Noting the Tradition. The teaching of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. James Beaton.

Chair Jack Taylor

Jack Taylor

I am very pleased to introduce to you this morning James Beaton. He has kindly agreed to come and

talk to us about his “Noting the Tradition” project, and in particular what he has found about the

teaching of Bob Brown and Bob Nicol.

I am particularly grateful to James for coming. He has had a very busy time. This will be the sixth

weekend in a row that he has been doing work at weekends on behalf of the National Piping Centre.

James is originally from Inveraray. He went to school in Lochgilphead and in Oban. He went to a

miscellany of universities – he seems to have been an eternal student. Celtic Studies at Edinburgh

University, a postgraduate diploma in librarianship and information studies from Robert Gordon’s

Institute of Technology in Aberdeen. He then went to Aberystwyth where he did an MSc in

Economics. He previously worked in health libraries because he had an interest in health

informatics, but of course his real interest was always in piping, so he came in 2010 to the National

Piping Centre as librarian. During his time the he has developed the archive and has initiated the

Noting the Tradition project.

He is a fluent Gaelic speaker. He tells us on Twitter that he occasionally tweets in Gaelic, that he has

Highland Tendencies. Make of that what you will.

Thank you very much for coming. We look forward to hearing your talk.

James Beaton

Good morning. I want to start off by talking a bit about the Noting the Tradition Project just to give

some background to it. I have a number of recordings from the project here and what I want to do is

to allow those recordings to speak for themselves. They are people who were taught piobaireachd

by Robert Brown and by Robert Nicol. We have Ann Spalding, Dr Jack Taylor, Jimmy Macintosh and

Malcolm Macrae. I really want these people to speak for themselves about being taught by these

two influential figures. At the end I would like to draw the thing together by suggesting avenues for

further research for members of the piobaireachd society or individuals who may be undertaking

more formal qualifications in perhaps ethnomusicology or cultural studies.

Noting the Tradition was a project which ran between July 2011 and July 2013 at the National Piping

Centre. It was funded partly by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The aim of the project was to gather oral

histories of individuals who had been involved with piping at a number of levels over 50 years or so,

so we were looking to interview people who had been active in piping since the late 1950s. Our aim

was to collect 40 interviews in total. At the end of the day we actually collected 45. We also had a

number of other aims in terms of training volunteers to carry out the oral history interviews. I think

that there is one of our volunteers, Howard Tindall, here today. We trained them in how to conduct

oral history interviews and also in the history and culture of the Highland Bagpipe. We also

undertook to roll out oral history training to schools, and a couple of the volunteers who were based

in Glasgow actually did this, notably in Drumchapel High School in Glasgow which is in area of

deprivation. We also worked with Clevedon High School in Glasgow.

I think it is important to say at the outset that this was not originally an academic oral history

project. It is not something where there are research questions set by the project overall. It was

more a case of allowing the researchers to get some training as far as piping was concerned, but also

to allow them to research the background of the individuals they were interviewing and perhaps to

see what emerged, so in that regard it is quite a bit different from some of the work that has been

done in the ethnomusicology of piping, notably by Decker Forrest who is now at Sal Mor Ostaig, and

also George Dixon at the Royal Conservoire of Scotland who used oral history methods as part of

PhD D Theses, but who in doing so were actually looking to answer fairly specific research questions

as part of that. We didn’t have that sort of framework behind it. We were more looking to see what

emerged from it but I think you will hear when we listen to the interviews that what we have

gathered is primary historical source material which is of value, and what I hope will come out of this

eventually will be further research work.

One of the themes which emerged was the influence of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol in the

transmission and teaching of Piobaireachd in the second half of the twentieth century, and how

important these individuals were for a number of the people we interviewed. When I was looking

over the project that was one thing that stood out, and I am very grateful to the Piobaireachd

Society for giving me the opportunity to come and talk about that.

I would like to move now into playing some sound files. What comes out of those is the sort of

teaching methods that both Robert Nicol and Robert Brown espoused, but also what their

understanding of Piobaireachd was. They had an understanding of Piobaireachd which, as far as I

can see, was sort of peculiar to themselves, or original to themselves. I would be interested to hear

any views from people about that.

The first sound file we will hear is Ann Spalding who was taught by Bob Brown as a teenager. She is

speaking here about who he was, how she was taught by him, and also a little bit about

piobaireachd itself. The lady who is interviewing her is Lowry Potts, who has no background in

piping. She just saw an advert for the project. She came along to one of our training sessions and

she interviewed Ann, so you will probably hear that one or two questions are questions that

somebody with more knowledge of piping might not have asked. So we can listen to Ann talking

here.

Ann Spalding

“Another reason that I wanted to go to Aberdeen, and I was only there for three years, at that time I

was getting my piping tuition, my piobaireachd tuition from Bob Brown at Balmoral and that was

Obviously going to be closer to go for instruction there. I had been going to Bob Brown since I was

fourteen or fifteen.

Tell me about him, what was he like?

He was the Queen’s piper and he lived at the Balmoral estate. The Bobs of Balmoral there was Bob

Brown and Bob Nicol, they were great pipers in their day, they competed then I heard them both

Competing as well. That was just the place to go, that was who you went to. My mum arranged it all

it was all done by letter we wrote a letter asking if it was alright to come up. It was my mum’s friend

that had a car then we were driven up to, I wish I knew all the details.

Did you audition for that?

No, he had heard me playing at a competition he had been judging at and the request had gone in

would he be prepared to teach me piobaireachd. My mum felt that she had taken me as far as she

could go. We took the car up to the foot bridge, we had to park the car walk over the bridge and he

picked us up at the other side and took us into his house on the Balmoral estate. I was quite

fascinated as I would be standing playing piobaireachd and I looked out the window and there would

be deer outside the window. But that would be a whole day Sunday.

Tell me about the importance of the piobaireachd.

The piobaireachd is the big music of the pipes that most solo pipers will aspire too. The people that

don’t play piobaireachd tend to not like piobaireachd because they don’t understand it; I think you

have got to play it to understand it. It is the classical music of the pipes that was the original music of

the pipes.

You couldn’t get more authentic than learning it the way you learnt it in Balmoral could you?

Not really, I was very fortunate I suppose, at that time I didn’t realise how fortunate I was. The other

unfortunate thing was that when I did get up to Aberdeen in 1971 that was the year Bob Brown died;

he had been out in Australia teaching. That was really quite hard and I kind of didn’t do very much, I

didn’t get any real instruction until I then came back home after I had qualified and started teaching.

I went then for my instruction to St Andrews to Bert Barron and I carried on learning piobaireachd

with him and it was then I seriously started competing.

What about the approaches your different teachers have had and how they have affected you, did

they have different styles and reputations?

No because Bert Barron was taught by Bob Brown as well so it was the same style. It was done in the

same style.

Could you describe that style, would I know what I was hearing if I heard it or was it too subtle?

It is probably too subtle, I think it is less now, at that time it was an east coast and west coast thing

John MacDonald of Inverness taught Bob Brown, I always felt there was an east coast/north east

style and a west coast style I didn’t really look into it enough to be honest.

Could you hear it now, that difference in sound?

It’s just the interpretation of the tunes that can be different. I think piobaireachd as it is played just

now is much more standardised, I think, than it was then. You would get people playing different

styles; I think it is just all the same now.

Is it written down, is it captured in that way?

Sort of yes, piobaireachd is written down now. But when I first went to Bob Brown to be taught, I was

learning a new tune The Earl of Seaforth, we had the book but we had no chanter involved at that

point you had to sing it. I was fourteen or fifteen at the time and I didn’t want to sing really but he

said sing damn you sing, so I had to sing with him. You had to sing through the tunes, there is a way

of singing piobaireachd and that is the way it has been handed down and it’s the canntaireachd,

there is a set Nether Lorn canntaireachd which is the beginning of all the books, and I have been

through it and I can sort of do it but I do sing my own canntaireachd because Bob Brown did it quite

differently from the books as well. It is the sound of the movements and that is what you sing.

James Beaton

So that’s Ann Spalding’s experience, obviously as a young girl going to Bob Brown. We’ll hear a bit

more about their character, the differences between them, and of their approach.

The next excerpt I have for you is of your President, Dr Jack Taylor. It is a fairly lengthy excerpt, and

I’ll let it speak for itself. The interviewer is Bill Gallagher. He is a piper who comes to the Piping

Centre quite a bit. He was quite keen to be involved in terms of that. Jack is really here speaking of

his experiences of learning piobaireachd with Robert Brown and Robert Nicol.

Jack Taylor

“So when did your lessons actually start, they started at the beginning of your university career?

Yes I remember it well. I had gone - I had decided to go to Bob Nicol, Bert said just go and the best

day was a Sunday. Bob did not have a telephone; he stayed away at the back of beyond in Glen

Gairn, a wee place he stayed up there.

He lived with his sister?

He did. He stayed with his sister up there and there was no phone contact and I just chose to go, Bert

said Sunday is usually a good day. So I just chose to go, it was a real cheek.

So you had been introduced to Bob Brown?

I had been introduced to Bob Nicol but I had not met Bob Brown by that time.

So this was Bob Nicol and so you went up at knocked on his door?

I basically went and knocked on his door and he said what are you doing here and that was it and he

gave me a lesson.

Right there and then?

There and then. I actually did not realise – I had got the bus to Ballater and I walked from Ballater to

his place which is actually a good deal further than I thought. Glen Gairn to Ballater is about five

miles and I remember walking [laughter], I did not know, but anyway so he thought I was completely

daft. He said yes fine and you just made arrangements, usually by letter, for your lessons.

So it was not every week?

No.

You would go away and practice?

Yes and there was no use really going to see them unless you knew the tune. If you wanted to learn a

turn you would familiarise yourself with it and then you would go.

So that is what you said they would do any finishing and polishing?

Yes.

Can you describe Bob Nicol what was he like. I understand he had lost sight in one eye?

He did. He had. Bob he was a very nice man, he was a bachelor, he was very direct, gruff even but he

had a great sense of humour. But when you went for a lesson with Bob, well come in sit down, what

tunes do you want to do and you would choose the tunes he would not and so you would say My

King has Landed in Moidart. He would say yes this is how I got it from old Johnny and he would sing it

to you.

He would sing it to you?

Yes.

And that was John?

MacDonald he had been a pupil John MacDonald from Inverness and Bob Nicol especially was very

insistent that what he was giving you was what he had been given. He saw himself as somebody just

passing it on and he was not doing anything to it himself musically which I think you could argue. I

would now argue with that approach but this is how I got it from old Johnny, this is it and we had

tape recorders coming in then so we would tape recorded stuff.

It is interesting it seems as if he actually encouraged people to record?

He did.

So there are quite a large number of recordings of Bob Nicol. So I suppose he was ahead of his

time at that time?

He would have been, Brown was the same he encouraged the recording and of course he recorded

lots of stuff as you’ll know.

Did he take the view I think I think I read he took the view that it was not just simply to be copied

the way he played was to set you the example but he did not expect you to copy it absolutely?

He would say this is the bones you put the flesh on it. Those were his words and he would repeat

these words often and if you played something to him and he would say that was quite nice but you

would maybe prefer it this way and then he would show you that way and normally you would prefer

it that way.

I have heard – I have read that he was habitually clad in tweed plus fours was he?

Yes he was. He was employed by Balmoral Estate as a gamekeeper/gillie/stalker I think was his main

thing, stalking. So he always had the baggy plus fours all the time.

I think he had an accident with or an illness that affected his right hand?

Yes he got Parkinson’s later on, I think medically I was diagnosing it as a kind of Parkinsonian tremor

of his right hand he got which made – curiously enough he could still play when his hand went on the

chanter it was steady although it would have affected his technique to a degree.

So you would play the tune on the pipes would he play the pipes or did he play the chanter?

He usually played the chanter but he also played the pipes and he played the pipes quite a lot. He

would play variations of tunes, he would play light music. Bob Nicol was a great light music player

much more than he was known to be.

Was he?

And there are recordings of Bob playing light music and it is pretty damn good playing.

Did you do any light music with him or was it all piobaireachd?

No I played the odd march to him and he said, “You need some lessons on how to play marches”

[laughter] and I never got the lessons.

Quite direct [laughter].

Yes.

So what about Bob Brown? How was your contact with Bob Brown?

It was through two people, it was through Bill Fraser who was pipe major of Aberdeen University at

the time, he made a contact and he took me and I think Ian Duncan or was it Bill Wotherspoon, I am

not sure up to see Bob Brown once. That was the first time I ever went and he was staying at Garbh

Allt Shiel there and that really hit me and that was when the sound of piobaireachd started to mean

something to me.

So what was Bob Brown like then?

Bob was a warmer more charismatic character who was much more willing although, yes he would

have said this, he was much more willing to put his own feeling into his music, Bob Nicol wouldnae

have done that but Bob Brown would and he was a great musician. He was a highly intelligent man

who had really thought hard about piobaireachd and how it should be played and about how he

would play it. The first time I went they were learning a particular tune called MacFarlane’s

Gathering and somebody said would you mind just playing it and Bob said och, aye, the pipes aren’t

going very well, and he played and I thought wow yes I now understand what this music is all about

and I really would say that I had not particularly until that time understood it.

So when was that can you remember?

It would have been 1968 probably.

So was that before you started lessons with Bob Nicol?

No after. I went to Bob Nicol first of all and then went to Bob Brown and they had no problem with

that.

So because you were not a regular weekly pupil you could say I will go to see Bob Brown send him

a letter and then you would go?

Aye, that is right.

You have written the – let me see – the entry for Bob Brown in the Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography?

Yes I did do that.

And you describe him as “a warm unassuming man with a deep love and understanding of

nature”?

Yes.

He was a gamekeeper?

Yes he was. His particular skill apparently was salmon fishing and he was an excellent salmon

fisherman but he did all the things that a gillie would do. But he did believe that closeness to nature

actually was helpful to people in the musical sense. Nicol did as well actually.

So a man of many parts?

Yes.

You refer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that Bob Brown’s gift was to bring

piobaireachd alive and I think you have just covered that?

Yes.

And you refer to his sure touch fluency and definition of melody and phrase, could you just

elaborate on that?

Yes I mean a piece of music should not be played in a straight line and to me piobaireachd often was

just played in straight lines until I went and heard him and it was not. So you would get a series of

four notes occurring one after the other which really would have the same note value but Bob Brown

would not have given them the same note value, one would be stronger, one would be weaker, one

would be medium, one would be stronger and he would just do that and one phrase would clearly

answer the next phrase, he would push a wee bit out here and then take it back melodically with the

next note. He just did all that kind of stuff that to me just made sense musically. He was just good at

it. He was singing through his bagpipes.

Yes. How did he teach, did he teach with canntaireachd?

Singing. Mainly singing and again I can remember just to site one example, going for a lesson it was

learning the set tunes for the competitions and then tune was MacLeod’s Controversy and he said yes

well this is it and I had my book, I had not studied the tune and he sang it and then as he sang it I

would mark my book with the nuances and influences that he put into it and he would say well that is

the way it is have a think about it, come back and the next time you can play it over.”

James Beaton

I think just looking through that we can see the influence of singing in terms of teaching

piobaireachd, and it is a common theme that we find running through all the interviewees who were

taught by Robert Nicol and Robert Brown. Very different I have to say than some of their

contermpories, or some of their older contempories. One of the individuals we interviewed was PM

Robert Kilgour, formerly of the Scot’s Guards. He received a lot of piobaireachd tuition from Willie

Ross at Edinburgh Castle in the late 1940s, and I think was maybe one of the last surviving pupils of

Willie Ross. Ross’s approach to the teaching of Piobaireachd was completely different. There was

no singing at all. He actually was very much against singing. He used the chanter. As Robert Kilgour

related in his interview, which I haven’t got a recording of with me, Willie Ross showed you

something twice, and if you had to be shown it a third time, you were too late, you would never get

it from him. So he had a very different approach to it.

Interestingly enough when Willie Ross himself was interviewed by Alan Lomax in the 1950’s about

learning to play the bagpipes away back in probably the 1880’s when he was a child he said he was

taught by canntaireachd and he actually started singing a little bit of canntaireachd to Lomax when

he asked him to do that. So there is a curious turn there and a curious approach, and it is maybe

something that would be worth further investigation at some point. Why, having been taught by

canntaireachd, did Willie Ross within his own teaching actually use the chanter?

Two of Brown and Nicol’s major pupils in the 1960’s and 1970’s were James Macintosh and Malcolm

Macrae. The next tracks I have are from them. First of all from Jimmy Macintosh, then from

Malcolm. I’ll speak about the Jimmy Macintosh tracks first of all. I am the interviewer. The

interview was done at Newark Airport during the Metro Cup in 2013. You may at one point here a

jet taking off in the background. But here is Jimmy talking about his first forays into professional

solo competition in the 1950’s/1960’s. He had been a boy soldier and had been taught piping in

Dundee, had joined the army spent quite a number of years in the army, and by the 1960’s he was

taking up professional competitive piping. So here he is speaking about that.

James Macintosh

“He was talking about Inverness, he was obviously thinking about all the great players and

everything and that was way above my level. So I entered for Inverness anyway and I didn’t do

anything in the piobaireachd, I did some things that weren’t very good, I could only remember three

piobaireachds. But I did win a couple of prizes with the March, Strathspey and Reel. I decided then

that I needed to study so I went to Bob Brown then. Bob took me on.

When would this about?

I started with Bob Brown in 1965.

So really in the fifties had you been involved with the band and stuff like that and then kind of moved

on and your solo piping career really started in the sixties? That’s right. I was in my forties then. That

was really the best decision I ever made during my whole life. He changed my whole life. I went up to

Balmoral and he says “Play something” and I played Donald of Laggan and he said “Yes, you’ve got it

all but you need to learn to play it from your heart not your feet. Put down your pipes”. So I put down

my pipes, took out the practice chanter and he said “you can’t use that, you need to use singing”. So,

that was it, from that point on every piobaireachd I played like that as a song. I progressed very

quickly with him. It was just chemistry that worked. He was that kind of person. He very easily

conveyed to you what he wanted. I did very well then, I mean I really started and I kind of dropped

away from light music.

So what were the tunes that you were doing with him?

All the tunes, he would just say, he would give me three or four tunes and just say “now memorise

them and as soon as you have them memorised, don’t play too much till you come back”. When I

went back he would comment on them. I wasn’t long started with Bob when Malcolm MacRae came

from Australia. Bob said to me there was a young Australian chap coming. I’d like you and him to do

what Nicol and me did with Macdonald, the two of you come together for lessons and take different

tunes so you can help each other out after these two years.

Was this the early seventies by this point?

When did Malcolm come here now?

Was it, 72 or 73, something like that?

No, it was before that actually, I think about 67.

Oh right, because I think he came and then he went back to Australia and then he came back.

Yes he went back. It would have been 1967 I think. So Malcolm and I did that for a few years. He was

sharing a house in Hamilton with a New Zealand chap, Donald Bain. Donald was here for two years,

and he was studying with Donald MacLeod. The day that Bob Brown was buried, I just started with

Bob Nicol then, I had had some lessons from Bob because Bob Brown wouldn’t teach you certain

tunes, the likes of The Big Spree he said “you need to go to Nicol” but then when Bob died I just

started with Bob Nicol then. Bob died in 1978.

And the other Bob died I think about 1972 or 1973, is that right?

1972, Bob Brown died, yes.

So yourself and Malcolm were going to both Bob Brown and Bob Nicol during that period?

Yes, basically all my piobaireachd teaching was from those two.”

James Beaton

So, really, Jimmy MacIntosh’s experience of going to Robert Brown and Robert Nicol.

The last three tracks I have are from Malcolm Macrae. Malcolm, again a pupil of those individuals.

And just to fill you in on a bit of the background of the circumstances of the recording I interviewed

Malcolm at the National Piping Centre when he was over here during the summer of 2012. However

we had a bit of a technical disaster and a lot of the interview was not recorded, so very kindly

Malcolm, when he went back to Australia, recorded a statement for us about his piping experience.

It covers a whole range of things. It covers his early days in Australia learning with an individual

called Peter Davidson who had been a pupil of Robert Reid. It covers his coming to Scotland, his

sharing a house, as we heard there, with Donald Bain, and then eventually moving to Scotland in the

early 1970’s, his time as president of the Piobaireachd Society, and one or two other aspects of his

piping career.

But what we are going to hear about first of all is his coming to Scotland and becoming a pupil of

Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. So I will just let him speak about that.

Malcolm Macrae

“I was at university studying law and then I was practising law. I qualified about ‘64 or ‘65 at about

the time that Robert Reid passed away, Robert Reid died in 1965 so the idea of going to Reid for

tuition proved impossible. I did eventually travel to Scotland at the end of 1966 and at one of the

indoor competitions in Glasgow in 1967, I introduced myself to Robert Brown, he, of course, had fond

memories of Peter Davidson’s time with him back in 1934. Peter had also been a good friend to one

of Bob Brown’s daughters, Marion. Marion was married to a tea planter. They were first in India but

latterly in New Guinea, they used to come to Sydney, Walter and Marion Johnson used to come to

Sydney for their holidays. I met Marion during several of those visits to Sydney and of course because

of the contact with Marion I dare say that Robert Brown felt that he had to help me for Peter

Davidson’s sake. He was kind enough to tell me to contact him and to feel free to go to him for

tuition. I remember well he said that you won’t have any difficulty remembering my phone number it

Braemar 251, that’s two fifty-first Highland divisions. After some months in Glasgow I contacted

Robert Brown and commenced going to him for tuition. I had a job with Glasgow Chamber of

Commerce and the job was nothing spectacular I was trying to sell advertising space in the Chamber

of Commerce’s monthly journal, not very successfully. But there was a little car went with the job,

little Ford Anglia, with a funny back window, but anyway, I used the car to go up to see Robert

Brown and I was going up of a weekend, probably every second or third weekend during the first half

of 1967. After I had been going to him for several months he said “look you should really team with

another piper from Dundee, Jim Macintosh, he has been coming to me as you have been and it would

help if you two were to come together as King George V said when he sent me, (that’s Brown and

Robert Nicol) to John MacDonald of Inverness one will forget, two will not forget.”

So I made the acquaintance of Jim Macintosh who was living at Broughty Ferry just outside Dundee

and we got into a routine of me driving from Glasgow, or latterly Hamilton where I was staying,

through to Broughty Ferry on a Saturday afternoon, I would spend the Saturday night with Jim and

his family and early on the Sunday morning we would hop in my car and go through Glenshee to

Braemar and to Balmoral, park the car by the roadside, walk over the pedestrian swing bridge across

the Dee go to Bob’s house at the Garbh-Allt Shiel and we would have a lesson a that extended from

early afternoon to sometimes eight or nine at night on the Sunday. I would then drive back to

Broughty Ferry and drop Jim off and continue on to Hamilton and go to work bright and early on the

Monday morning.

This was just wonderful. It was a wonderful experience and certainly it did help that Jim and I were

going together because we were working on different tunes. Our principal objective was to master

the set tunes for that year and we would each have four or five tunes and invariably, I think that we

each ended up learning the other man’s tunes better than the ones we had been working on

ourselves, because you could hear and see the other player being conducted through his tune by

Brown and you could appreciate exactly what it was Brown was trying to get out of the pupil’s

playing. Whereas the pupil had fingers and bagpipe to worry about and he could never accomplish it

quite as well as you perceived it could be done.

I was living in Hamilton during 1967 and 1968 because early in 1967 I had made the acquaintance of

Donald Bain a piper who had just a month or two before I had; he’d gone to Glasgow to have tuition

from Donald MacLeod. But Donald had his wife Alice and two little boys in tow and they were living

in a tenement flat just off Alexandra Parade at Townhead, Toonheid, in Glasgow, near the infirmary

where Alice worked as a nurse. However, the boys were not enjoying Glasgow life, certainly not

tenement life in the middle of winter so we teamed up and we rented a house in Hamilton, a bit out

of Glasgow but we both commuted into Glasgow. Donald had a job working for a company that

serviced Gestetner duplicating machines and he had a little van so we both had wheels. From my

point of view the most interesting aspect of being able to stay with Donald was we were able to

compare and contrast the tuition that we were getting, he from Donald MacLeod and I from Robert

Brown. He too was working on the set tunes so we were quite mystified early on as to why it was that

there were subtle differences between Donald MacLeod’s ways of the tunes and Robert Brown’s

ways of the tunes. Ultimately we could only put it down to the fact that they were taught by John

MacDonald at different stages of John MacDonald’s career. Robert Brown had started going to John

MacDonald in Inverness in, I think, 1926, Nicol having gone the year before in 1925. Brown and Nicol

had continued going to John MacDonald until the outbreak of war. Donald Macleod as far as I know

didn’t have regular tuition from John MacDonald until after the war, mid to late 1940s. Whether that

is the reason for the slight differences in style I really don’t know but that is all that Donald and I

were able to put it down to. Certainly it has been said by many to me that Donald MacLeod didn’t

ever hear John MacDonald play pipes and it may be that that is part of the reason for the differences

that Donald Bain and I were able to detect in the teaching we were receiving.

I had the impression before I went to Scotland that to play piobaireachd it was a matter of simply

copying parrot fashion the playing of a master player such as Robert Reid and certainly although

Peter Davidson had had good tuition in New Zealand from, amongst others George Yardley who was

a pupil of John MacDougall Gillies, the way Peter learnt tunes from Reid’s recordings was simply to

sit there with an ear glued to the loudspeaker of the tape recorder and to try to analyse the relative

lengths of notes and try to reproduce the tune in that fashion, so that is the way I learnt piobaireachd

as well.

After I had been going to Brown, I suppose for three or four lessons the penny dropped. There was

rather more to it than simply parrot fashion learning to copy the way of the tune. Rather there were

rudimentary rules that gave you the key to any particular tune. Now, Brown talked about scansion,

he used to describe any particular tune by reference to its scansion. By scansion he meant the pattern

of accented and unaccented pulses or beats within each phrase. So a four pulse tune he would

describe as the scansion being strong, medium, medium, strong. Three pulse tunes would be strong,

medium, strong or medium, medium, strong depending upon the particular tune. Of course once you

were told the scansion of a particular tune was strong, medium, medium, strong it all became

predictable and intelligible and you were able to use this knowledge of the pattern to be able to

present the tune in a way that was both musical but made sound sense in a way. This was a great

revelation; I wondered where the term had come from. Nicol also talked about scansion, I spoke

subsequently to other pupils of John MacDonald and they said that, no, they didn’t remember John

MacDonald talking about scansion in that particular way.

The conclusion I reached was Brown and Nicol were able over many year analyse the way John

MacDonald played and they were able to identify the pattern of pulses within the phrases and were

able to discern that this was akin to scansion in terms of poetry, where a line of poetry can be

scanned and the syllables can be identified as strong or weak or having a particular pattern.

Notwithstanding scansion was a great aid to being able to interpret and present a tune in a sensible

but yet musical fashion and this was the one particular feature of Brown’s teaching in particular that

made a great impression on me.”

James Beaton

I have one more track to play in which Malcolm talks in a bit of detail about the teaching methods of

Bob Brown.

Malcolm Macrae

“Could I say a little more about Brown’s method of teaching? We did not play the practice chanter to

any great extent. The practice chanter was really for demonstrating and practising embellishments.

Brown’s method of teaching involved him singing the tune to us without reference to a book

although both Jim and I would do as all piobaireachd pupils do we would sort of mark up the book

with all sorts of magic symbols. But invariably it is very difficult to remember exactly what you

intended by a particular mark that you might have put on a score. It was a matter of learning the

song of the tune, particularly the song of the ground. You would have an indication of the scansion

and you would listen to Brown singing it, you would then sing along with him.

Unfortunately there was a certain reticence about us using tape recorders in our lessons, and this

was not encouraged so we didn’t record our lessons. Therefore it took a long time, like maybe four or

five lessons over several months to get the way of the tune precisely as Brown would want it. Jim and

I would sing the tunes to each other driving up and down the road going to and from our lessons, but

almost always there would be subtleties that we would immediately become aware of once Brown

again sang the tune to us.

I can’t help but contrast that method of learning which took a lot of time with the methods that

pupils invariably seem to use these days where immediately they come for tuition the tape recorder

or the mobile telephone or whatever goes on and the whole session is recorded. I think this is really

wonderful, where it might have taken me many weeks or even months for a tune to mature and for

me to feel I was playing it more or less how Brown wanted me to play it.

Now one of my pupils might say they want to learn a tune, so I say “oh set your recorder going” and I

sing the tune to him. Depending upon how experienced the player is I might sing the ground and just

a little of each variation or I may sing the whole tune. The pupil takes that recording away and

almost invariably within a week or two, or three he is back and can play the tune on the bagpipe.

Now, Jim and I took much longer than that to learn any one tune because of the repetitive nature of

the process of going through the song of the tune again and again at successive lessons. I just wish

we had had the temerity to have said to Bob Brown that we would really like to record your singing

of this tune so that I can listen to this before I come next time, so that hopefully I could have the tune

off by the next lesson.

Ok, he would sing the tune, we would sing along with him and then we would play the tune once we

had memorised it on the bagpipe, not on the practice chanter. We would play the tune on the pipe

and he would conduct us through the tune. We would move slowly around the room and he would

either stand in the one spot or move in front of us conducting us with his hands and his arm and you

were very quickly able to interpret his hand movements and the way in which he was conducting.

And, indeed sometimes the way he looked at you, enabling you to appreciate the nuances of

expression that he was looking for. I think this is a wonderful way to learn and to teach others. That

is the method that I have used, I think successfully, over the last fifteen or twenty years that I have

been teaching.

When you could play the tune right the way through he might comment on technical matters,

embellishments and so on but the concentration was on rhythm, on the tempo of the ground and the

variations and above all on the expression. He wanted you to be able to show the start and the finish

of each phrase. This has made me appreciate that because of the limitations of our instrument where

we can’t vary the volume and we can’t stop the sound, the setting out of the phrases and showing

the phrases and showing the ends of the lines is of paramount importance. Brown used to liken

piobaireachd to poetry, lines of verse and the expression that you gave to the line and phrases that

made up the line was all important.

He used to not speak about the term rubato, he did not use that term, but he used to indicate that

you would take a little off this note and put it onto that one for effect. He talked about robbing Peter

to pay Paul, he talked about the lights and shades and these subtleties of expression made his

playing very distinctive.

I feel that this represents the heart of good piobaireachd playing as contrasted to the many players

who can play the tune pretty much as is accepted as the customary way of a tune as compared to

what might amount to a literal interpretation of the score. But the subtleties nevertheless are still

missing; some of these subtleties that Brown was able to impart really made each tune very

distinctive.

Brown had died, of course, before I went back to Scotland in 1974 and I went to Robert Nicol from

1974 until his death which I think was in the late 1970s. I found Nicol a wonderful teacher in that he

left you in no doubt whatsoever as to what he required. He had a very positive and forthright manner

of singing the tune and conducting you through the tune. I felt there were rather less subtleties in his

expression, but nevertheless if you could play on the bagpipe the tune as Nicol sang it you were

playing a really good piece of music.”

James Beaton

So, the teaching of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. That is the final excerpt from Noting the

Tradition that I have for you. I think that for me there are a number of things that arise – where did

the term “scansion” come from, what about the differences between individuals who were coming

from what seemed to have been the same source, for example Donald MacLeod being taught by

John MacDonald of Inverness and perhaps taking a slightly different approach to tunes. I think it is

about the nature of tradition; it is about individuals interacting with tradition.

I think there is probably the foundation of a research project there, because there are other people

who were interviewed who have something to contribute to the transmission of Piobaireachd in the

20th century. Howard Tindall, who is sitting in the audience, interviewed Hugh MacCallum. Now

Hugh was taught by Ronald MacCallum by and large but he also received some tunes from Willie

Thomson who lived in Kintyre, probably born about the turn of the 20th century, had been taught by

Ronald MacKenzie, who in turn had been taught by John Ban MacKenzie, so you have people there

who are going back not many early remove to those who had the old Gaelic oral tradition, which

indeed the evidence that we are hearing here seems to that which these two individuals very much

espoused.

So that is really all I have to say. I am certainly happy to take questions, and any comments that you

might like to make.

Jack Taylor

Any questions for James?

Tom Graham

Sometimes tunes seem to be all fingering and no melody. You were saying that they would sing to

their pupils. I maintain that they must have sung the tunes when they were invented. There must

have been a rhythm to them; otherwise it wouldn’t have just arrived. I must confess that a lot of

piobaireachd just sounds like expert fingering rather than expert song. So is that my fault?

James Beaton

Interestingly one of the things that has come out of this – and I didn’t really play – we could be here

all day – Ann Spalding makes the comment, and Malcolm alluded to it at the end of his piece there –

that the approach is much more standardised now than it was formerly, and there are one or two

other interviewees who make that point as well.

Tom Graham

Do you think that it was more rigorously taught this way?

James Beaton

There is some evidence which suggest that pipers who approach music orally actually have a

different take on the music than pipers who learn to read music. There is an article in Scottish

Studies by a man called Tyber Fallsit which looks at the piping traditions of Cape Breton where the

pipers were by and large mainly Gaelic speaking. They were mainly ear-trained pipers and they

weren’t able to read music. If I have understood what he is saying in the article he is saying that

those individuals have their own aesthetic which is different from that of those who have learnt to

play from the page.

Roderick Cannon

My question follows directly on from what James just said, but it is really for Jack. Jack, you talked

about having lessons from Bob Brown and as he would sing to you, you would be making marks on

the score, as you were listening. I want to ask, do you still have these? And would you be prepared,

not just now, but possibly privately to sing yourself into a recorder to illustrate what those marks

convey to you.

Jack Taylor

I do. I didn’t do that for very many tunes, certainly the tunes I got from Bob Brown I still do have the

markings, and, unlike Malcolm I am able to understand my markings. They are very helpful.

I was thinking about Malcolm’s remarks about tape recorders. Bob Nicol was very happy for us to

use tape recorders. But it made me think. Maybe it accelerates learning in one way, but maybe

having time to go over stuff, and then go back to the teacher, could mean that learning becomes

more firmly entrenched. I remember going to Bob Brown, and he would give us a new tune. You

would go away with it in your head, and then it would disappear somewhere, and you would try and

capture it back, and it took a long time before you felt you had caught what he was trying to give

you. You only really realised whether you had or whether you hadn’t when you went back for the

next lesson and you would do what you thought he wanted you to do that you would realise that is

was or wasn’t right.

Peter McCallister

On the same point about that, I have been going for lessons for a long long time, and sometimes the

teacher changes which is really interesting. I wonder if you have any ideas on that regarding the oral

tradition James.

James Beaton

You mean the actual person changed, or the teacher’s approach changed?

PM

The teacher’s approach changed.

JB

I have had various discussions about this with pipers, but also I wouldn’t personally agree with

Malcolm’s analysis of why Donald MacLeod had a slightly different approach from Brown and Nicol

towards Piobaireachd because I think that there are a number of other possible explanations other

than the fact that Donald MacLeod received his teaching from John MacDonald at a later stage in his

career. Yes I think that John MacDonald changed his views about tunes. I had a discussion with

Roddy MacLeod about that. Roddy was making the point that he has actually revised his views on

tunes throughout his piping career. And also I think that with Donald MacLeod you are actually

dealing with a consummate musician who would have been putting quite a bit of himself into tunes

as well.

One of the other interviews we have done, fairly recently, is with John MacDougall. After the tape

machine was switched off, he said yes I went to Bob Brown and so on but you actually have to put

quite a bit of yourself into these tunes. That was a fairly strong statement from him about that.

Tom Graham

Sometimes you hear a piper playing, and he misses a grace note or something like that, but in the

process of memorising that grace note that they have actually missed, they have forgotten how the

tune goes. And sometimes to memorise a tune properly you have to get this rhythm in your head

about it. I am doing a tune now and in fact while I am sitting here now I am practicing the

movement rather than listening to the tune. May it is just because I am a Scouser, but it seems to be

overplayed how wonderful your fingers are, how well you can play that tune.

JB

Which maybe is the Breton approach to things, that the taste of the music is much more important

than the actual technicalities.

Malcolm Whyte

A lot of us here will remember Rhona Lightfoot giving us the MacFadyen talk at Stirling Castle, and

she maintained that, first it helped if you had the Gaelic; second the music had to be in the family

whether it was clarsach fiddle or pipes and you had to understand the history of the tune. If you did

that, it came from the heart rather than the head, and that was the impression I got from listening to

these tapes, that you have to understand what the tune is about and the history of it and where it

was written. Would you agree on this?

JB

Up to a point. I think we need to move away from the concept of these tunes being written,

because I think we don’t know how these tunes originally emerged. That would be the point that I

would make. It is important not to forget that with Gaelic culture you are dealing with something

that until the beginning of the 19th century was primarily oral, and the transmission of song, the

transmission of literature, oral literature, and the transmission of music, is done orally, and I think

that, at this stage when we live in a highly literate culture, it easy to forget just how oral these

cultures were, and how strongly oral they were. I mean if you move sideways and begin to look at

Gaelic Song for example, there are songs that are composed, not written, composed, in the 16th

century still being sung in the 20th century, and these songs have been passed on orally. So I think

that it is important to see it within that broader context.

Keith Nicol

It is just an aside, rather than a question. My wife comes from an Irish background, her mother was a

Gaelic speaker from the north west of Ireland, and when I introduced her to some of the tapes form

the masters of Piping series with Brown and Nicol, which are very good, she recognised the styles of

some of these tunes which she had got from her mother which I thought was interesting because

her mother would sing these songs when she was doing the washing or doing the housework, so it

was ingrained in certainly the Irish culture.

JB

It was ingrained in the culture of the Highlands as well. You find travellers coming to the Highlands

as they are opening up in the 19th century and one of the things that they comment on is just how

ubiquitous music is, because people sing when they are in the fields, when they are working in the

house and when they are doing all sorts of things.

Jack Taylor

If there are no other questions it remains for me to thank James again for his excellent contribution

by getting that project up and going, analysing the material, and proposing ideas for further

research. In particular highlighting that thing which was a word that Bob Brown seems almost to

have invented, scansion, and what all that actually means.

So James thank you very much for your contribution. It has been much appreciated.