Hi Orbis,
On the Mike McGoldrick CD, “Morning Rory”, the first track “Jenny Picking Cockles/The Earl’s Chair” sounds fast to me, also the CD “First Light” with John McSherry piping, there are some pretty fast tunes. Well they sound fast to me.
Cheers, Mac
Nice of you to ask Larry! But I’m now OFFICIALLY done for the summer (yee ha) and can concentrate on REALLY important things like practicing pipes. And getting ready for my informal music education/pipe study that I’m gonna do at Augusta and Elkins…
Janice…always good to hear someone getting their priorities straight! It seems that acedemics only make one appreciate recreation a little more. 
has anyone heard a version of The Shepherds Daughter that davy spillane plays on one of the tracks on the first afro-celtic sound system album - i thought when i listened to it that it was the fastest playing i’d ever heard - does any else agree?
Patsy Touhey, Pat Mitchell, Séan Potts, and Gay McKeon always makes my jaw drop. They are amazingly accurate in tempo and getting all the notes in, too.
I think the hottest I ever heard were the Paddy Keenan cuts on “A Celebration of Pipes in Europe”. He puts in all of Patsy Touhey’s licks plus a few of his own but in a glorius full fidelity recording.
I just play half-fast, myself.
Hi All,
Great discussion. My comments.
a) Someone mentioned coming out of the closet as a piper…congrats.
b) Columbia is spelt Colombia, and the people there suffer an awful lot due to attrocities supported by CIA funding of the weaponry down there. Pipers or not, they deserve respect.
c) On the speed thing. Sure, someone can play for speed in the first year, but it will not be clean. As Paul said, experience of numerous senior pipers holds a lot of weight. To take a Canadian example, Ashley McCisaac (fiddler), started playing slowly and worked for fifteen years to play the way he does.
d) Could the author of the question post a sound bite of his fastest song, so the jury can speak. We could all be wrong and find that his speed is clean, precise and crisp. Until then, I remain skeptical.
Cheers,
Novice Piper
Except that all of those guys played their instruments pretty much like a lot of other guys had done over the previous hundred years, they just stole liberally from a bunch of styles and put them in a setting that was normally out of context for that style. They weren’t innovators so much as just really good players who dabbled in a lot of styles.
Royce