I’ve been learning about the dislike uillean and GHB have for each other. How long has this been going on? I’ve been playing GHB for 12 yrs. but it’s only since I’ve been reading uilleann pipe forums I’ve learned about this. Both instruments have their challanges & in other ways are quite alike. (I’m now learning to play the uilleann pipes)(I’m Irish, Scottish, German, Indian, Viking and no telling what else) I always thought the Irish & Scottish were so mixed it didn’t make any difference which one you were. I like the loud, proud, heritage of the GHB, marching off to war, and the sheding of tears at funerals, the last goodbye. And the reels and jigs of the uilleann pipes makes everybody want to dance. The uilleann pipes can change octives to add additional feeling to tunes no GHB ever could, but played together, fantastic! So whats the deal? Some pipe makers even make both. Is this an American thing?
Hi
Perhaps we have very mixed origins make us more tolerant about that. I’ve also irish, German, French, English, et. roots, that may help. I like GHB because I can play outdoor, and UP for inside.
Philippe
Actually, many, many present day pipers are also GHBs or were. In fact, Eric Rigler studied and competed with GHBs long before discovering the UPs. I believe that Jerry O’Sullivan also played GHBs, and in fact Seth Gallegher started with them in Massachusets as well. A high percentage of the Ups in our Long Island, New York club are accomplished GHBs, and still active. I think that among our group, there is more disdain perhaps for the bodhran (though I like the tempo is can provide for a group or session) and the GHBs are just different. The only exception maybe, is the fact that the GHBs and the marching bands often are more rigid in how uniform the playing must be. The UPs often draws these pipers who sometime become fed up with the discipliarians in those marching bands that begin to take the fun out of it.
Oh, I’m not so sure it’s a “dislike” thing so much as just good natured ribbing.
My experience is that Upipers and Bigpipers tend to respect each others art but will kid each other about their choice of instrument, all in good fun, y’know?
Jeff
I love both instrument and have played the GHB’s for 18 years and recently decided to get into UP’s I also have the typical mut heritage, like most Americans. Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh,.. I was raised on both music though.
The So Cal UP Club has several GHB converts.
The two instruments are quite different.
PUIF has put his finger on something relevant: the military, regimented approach common in pipe-band circles is a bit of a put-off for a lot of free spirits, especially when it gets tied up with competitions, bullshit and blanco, the majorette aspects of the marching band and sometimes a rather mercenary preoccupation with the size of performance fees.
The propensity of pipe bands to play the same one or two tunes that are expected of them (Amazing Grace, Mull of Kintyre, Scotland the Brave etc.) or, worse, two-octave tunes like Roddy McCorley that are sawn in two to fit within the compass of the chanter are also a major turn-off.
But the sound of a pipe band even just tuning up stirs the blood, and I particularly love the sound of a solo war piper playing the kind of tunes that are suited to the instrument.
We are probably a bit jealous of all the uniforms they get to wear.
Especially the fact that they can get away with wearing lace-trimmed shirts without being called cissies.
Roger, did you mean to say lace shirts, or the lace under their skirts?
djm
Jealous of men who wear skirts? hmmmmmm
I’m grateful that an uilleann piper is not expected to wear a kilt while performing; the damned things are hard enough to play without having to sit like a lady!
I allso play GHB. I’ve had people ask me if playing the bagpipes was hard. I tell them the hardest part is putting on the kilt. I try not to think about it. but everyone expects a bagpipe player to play in a kilt so their “paying the piper”. I have 3 kilts but I ONLY wear them if someone wants a piper.
uniforms? dressed up like the queen’s best in a shameless display of medieval crossdressing. the up crowd is generally concerened with how they sound, the hp gang with how they look.
there’s a reason for that…playing the ghb and worrying about how you sound is a lost cause… like trying to teach a pig to sing - it wastes your time and it annoys the pig! if you sound like that you’d better be concerned with the way you look!
just kidding…don’t beat me…
Great fun!!..I knew it wouldn’t take long for this thread to get going
I’ll bet the GHB players wish they had a 71 page fingering chart too!! :roll:
In spite of my partial Scottish heritage, I knew wearing a kilt wasn’t for me when I was talking to a guy in a Scottish Heritage Center and he said somethiing along the lines of “and the feeling of your kilt swishing as you are marching makes you feel like a real man.”
Me, personally, I like a nice hairy man in a kilt (lace shirt optional). 
I’ll bet you say that to all the shaggy transvestites.
I’m glad I’m allergic to wool. Now lace shirts, on the other hand … (where’s my Liberace albums).
would that be a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania?
Dammit, Janet!
Hear, hear. As someone who plays both instruments, I thought I’d toss a few comments of my own on the fire here.
It should be noted that the GHB crowd has been in the throes of a (relatively speaking) quiet revolution for more than two decades now, with younger players abandoning the regimented approach associated with the instrument in favor of a far more individualistic, musical approach. The influence of uilleann piping has been crucial to this: would Fred Morrison and Gordon Duncan play the way they do had they not listened to Paddy Keenan when they were teenagers?
Actually, for a long time, I was kinda put off from playing uilleann pipes in part because of the smart-alecky, smug attitude towards Scottish piping that I encountered among some of the earliest uilleann pipers that I met. The first time I encountered an uilleann piper at a session, he took one look at my smallpipes, laughed and shouted: “You need to get rid of those damn things and get a REAL set of pipes”, pointing at the duct-tape festooned instrument in his lap. He then proceeded to play a painfully out of tune rendition of The Kesh Jig with plenty of rubato. I was most unimpressed.
I used to play in a pipe band but I don’t think I’d go back to it; not so much because of the whole campy, regimented thing, but because I tend to dislike a lot of the fast, flashy, all form/no substance tunes that these days are de rigeur in the repertoire of a serious, competing pipe band. I also dislike the impact that band playing has had on the evolution of the instrument itself: a century or so ago, it was still possible to find Highland pipes pitched in A or thereabouts. Surviving cylinder recordings and printed records suggest that the reeds were a lot easier and quieter back in those days. I once heard a story from P/M Jim McColl, now a resident of southern Oregon, in which he said something about some old (i.e. late 19th/early 20th century) pipers being able to produce vibrato effects on notes strictly through breath control, though I have no idea how they went about doing that. These days, the search for an ever bigger, brighter sound in pipe bands has resulted in the pitch climbing higher than B flat and seriously gut-busting reeds. If I ever get another set of Highland pipes, I think I’ll go for something (relatively) quiet, pitched in A, and not so labor-intensive to play.
I used to play in a pipe band but I don’t think I’d go back to it; not so much because of the whole campy, regimented thing, but because I tend to dislike a lot of the fast, flashy, all form/no substance tunes that these days are de rigeur in the repertoire of a serious, competing pipe band
.
I fully agree; competition is the worst part of GHB: nonsense! I think most of us are old enough to avoid these children games!
Philippe