I recently got an email with this as a brief;
"We’ll be celebrating the anniversary on April 10 but we’ve already kicked off the worldwide celebration. People from more than 25 countries, including bagpipers in Scotland, Bollywood movie actors in India, a firefighter in New York City, and members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, came together to create a first worldwide “it’s a small world” video."
Well, that was an interesting project to be involved with! I was asked to perform some pipes for Disney’s celebration of the song “It’s a Small World”. They also asked me to think up a location that would suit the “Highland” brief that they had so I chose the Rest and Be Thankful in Argyll. A part of Scotland which I pass almost weekly on the way home or back to Glasgow.
Originally the pipe part was in C Major! This worried be, but I quickly got looking at options for playing in C. I knew that if I taped my C and F holes on my A Moore Chanter then I could get a C Major scale, but it would start half way up the chanter! Luckily, the tune managed to fit on it like this so the next thing to think about was the drones. My friends at Pipedreams Reeds sorted me out with a shorted tenor drone reed which made it tune lower and the Bass was able to tune low enough anyway and the result you can head in the attached podcast for this blog.
Do remember it wasn’t ideal conditions for playing pipes either on a wet, sleety hillside in February! You can see the finished video here;