Ross's Music Page

Favourite download: blank music paper

Colclough's Tutor for the Irish pipes was published about 1840 and gives us an insight into the music and playing techniques of the period. Here are the introduction and the tunes, thanks to Ken MacLeod (whose copy it is) and Wilbert Garvin (who scanned and retouched it). There's also a picture of the author Dudley Colclough (whose name was apparently pronounced `Cockley').

The MacDonald Manuscript was compiled by Donald MacDonald, who published the first collection of piobaireachd - the classical music of the highland pipes - in 1820. The manuscript was his draft for a second book that unfortunately never appeared. Roderick Cannon and I scanned a copy of the manuscript, and here it is.

The pastoral pipe was an eighteenth-century instrument that evolved into the uilleann pipes of today. I have been busy digging out its repertoire, which had been forgotten or lost.

The Sutherland Manuscript: here are some tunes from a manuscript by John Sutherland in pdf and abc formats. This manuscript dates from maybe 1785 and is in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. Here is an article I wrote on the manuscript and its music for An Piobaire (magazine of the NPU).

The Advocates' Manuscript: an earlier manuscript, from perhaps 1765, now in the Advocates' Collection of the National Library of Scotland, is reproduced here by kind permission of the Library's trustees:

• Part 1 (front of book, tunes 1-33)
• Part 2 (front of book, tunes 34-end)
• Part 3 (back of book)

Geoghegan: You can also download a copy of Geoghegan's Compleat Tutor, the only previously known music for the pastoral pipe, and also the first book of bagpipe music published anywhere, in 1746 (and there's a high-res scan of the frontispiece here). Between them, Geoghegan, the Advocates' manuscript and the Sutherland manuscript let us track the evolution of the music at roughly twenty-year intervals from the instrument's invention until commercial pipe music publishing took off in the early 1800s.

Pastoral pipes have in recent years been produced by Chris Bayley, Michael McHarg, Jon Swayne and a few other makers. For more, see Brian McCandless' website and the Chiff and Fipple site.

Here are some music recordings that are now out of copyright, and so free for anyone to download and use as they wish.

Highland pipe music

John MacDonald MP3s - Here are three recordings by John MacDonald of Inverness. The first is thanks to Michael and Diana from Juneau, Alaska, while the third is taken from a 7-CD set of out-of-copyright pipe music available from Tony Langford, who is t.langford AT ucl.ac.uk.

• Lament for Patrick Og MacCrimmon (1927)
• Lament for the Children (1929)
• The Edinburgh Volunteers, Angus Campbell's Farewell to Stirling (1928)

Robert Reid MP3 - Here's a recording by Robert Reid

• Captain MacLean, Tullochgorm, The Piper and the Dairymaid (1937)

Willie Ross MP3s - And here are some recordings made by Willie Ross. (The Reid tracks and these five Ross tracks are from Tony Langford's collection.)

• Leaving Glen Urquhart, Lady Loudon, Duntroon (1910)
• Bonnie Anne, Tulloch Gorm, Sandy Duff (1910)
• The Balmoral Highlanders, Balmoral Castle, The Grey Bob (1910)
• Lord Alexander Kennedy, The Bridge of Perth, The Wren's Death (1937)
• A radio interview with Willie Ross (1950)

More Willie Ross MP3s: Here are MP3s of twelve recordings by Willie Ross, dating back to the period 1910-1939: 05.mp3, 07.mp3, 08.mp3, 10.mp3, 11.mp3, 12.mp3, 13.mp3, 15.mp3, 16.mp3, 17.mp3, 18.mp3, and 19.mp3. These are from the test disks Willie got from the record companies, and which are now the property of his granddaughter, Lesley Ross Alexander - to which we owe our sincere thanks for making them available. Thanks also to Richard Powell for digitising them. (I'll put in the tune names once we've figured them all out - do email me if you recognise some of them.)

Irish music

Richard O'Mealy recorded ten tracks for the BBC in Belfast in 1943, in his uniquely staccato style. Here they are, thanks to pipemaker Chris Bayley. The tracks are O'Mealy's Hornpipe, Harvest Home, The Wheels of the World, The Blackbird, Drops of Brandy, The Sligo Lasses, Smash the Windows, The Donegal Reel, The Mountains of Pomeroy, and The Maids of Mourneshore.

Seamus Ennis: Here are four acetate recordings Seamus made for an American friend in 1948. They are Salamanca, Lord Gordon's Reel and the Merry Blacksmith; The Bucks of Oranmore and The Sligo Maid's Lament; Paddy O'Rafferty and the Reverend Brother's Jig; and The Groves.

There are mp3s taken from old 78s of Patsy Touhey playing The Maid on the Green, Jackson's Jig and Give us a Drink of Water; of him playing Drowsy Maggie, Scottish Mary and the Flogging Reel; and of Michael Carney playing The Jolly Tinker. Phil Martin plays The Greencastle Hornpipe, The Quarrelsome Piper and The Cork Hornpipe, and The Cup of Tea and The Flogging Reel. Seamus O'Broin plays The Green Groves of Erin and a hornpipe. There is a performance of An bheann do bhi cheana againn (My Former Wife) maybe by Tom Ennis, or by James Early (opinions differ - does anyone have the original 78?). Dinny Delaney plays The Repeal of the Union and The Old Hag at the Kiln; and Bean air Tir air Urlar ag Obair and The Geese in the Bog.

Uilleann cylinders: Here are three old cylinder recordings of the uilleann pipes. The first two are of Bernard Delaney playing in Chicago in 1898: the tracks are Colonel Taylor's, or the Beauty Spot, and The Cook in the Kitchen. The third track is the last of the old-school Kerry pipers, Mici `Cumbaw' O'Sullivan, playing fragments of Alasdrum's March - possibly a seventeenth-century piobaireachd lost to the Scots tradition but preserved in the Irish.

Irish fiddle: Here is Padraig O'Keefe playing Caioneadh Ui Dhomhnall - the Lament for O'Donnell after the Battle of Kinsale, recorded in 1948 or 49.

Most of the 78s, plus the cylinder and the fiddle recordings, are courtesy of Ken MacLeod.

I plan to put many more old tracks and books online, as time permits. (Email me any out-of-copyright stuff you think I might put up here!)

• The Bagpipe web directory is a good place to find stuff about Scots piping, and his forums are where many pipers socialise
• The Northumbrian Pipers' Society and Julia Say's Northumbrian smallpipes encyclopaedia are good starting points for England's only surviving indigenous folk instrument
• Na Piobairi Uilleann is the association of Irish pipers, the Chiff and Fipple board is the online meeting place, and the Uilleann Obsession website provides links to Irish piping events in the USA
• The Lowland and Border Pipers' Society provides a home for people interested in the Scottish smallpipes, the instrument from which the Northumbrian pipes may have evolved, and the Border pipes
• The Bagpipe Society serves people interested in reviving various English bagpipes, and in pipes from round the world
• The Piobaireachd Society works to preserve and promote the classical music of the Highland bagpipe. See also pibroch.net
• The World of Bagpipes has links to the pipes played in France, Spain and other countries, as does Hotpipes
• Comunn na Clarsaich (the Clarsach Society) is devoted to the harp that for centuries played a central role in the Gaelic culture of Scotland and Ireland (particularly in its wire-strung form). Its greatest composer, Carolan, left us a lot of good tunes
• Lesley Nelson's Folk Music Site has many songs from England, Soctland, Ireland, Wales and America
• The English Folk Dance and Song Society has worked for over 100 years to preserve the traditional music and dance of England
• Triplepipe.net is about the predecessor of the bagpipe in the UK - a bagpipe without a bag. It was played by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Romans and Greeks, and survives today in Sardinia as the launeddas. The discovery of medieval stone carvings and manuscript illuminations suggests that its place in British music has been underestimated
• There is more iconography here and here
• Here are some links to instruments and makers: Pipeshow; Harp and Pipe links; Celtic instruments; Galician bagpipes; the Dudey; the Musette; oddmusic.com; and pipemakers Julian Goodacre, Ian Kinnear. Bill Haneman, Nick Whitmer, and Steffen Fischer
• Bill Haneman's site has a copy of O'Neill's Irish Minstrels and Musicians
• Links to some other music topics: flutes, wooden flutes, Pannalal Ghosh, the Ney (with online lessons), the Shakuhachi, Korean music, and Arabic music (see also the Oud and the Maqamat).

Sheet music: here are some links to online sites where you can download out-of-copyright or other public-domain sheet music.

• The standard sources for Irish folk tunes are O'Neill's Music of Ireland, O'Neill's Dance Music of Ireland, The Session, The Fiddler's Companion, tuneDB and Henrik Norbeck's site. JC's Collection also has many tunes from other traditions
• The Farne Archive has a lot of Northumbrian material, as does Pete Loud's collection
• Playford's Dancing Master is a vital source for 17th-18th century tunes, while the Library of Congress has a number of old dance manuals
• The Village Music project indexes, and has transcribed tunes from, many old music manuscripts from England, Scotland and Ireland, while Cantaria has old folk songs
• The Lester Levy Collection at Johns Hopkins hosts American music from 1780-1923
• Fife and Drum Online has a lot of 18th-19th century music from North America (and Scotland)
• There are Highland pipe tunes at Viperpiper and Sormpages
• Ceolas has a number of tune books, as well as information and links to software to deal with various online music formats. Background information on tunes can also be found at irishtune.info

A couple of my tunes have been published: a jig called The Chaffinch, and a pipe adaptation of the Cajun song Ou ce que t'es parti.

I am concerned about the effect that the copyright lobby has had on traditional music; see here, for example, about how things developed in Ireland, and here for flamenco. I summed up the issues in a response I wrote to the EU's consultation on the collecting societies.

Finally, since I admitted in my EU response to having been a busker during my student days, there has emerged an embarrassing photo of me, in some town in Germany, aged about 20. I put it here to forestall the blackmailers!

My proper home page is here.