Since the year 2000, Dr. William Donaldson has contributed his exclusive analysis of tunes set by the Piobaireachd Society for the major solo piping competitions at the Northern Meeting, Argyllshire Gathering and other significant events.
The author of the seminal work, The Highland Pipe & Scottish Society, Dr. Donaldson explores manuscripts inaccessible to most pipers, and compares and contrasts settings of these great tunes, which now number more than 100 in our series.
In addition to his work as a lecturer in Scottish history with the Open University, William Donaldson received more than eight years of ongoing instruction in ceol mor from the great Robert Bell Nicol of Balmoral, Scotland.
Dr. Donaldson also provides his on musical interpretation of the piobaireachds in MP3 file format.
Please note that the Set Tunes Series is available to all for free and copyright remains with Dr. Donaldson.
pipes|drums' presentation of Dr. William Donaldson's Set Tunes Series is the largest online collection of piobaireachd in the world. We are grateful to him for his work.
This Years' Set Tunes
09 - "Lost Pibroch": Introduction to the Set Tunes Series 2009
Quality reed selection is a pre-requisite to obtaining a good tone in a pipe corps. Four criteria to consider when testing reeds are balance, vibrancy, volume and strength. Check the High A Low A balance against a single sounding tenor drone - if these two notes are in the ballpark chances are the rest of the notes can be tuned.
