Annual weekend events have taken place in Melrose and Bridge of Allan featuring well known tutors such as Gary West, Gordon Mooney, Fin Moore, Annie Grace, Allan MacDonald, Barnaby Brown, Matt Seattle, Mike Katz, Finlay MacDonald, Iain MacInnes, Brighde Caimbeul, Malcolm Robertson and many more. 

Over the years these weekends have covered many different aspects of playing within the instrument’s capability, looking outwards from Scotland to embrace a range of European/ World traditions. We have made no attempt to impose a standard “border” repertoire through the teaching offered - our aim has been to expand participants’ exposure to the many possibilities offered by this wonderful instrument and allow them to make their own decisions about what they want to play.

Our classes have offered tunes for dancing; Cape Breton style strathspeys and reels; tunes from the Dixon Manuscript (border repertoire); playing and singing;  Irish, Galician, Northumbrian and Breton tunes; puirt a beul; freeform slow air playing; duets and harmonies; new compositions and, most recently, piobaireachd on smallpipes. 

Dates for the next teaching event are featured on the news section of the website in good time. 

Booking is essential.

Pibroch Weekend  with Allan MacDonald: 21-23 April 2023 - Cancelled

Unfortunately, due to a low number of bookings, the LBPS Committee has regretfully decided to cancel this weekend event.

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LBPS Winter Teaching Sessions on Zoom: Tuesday, 21st February 2023

Following on from David Faulkner’s excellent session last month, Jeremy Kingsbury will be hosting the second session. Jeremy will be known to most of you from his popular bi-weekly (mostly) podcast. In these, he explores the likely repertoire of 18th- and early 19th-century pipers of the British Isles. He also has two albums to his credit: Oyster Wives Rant and Pay the Pipemaker.

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The Piobaireachd Weekend 2022 – a Review by Rona Dawson

Having booked up for the Society’s piobaireachd weekend fairly late, it came as little surprise to find that accommodation was a bit hard to find – the local hotel seemed to be closed for refurbishment and B&Bs were full. So it was that we ended up in a “panoramic pod”!  Having some experience of the basic wooden structures available on some campsites, we weren’t sure what we were getting. But despite the satnav’s best efforts to take us up hill and down dale we got there, and we were introduced by the owners to a beautiful little house in miniature, complete with full kitchen, comfortable lounge area with log fire, shower room and hot tub all heated and ready to go.  This proved to be one of the highlights of the weekend – a tub with, as promised, a panoramic view was just the ticket after a hard day grafting at the tunes!

Chris and Anne Bacon were, as always, perfect hosts and had ordered a fab selection of Indian dishes from the local takeaway for the first night which disappeared pretty quickly.  A few tunes were struck up – it’s not usual to hear even a piobaireachd ground at a session but we managed a few of the more accessible tunes.

The first day’s teaching was all about the Bells of Perth – even played at a sprightly tempo it was hard to find much to recommend this tune in my opinion – a couple of the variations might be worth reprising but I wasn’t really feeling the love. We also looked at two Nameless tunes in Kilberry (hio tro tro and  Hi horodo hao).  These are not heard played much, probably because they don’t have taorluath or crunluath variations and yet have beautiful melodies that warrant much more public airing.

After a long day concentrating, Anne’s venison pie made a fantastic meal.  More instruments were brought out afterwards and the tunes fairly flowed.

The second day’s highlight, musically, was the Lament for the Laird of Annapool, a tune that focusses on the high G and has elements of keening in it according to our tutor Allan MacDonald.  His kind of piobaireachd is not what you’d hear at a Piobaireachd Society gathering (thankfully) and even those who don’t have the full range of technical dexterity could make a very adequate stab at reproducing the overall effect of the tune by the time we’d finished. 

We reprised the Unjust Incarceration which had been done at a previous weekend and altogether the weekend was a very enjoyable and chilled way of getting back into the swing of playing after an extended (at least for some of us) lay off over the last couple of years.

Hopefully more folk will be interested enough to come along in future and investigate the big music – those who did go have a mission to play the tunes at Society gatherings and sessions where people can get a sense of what they’re missing!

Thanks to Allan, Chris and Anne for making the event such a success.

Rona Dawson

Piobaireachd Weekend – Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th April 2022.

Christopher Bacon has kindly offered to host another piobaireachd on smallpipes weekend in Allendale, Northumbria. This will be an in-person event.

The tutor will again be Allan MacDonald, who will upturn all your preconceptions about piobaireachd and provide a musical experience not to be missed – even if you’re not already familiar with this style of music.

The tunes will be The Bells of Perth, Lament for the Laird of Anapool, The Old Woman's Lullaby and 2 Nameless tunes (40 & 41 in Kilberry).

The booking form is available below. Anyone wishing to attend should book their own accommodation in or near Allendale in plenty of time. Shared transport to and from the venue can be arranged after booking.

Please note: We are aware there is interest in Allan's piobaireachd style from all airts and pairts so we will organise a separate online session event on another date to include as many folk as possible.

This year the group would like to encourage pipers who have not had any previous experience of playing piobaireachd to come and join the group. We will be playing smallpipes in A and even the new long practice chanters which work perfectly along with smallpipes. There is no requirement to be able to play a beautifully rippling crunluath but a good standard of playing will get the best from the weekend; at the moment the course is not for absolute beginners. 

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LBPS online tune session 24th February 2022

We are delighted to invite members to an online tune session on Thursday 24^th February at 7.30 pm.

Making the Graceless Gracefull (sic)

Fin Moore, well-known pipe maker and player from Perthshire, will lead the next online session on Thursday 24th February from 7.30 pm via Zoom.

He'll look at a couple of fairly well-known tunes, Hackey Honey (Dixon) and Brose & Butter (Blue Book), and also Catriona's Welcome by Gary West. He will explore what to do when faced with a manuscript that has no gracenotes, what kind of gracings would be most suitable/effective for making the tune musical, along with some observations about gracing in general.

All members will receive a Zoom link to the event by email.

We look forward to seeing you there!

If you are not yet a member of the Society, you are very welcome to join. Membership subscription rates start at £9 per year. Once your subscription has been processed you will receive an email with the details of the Zoom link. Membership includes reduced rates at the LBPS shop, invitations to other Zoom social and tutorial sessions, and access to the latest issues of the Society’s journal Common Stock, either online or posted out to you. Choose the subscription rate you prefer.