trungboyshigh wrote:
Matt White wrote:
I have to agree...
But I also think bagpipes come a close second!
Kudos on that, i think bagpipes are way overrated, horrible sounding instrument to be honest...
I don't believe that there are that many truly intrinsically horrible instruments. There are instruments that are horribly played EG the pan pipes.
I think the bagpipes can sound pretty good, but too often they're played in a cliched way by mediocre players so that tourists can convince themselves that they've seen a bit of the "real" Scotland or so that people who have no connection to Scotland other than a surname beginning with "Mc" can shed tears for an "old country" that they've never set foot in.
It's like people I know who say they can't stand the electric guitar. What they can't stand is what too often gets done with an electric guitar. They will quite happily listen to Les Paul but will start complaining when they hear some piece of cod-heavy metal with the guitars distorted up the wazoo.
It's not the instrument's fault (despite my earlier joke).
BTW there is not one, single "bagpipes". What most people think of as "bagpipes" are the Great Highland Pipes. If we consider bagpipes as reed instruments where the air supply is via some kind of bladder rather than directly from the player's mouth then things get wider and more interesting as we can include things like the Northumbrian Small Pipes (from the English side of the borders), the Uillean Pipes and even the Scottish Small Pipes. These are all "bagpipes" but in some cases the bladder is inflated by a bellows, and they all have different shapes to the bore of the pipes. Some may not even have a drone note, others (EG the Uillean Pipes) have a drone that can be changed by the player during the tune.
Note that all of this means that "bagpipes" are not necessarily Scottish. Bagpipes, in various forms, were all over western Europe at one time and even now they are not confined to Scotland or to Scottish music.
