands self-supervise. When this happens, my playing is "influenced" by all the players I ever "aped", but I am no longer strictly "aping".
So another way to think about aping is to call it "*not* reinventing the wheel."
This what what musicians mean when they talk about knowing your chops. There are hundreds of little variations you can do to a note or a phrase in ITM, and if you listen to good players, you'll eventually hear all of them. Mimic them, and these chops become your own, and then you can use them to suit your own personal taste (informed as it is by all those years of listening). The more chops you have in your repertoire, and the more attuned your sensibilities to the music, the more developed your style will be.
Aping? Or building on the inventiveness and insight of the people who've played before us.... And even if you don't play often or well enough to actually *build* on it, at least you can participate in maintaining or nurturing the tradition along.
As a writer, I've decided that I don't have an original thought in my head--I'm always aping someone else's ideas. But so are nearly all of the other people out there making a living as writers. And few of us spend any time re-inventing grammar, vocabulary, syntax, etc. So what makes each of us worthwhile and interesting as writers is how we use these time-tested tools and worn out ideas to talk about life in our time, from our point of view. I don't think traditional music is much different.
If we were more interested in pushing the musical envelope, we'd be bashing away on "found" electronically sampled instruments (or a Chapman Stick) in 7/13 time through 10-foot high speakers. And probably making money doing it.
It's a generally accepted principle in music that you must first copy slavishly before you strike out on your own.
You pay your dues by transcribing Coltraine in Jazz or whatever style you are trying to master.
The feeling is that only by "putting your fingers where the masters put them" can you get a true
understanding of what the music is. Some of us will never get past this stage and that's ok.
We'll enjoy sounding a little bit like our heroes. You true budding artists out there will spend time learning
from the masters and then move on to new ideas of your own. A new style is born! Its much easier to
innovate in a style when you understand it. How many of us have heard musicians from other styles
who play "A little Irish," but really don't at all? Inow step down from my soapbox and return the floor to wise
voices.
I never felt this way, Joe. In fact, this was one of the things that irritated me the most in bebop. If everybody thought this way, jazz would never have been invented. It's good to learn how other people do things, but it's also good to always have an itch for doing it your own way. Music is a dialogue between you and the composer or the tradition and, if you're lucky, your audience. Imitation may be a learning technique, but it's so much better to develop your own voice. Of course, this doesn't mean that when playing in a session you have the freedom to start doing crazy variations; that goes without saying.
I think Joe and Glauber are both right, except that Irish music doesn't seem to rest on many "generally accepted principles." This is music from the ground up, some of it from people living and playing in relative isolation with no one around to slavishly copy. So they made it up and did whatever worked.
That said, isn't it more efficient and even effective to follow a better player's lead? I'm sure most of those isolated folks would've been at the elbow of any decent, friendly traveling player who happened across their doorway....
I've absorbed more than I've tried to emulate anyone in particular, I've met few ITM players that have actively tried to play just like someone. I heard a story about a great fiddler who was hellbent on sounding like Peoples than he just accepted he never would. He has the talent & drive to do it, he just gave up on it & realised he's having more fun playing his own music. I think his playing surpases Tommy Peoples playing. He doesn't have any style that reaches out & makes you say he's playing a certain regional style but his playing is rock solid. I guess he turned all of that energy into playing well & lerning a bjillion tunes, at any rate I think any good musician grows their own wings eventually. Like I said before I've met very few playes who go after one player alone, there's way too much good music so easily available on CD's etc that I wonder how anyone can get hooked on one player & one player alone. It is good to have a good player around to listen to first hand when your first starting out, when I was learning my teacher would let me sit in on the sessions & just watch & listen. I learned a lot from those sessions & he was patient with questions & requests. I would ape his playing if I could but I think it's just beyond me, but i often use variations I learned from listening.
Glauber your right about the Jazz thing but I don't know how applicable the jazz to ITM relationship is. Jazz is about inovation where ITM is more about tradition. The drawing of outside influences into ITM does happen but it is slow at best. Outside of the Banjo & Bouzouki there have been few "outside" instruments accepted in the last 100 years much less new dance rhythms or funky accompaniment. Jazz went from Barrelhouse piano to Kenny G & Sun Ra in less than a hundred years, it's a more accepting form of music, I'm not taking away anything from the musicianship of jazz players - everyone has there own favorites in Jazz, but it is a much more freely accepting kind of music than ITM.
Jazz is divided in many tribes who are very loyal to their stuff. I think it's becoming an intellectualized and over-dissected thing, and few kids these days go for jazz. IrTrad has the pure high energy of old jazz, without the stuckuppiness of modern jazz. Plus, Kenny G plays Irish too! !!!
(Actually, Kenny is as good an Irish musician as he is a jazzer. Dig?)
Oh lord, point taken there, Glauber...hehehe...Brad, have you never heard mainline jazz players talking about Kenny G? Yipes. Never call him jazz round jazz types unless you want your head bit off... Not that he doesn't make just fine music, but most jazz musicians react the same way as most ITM players might react to an Old-Time fiddler being held up as a shining example of ITM.
Not that your point isn't taken as well, Brad. Heh.
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery so I've been told.
I am probably lacking the exact meaning of "Aping" so forgive me if my comments miss the mark completely.
Most really good players I've talked to don't mind their form being coppied, probably because they know they can't be duplicated exactly. I'm sure there are a few very talented individuals who can copy the notes and strokes to a "T" but for the most part I think were a bit like snow flakes. Every one will play a bit different no matter how hard they try. (Course you might think I'm just plain flaky)
As for sitting around at a session and playing tunes straight off recordings "Aping" them as you say, it can be fun at times depending on who's there.
glauber, there are quite a few kids into jazz in a big way in Canada, for the record. Nobody really seems to like the freestyle, intellectualized new stuff much, but swing has a pretty good following.
Glauber I had the sheer displeasure of hearing a Keeny G styled slickster try to play airs on a Soprano Sax once, needless to say it was Brian O'Donovan's "Celtic Sojourn" show on WGBH - that show is bad ju-ju stay away.
i think it's very good to have at least one high paid guy that we can all brag we can play better than! Just for this reason, i hope Kenny keeps making his plaintive out-of-tune sounds for a long time. I would like to see some fast reels well played on a soprano sax, though. Should sound a little like a manic piper who has had too much latte.
I read that the pipe chanter is basically a Baroque oboe. I wonder if anyone plays Irish oboe. Perhaps this is a good idea for the Boston Pops.
Aping Vs. Influence
Aping Vs. Influence
I saw this as a topic on IrTrad & thought it would be good for thesession.org too.
When I first was learning fiddle I took some lessons from some people who in turn learned from folks from Co. Sligo. These first lessons were formative. I do branch out & learn other tunes from other styles. When I do it's usually something I learned at a session or a recording. I don't learn it note for note & be a perfectionist about the whole thing, I let it settle into how it comes out of me.
I have caught myself trying to ape the playing of certain heros & I try to nip it in the bud. It's a fine line between being influenced & aping. For example I went to a session where they played the first Bothy Band album through. It was kind of annoying - than they went for the second album - that was way too far. If i wanted that I would have sat home bought a six pack & played along with those albums. That's the biggest extreme of aping I've ever seen or heard. Granted it's usually not taken that far. Where is that line between playing some Bothy Band or Coleman sets & just aping someone?
# Posted on March 6th 2002 by B Rad
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Good heavens. Sounds like one of those things that's a great idea if you're well on into the pints -- then you wake up the next morning and go, "what the ---".
Well, I have to say that I've done my fair share of slowing down recordings to figure out exactly *what* some fiddler was doing. I learned a lot from doing it. But everyone should gradually develop their own style, of course.
I guess if you don't put anything of yourself into the tune, then it's aping. Hmmm. I'll have to think about it.
Zina
# Posted on March 6th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
"It takes a long time to learn how to play like yourself". -- (Forget which blues artist is credited with that one)
All the same, playing an entire album note-for-note does seem a bit extreme!
# Posted on March 6th 2002 by Caoimghgin
I think: the way to play like yourself.....
..... leads straight thru aping (.. but I agree: If a hole session replays records note by note with rolls and trebbles and grace notes and all something went wrong!)
... I really fell in love with the tunes, when I heard the set "Bucks of Oranmore/Eileen Curran/Jimmy over the moor" by Hayes/Cahill the first time. I started searching the tunes as sheet music. The first and second was easy to find, but playing them as noted was boring in many aspects. So I burned a slowed down Hayes-file and practised playing exactly like him (and started transcribing the third tune, which I couldn
# Posted on March 6th 2002 by crannog
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Gee, if you're gonna do it, the Bothy Band ain't too bad a chimp to ape....
It can be fun to play a set or two, spread over the course of a night, along the blueprint laid down by some great player, but I can't imagine doing a whole album that way, at least not in public. Kind of like those Japanese bands that imitate the Beatles (or, to get really ugly, Elvis impersonators).
But as a learning tool, in the privacy of your own living room, I think it helps a lot to learn a tune note for note the way some "better" player does it. Once you've got it, you can add your own ideas, but you'll be a more "informed" player.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
I guess the other question this raises is WHY you're aping. If it's to learn, or because you absolutely love someone's particular version of a tune, no problem. I'm not so endeared, however, by people who haul out Coleman note for note just to show off that they can do it. At a session, I like it when the focus is on the music, not the musicians. And in a performance, I'd rather hear the artist play like themselves than try to impress me by rehashing someone else's ideas.
Some of the better players are quite good at imitating the other A-tier players, but they know not to do it on stage. At Kevin Burke's workshop last fall, he imitated himself (sort of exaggerating his trademark rhythmic pulse), then played the same tune a la Martin Hayes (and if you closed your eyes, you'd swear Martin was in the room), and then sawed into a Donegal John Doherty style, all just to make a point that bowing matters.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
Polly wants a triplet
I'd love to be able to ape. I'm good with the notes, but find it next to impossible to mimic bowing patterns. Even if I nail it for an afternoon a stiff wind could blow it all out of my head and I'd be back to playing like myself again. better, but still myself.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Kerri Brown
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Kerri, I was thinking the same thing yesterday...that when I hear a tune played exceptionally well I often think, "I could die happy if I could learn to do it like that." As a recreational player, I'm happy just to learn another good tune. I'm ecstatic if I can get it to sound half as good as the hotshots on their recordings. If it takes a little aping to get there, why should I worry? I learned the Silver Spear from Kevin Burke years ago and I still play it with all of his little variations, triplets and rolls where Burke puts them. I tinkered with it at one point, but it sounded better to my ear the way I first learned it. So I do it that way--I just haven't heard a nicer version.
So aping is a good thing when we use it to reach for improvement or when, as amateurs, it suits our tastes better than anything else. Of course, in the long run most of us are going to end up sounding like ourselves--for better or worse--anyway.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Will, i would play with the record, but they play too fast!
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by glauber
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Glauber, you've got to quit playing those old vinyl 33s at 78 rpms!!! Or drink lots more coffee...
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Will, I've just lately reached a new level where I'm able to slightly vary a tune with each cycle through without thinking too much about it. It's amazing. At the moment, most of them are just narrowly averted mistakes, but finally I don't have to think "OK, bow goes up, bow goes down, bow goes up, bow goes down, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand triplet." I more get to just listen and think "Hey that was neat! What did I just do there? Oh well, no matter. Here comes that long, drawn out d - let's see what happens to it this time." I think this is musical nirvana for ITM. Just pop a tune into your head and press play and the tune never comes out the same way twice.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Kerri Brown
Oh, right, what does that have to do with aping or influence? well, good question, Kerri, let me explain:
Through years of mimicry and emulation I've amassed a big mental file of notes for my left hand and another of rhythm and ornamentation for my right hand. My brain tells my hands "OK, now we must do THIS! Work together now, we are trying to make THIS sound. OK hands, the eyes and ears are telling me that's not quite right." Rarely, but with increasing frequency, there are shining moments when my brain can go for a coffee while the hands self-supervise. When this happens, my playing is "influenced" by all the players I ever "aped", but I am no longer strictly "aping".
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Kerri Brown
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
So another way to think about aping is to call it "*not* reinventing the wheel."
This what what musicians mean when they talk about knowing your chops. There are hundreds of little variations you can do to a note or a phrase in ITM, and if you listen to good players, you'll eventually hear all of them. Mimic them, and these chops become your own, and then you can use them to suit your own personal taste (informed as it is by all those years of listening). The more chops you have in your repertoire, and the more attuned your sensibilities to the music, the more developed your style will be.
Aping? Or building on the inventiveness and insight of the people who've played before us.... And even if you don't play often or well enough to actually *build* on it, at least you can participate in maintaining or nurturing the tradition along.
As a writer, I've decided that I don't have an original thought in my head--I'm always aping someone else's ideas. But so are nearly all of the other people out there making a living as writers. And few of us spend any time re-inventing grammar, vocabulary, syntax, etc. So what makes each of us worthwhile and interesting as writers is how we use these time-tested tools and worn out ideas to talk about life in our time, from our point of view. I don't think traditional music is much different.
If we were more interested in pushing the musical envelope, we'd be bashing away on "found" electronically sampled instruments (or a Chapman Stick) in 7/13 time through 10-foot high speakers. And probably making money doing it.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
It's a generally accepted principle in music that you must first copy slavishly before you strike out on your own.
You pay your dues by transcribing Coltraine in Jazz or whatever style you are trying to master.
The feeling is that only by "putting your fingers where the masters put them" can you get a true
understanding of what the music is. Some of us will never get past this stage and that's ok.
We'll enjoy sounding a little bit like our heroes. You true budding artists out there will spend time learning
from the masters and then move on to new ideas of your own. A new style is born! Its much easier to
innovate in a style when you understand it. How many of us have heard musicians from other styles
who play "A little Irish," but really don't at all? Inow step down from my soapbox and return the floor to wise
voices.
Joe
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Carrmuse
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
I never felt this way, Joe. In fact, this was one of the things that irritated me the most in bebop. If everybody thought this way, jazz would never have been invented. It's good to learn how other people do things, but it's also good to always have an itch for doing it your own way. Music is a dialogue between you and the composer or the tradition and, if you're lucky, your audience. Imitation may be a learning technique, but it's so much better to develop your own voice. Of course, this doesn't mean that when playing in a session you have the freedom to start doing crazy variations; that goes without saying.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by glauber
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
I think Joe and Glauber are both right, except that Irish music doesn't seem to rest on many "generally accepted principles." This is music from the ground up, some of it from people living and playing in relative isolation with no one around to slavishly copy. So they made it up and did whatever worked.
That said, isn't it more efficient and even effective to follow a better player's lead? I'm sure most of those isolated folks would've been at the elbow of any decent, friendly traveling player who happened across their doorway....
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by Will Harmon
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
I've absorbed more than I've tried to emulate anyone in particular, I've met few ITM players that have actively tried to play just like someone. I heard a story about a great fiddler who was hellbent on sounding like Peoples than he just accepted he never would. He has the talent & drive to do it, he just gave up on it & realised he's having more fun playing his own music. I think his playing surpases Tommy Peoples playing. He doesn't have any style that reaches out & makes you say he's playing a certain regional style but his playing is rock solid. I guess he turned all of that energy into playing well & lerning a bjillion tunes, at any rate I think any good musician grows their own wings eventually. Like I said before I've met very few playes who go after one player alone, there's way too much good music so easily available on CD's etc that I wonder how anyone can get hooked on one player & one player alone. It is good to have a good player around to listen to first hand when your first starting out, when I was learning my teacher would let me sit in on the sessions & just watch & listen. I learned a lot from those sessions & he was patient with questions & requests. I would ape his playing if I could but I think it's just beyond me, but i often use variations I learned from listening.
Glauber your right about the Jazz thing but I don't know how applicable the jazz to ITM relationship is. Jazz is about inovation where ITM is more about tradition. The drawing of outside influences into ITM does happen but it is slow at best. Outside of the Banjo & Bouzouki there have been few "outside" instruments accepted in the last 100 years much less new dance rhythms or funky accompaniment. Jazz went from Barrelhouse piano to Kenny G & Sun Ra in less than a hundred years, it's a more accepting form of music, I'm not taking away anything from the musicianship of jazz players - everyone has there own favorites in Jazz, but it is a much more freely accepting kind of music than ITM.
# Posted on March 7th 2002 by B Rad
Jazz and ITM
Mad,
!!!
Jazz is divided in many tribes who are very loyal to their stuff. I think it's becoming an intellectualized and over-dissected thing, and few kids these days go for jazz. IrTrad has the pure high energy of old jazz, without the stuckuppiness of modern jazz. Plus, Kenny G plays Irish too!
(Actually, Kenny is as good an Irish musician as he is a jazzer. Dig?)
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by glauber
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Oh lord, point taken there, Glauber...hehehe...Brad, have you never heard mainline jazz players talking about Kenny G? Yipes. Never call him jazz round jazz types unless you want your head bit off...
Not that he doesn't make just fine music, but most jazz musicians react the same way as most ITM players might react to an Old-Time fiddler being held up as a shining example of ITM.
Not that your point isn't taken as well, Brad. Heh.
Zina
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by Zina Lee
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
I'd give anything to be able to copy the great players exactly. But I like to think that if I could, I wouldn't.
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery so I've been told.
I am probably lacking the exact meaning of "Aping" so forgive me if my comments miss the mark completely.
Most really good players I've talked to don't mind their form being coppied, probably because they know they can't be duplicated exactly. I'm sure there are a few very talented individuals who can copy the notes and strokes to a "T" but for the most part I think were a bit like snow flakes. Every one will play a bit different no matter how hard they try. (Course you might think I'm just plain flaky)
As for sitting around at a session and playing tunes straight off recordings "Aping" them as you say, it can be fun at times depending on who's there.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Tiny
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by flyinfiddler
Kenny
Zina,
i heard him play the Theme from Titanic once. That's Irish, no?
(ducking for cover, quick!)
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by glauber
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
glauber, there are quite a few kids into jazz in a big way in Canada, for the record. Nobody really seems to like the freestyle, intellectualized new stuff much, but swing has a pretty good following.
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by Kerri Brown
Swing
I think that's because of Austin Powers. "Swing baby, yeah!"
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by glauber
Re: Aping Vs. Influence
Glauber I had the sheer displeasure of hearing a Keeny G styled slickster try to play airs on a Soprano Sax once, needless to say it was Brian O'Donovan's "Celtic Sojourn" show on WGBH - that show is bad ju-ju stay away.
# Posted on March 8th 2002 by B Rad
Re: Aping and the soprano sax
Mad,
Just for this reason, i hope Kenny keeps making his plaintive out-of-tune sounds for a long time. I would like to see some fast reels well played on a soprano sax, though. Should sound a little like a manic piper who has had too much latte.
i think it's very good to have at least one high paid guy that we can all brag we can play better than!
I read that the pipe chanter is basically a Baroque oboe. I wonder if anyone plays Irish oboe. Perhaps this is a good idea for the Boston Pops.
# Posted on March 9th 2002 by glauber