Some of you may know that I’ve been working for the past two years to learn how to play the bagpipes.
I’m a slow (ish) learner.
After spending an incredible amount of time on the practise-chanter I finally ‘went to instrument’ about 2 months ago.
It’s a steep learning curve. You basically keep banging your head against ‘flat-out impossible’ until you make a dent and reach ‘forgetaboutit’.
A bit of persistence and you reach the hallowed level of ‘stopkiddingyourselfidiot’ which leads you straight into ‘imnevergoingtogetthis’.
And then one day…
The golfers will know what I mean.
When people ask the inevitable ‘why?’, I’ve taken to answering ‘because I want to be able to play Avril lavigne’s Sk8tr Boi on the bagpipes while idling a 5ft tall giraffe unicycle’.
I try n deliver this line as casually as possible, with as much ‘doesn’t everyone?’ in my voice as I can muster.
I’m not quite there yet.
(You won’t believe what a hassle it is to get bagpipe transcriptions of Avril Lavigne tunes nowadays, tsk…tsk…tsk.)
But last night, I played one verse of Amazing Grace on the pipes while idling my unicycle.
I know, I know, video please.
I’ll get some this weekend and stick it up in my gallery and link to it here.
Yes, video please. I’ve never seen bagpipes on unicycle yet. Often a large bagpipe group plays in the same parades we are doing. Bagpipes are fine but the worst place for a unicycle group, with its own sound system, is to be right ahead or behind of the pipers.
In the mid '80s I hung out with the Portland comedy crowd quite a bit. Johnny Johnston was “Mr. Bagpipes”, and still is. Check out these vids:
VanHalen’s Eruption (His old signature piece, looks like it still is)
3 minutes of piping routine (Love the “THX” intro)
8 minutes of routines (Did you see him at the SA Comedy Festival?)
Misc. Vids:
Dave, once you get the pipes mastered, you need to learn to rock like Johnny.
And no, a quick youtube search on “unicycle” and “bagpipes” confirmed that I’m by no means the first.
(But the “1-9 of about 9” did make me feel a bit better)
I used to play bass in a couple of bands (in my younger days).
Bought the gf an accordion for her birthday and messed around with that a while back. Couldn’t get the two hands to work in harmony, it’s a mission.
We’re also looking at working up duo versions of some Leonard Cohen songs for bagpipes and accordion.
Should be fun.
That’s odd, because I can hear the sound just fine. He did an Amazing job as well. Can’t wait to hear skater boi! Now you probably would be the first to paly that!
I watched it with the sound now. Good stuff! I think the other amazingly impressive thing that, strangley, no one has mentioned is the fact that he is idling on the wall! Mad skillz, Dave!
And I don’t know what paly means:( Google won’t tell me either.
I watched it. I’m not sure which hurts more, my neck or my ears.
Mad skilz there Gild. The idea of pairing the bagpipes with an accordion is brilliant. Only thing more brilliant would be to add a baritone ukulele for a trio.
