Greetings, Just joined the list and thought I'd introduce myself. I live in Northern Virginia currently, previously lived at various points in the US, Newfoundland, and the Middle East. I'm not an NSP player myself, but it's a subject of interest to me and joining the List seemed the best way to learn more. I currently play sackpipa (Swedish bagpipe), and have both an E/A mouthblown cast-resin set by Hamon, and am about to take receipt of a D/G bellows-blown set by Boris Favre of BC. I also just picked up a Cushing bellows-blown SSP for variety, though I play it with open-fingering. I've always liked NSP, ever since I was a teenager skipping class at the University of Washington to go listen to old vinyl in the archives and stumbled across an old Billy Pigg album. To this day I still use "Wild Hills o' Wannies" as a stock tune on sackpipa, Appalachian dulcimer, classical guitar, and pennywhistle. I'm not totally sure whether I'll take up NSP at some point. They do seem rather fragile, and the kind of pipe you have to play or mess with every single week to keep them hale (which is hard with the sheer number of instruments I muck about with). On the other hand, their sound is incredibly distinctive, and the complicated drones and multi-keyed chanters do offer a ton of flexibility. I will be up at the Upper Potomac Piper's Weekend in West Virginia in a couple weeks, so hope to maybe be able to try out an NSP there, as well as get as many folks as possible to try my bellows-blown sackpipa. Hope to meet some of you there, and look forward to learning more from the List, -Matthew --
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