Five things

Everyone loves a list, it seems. A while ago I started on creating a list of CDs I love to guide those who are interested in hearing more smallpipes, more pipes or more Scottish music.  My main problem was that many of my CDs would overlap the categories I had in mind: CDs that have some Scottish tunes, or some smallpipes but aren’t normally exclusively pipes or Scottish.  I could have had items appearing under more than one category, which isn’t difficult, but I couldn’t find an elegant way of creating and presenting that variety of categorisation on one blog page. I could, yes I know I could, just have done an alphabetical list, but I'm a librarian, dammit - my professional pride is a stake.

So “Five things” will be a series of snippets, short lists, not exclusively CDs. I may also use it to talk about Scottish music, folk music or Scotland more generally.  It also lets me satisfy my blogging urge when I have nothing much to say in terms of piping. Five is flexible - the list will always be called five things, but sometimes there will be more than five, sometime less.

I'll kick off with five CDs of (mostly) Scottish music, No Ossian, because their CDs will turn up on other lists, and not A Jock Tanson's Bairns (which I am listening to as I type) since I've I've only just discovered them. 

1. Canaich. Counting all three CDs as a single item here. It took me a while to like it - I initially felt it had moments of You and The Night and The Music (in a radio 2 sort of a way) - but now I love it. It really evokes the spirit of the Scottish landscape for me. Mainly fiddle, in contemplative mood, there are also pipes, but sadly they are Irish pipes. It’s a failing, to my mind.

2. Fiddler’s Bid. This opens with the FB Ode to Joy and frankly the entire CD makes me feel that it’s good to be alive. They sound like they are having such fun. Great tunes, not all Scottish.

3. Springwell. For some reason I do very much enjoy pipe tunes played on strings, even banjos (although I profess to dislike banjos) and these are such good tunes. It's great to listen to pipe tunes on other instruments as I get to concentrate on the tune without being distracted by the piping. Mostly Scottish tunes, many pipe tunes.

4. Single Track Road Trip I love Scottish fiddle. I have some difficulty understanding why a man who can play pipes would waste his time on stringed things, but I do love his banjo interpretation of pipe tunes, complete with all the grace notes. All Scottish tunes.

5. Doubling. Despite not being mad about boxes, and despite the paucity of pipes I like this album: lots of Scottish tunes, old and new.