George Atkinson used to attend the NPS meetings when I was there in the early days and he used to be the only fluent piper that came to our meetings. I remember him playing Athole Highlanders and the Remember Me hornpipe in a very clear and articulated style that we knew was what we had to aim for in our playing no matter how long it took us. Nothing was said about how he did it we just had to listen and copy his style.
This is a far cry from the present day obsession for teaching the pipes and getting your milliseconds of separation between your notes as though that was the only criterion to be aimed for. Yes, let's get separation between notes but be prepared to slide one note into the other to get the musical shaping plus the discrete grace note to make up for the lack of dynamic in the instrument when interpreting tunes and not just playing a succesion of detached notes. Colin R ________________________________________________________________________ AOL Email goes Mobile! You can now read your AOL Emails whilst on the move. Sign up for a free AOL Email account with unlimited storage today. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
