I feel that my posts came across in a way that I didn’t intend.
I too can appreciate Brian’s playing, very clean and easy to follow even for a beginner piper like myself.
As people have said before the reg playing is also great. But this was not was I wanted to discuss.
My remarks had nothing to do with Brian’s technique. Also, when it comes to style and pitch I prefer less staccato
than more, and flat sets over concert pitch, so that not the issue.
My question was related to the recording of the pipes on the sound clips as I felt that I lacked something
sound wise to get the “Buzz”. Maybe it was the compression on the internet files, but as I seem to
be almost the only one that felt this, it is more likely due to my own inexperience.
I may be out on a limb here, but that’s never stopped me-
I read some astonishing comments posted early on in this post;
a kind word to the beginners:
practice asking more questions-you will taste far less of your own shoe that way.
also, coming to any conclusions about the quality of the audio from a CD, compressed into some streaming fromat, over your computer speakers, or earbuds is ludicrous. [/i][/i]
Actually decent modern earbuds are pretty good, better than almost all speakers.
My point is similar to yours K - the highly compressed nature of the low-bandwidth streamed data doesn’t seem to reflect the tone quality of the accurately. Just listening to the higher-bandwidth version makes that pretty clear - the pipes sound more interesting tonally in the high-bandwidth version, which suggests that they should sound better still in the CD and/or live.
The set belonged to me at the time Brian recorded the CD. To my ear, the set sounds the best in a larger room, or a room with a high ceiling, etc.
I was living with Brian in Chicago at the time when he recorded it. I was very taken by his version of the slow air Port Na Pbucai and by his playing of Boys of the Town when he first played the recording for me. I think the overall pace of the music is flawless. He is constantly analyzing and working on his playing, and he has a deep respect for the music.
Brian is an excellent piper and reed maker, and he has given me a lot of guidance in making pipes.
The Gallagher set is a lovely set of pipes. It is now owned by a fellow in Ottawa. You can hear it on my myspace page under “Brady’s Reel”.