Notes on scores by Alberto Massi

Alberto Massi Each of the tunes perfectly played by Roddy MacLeod in his collection is accompanied by brand new scores which try to make a step forward in writing down piobaireachd on staff notation. It has been believed for long that piobaireachd could not be efficiently reproduced using this method, in a belief that it was not able to show all the subtleties which are so important in playing this kind of music. While most part of this assertion can be accepted as true, though perhaps the same should be applied to any other sophisticated kind of music, we should not abandon the idea to create reliable scores which can be used as a valid learning and studying tool and also give this music an almost universal visibility. This is not intended to be a sort of criticism of the extremely important scores produced during 19th and 20th centuries; on the contrary, this work starts from them trying to carry on their main aim to provide any player or student with a reliable representation of this music.

The first and possibly more important step we decided to take was to abandon a fixed time signature framework. This had already been done by A. G. Kenneth in his Piobaireachd Society's books, 11th to 15th , with the sole exception of book 12. This feature though had little if any impact on the tune representation, because a fixed time signature, almost always 4/4, was in fact used inside any single bar. This scheme was not used in Ross's Binneas is Boreraig helping him to produce very interesting and accurate scores.

Similarly to Ross's work, the length of each note was used in this work as the basic rule in defining phrases and lines. So, these new scores can have different music "quantities" inside each bar, in order to efficiently show the length of every single note. The bar division, anyway, as well as the standard Stave, were maintained (so differing from Binneas is Boreraig) in order to allow an easier memorization of the tune itself and a friendly visual representation of the tunes. Pipers are usually very well accustomed to a given structure for any tune, say 6,6,4 or 4:4,4 etc, and this structure has been preserved here even if, theoretically, bars are defined as part of any tune having the same "quantity" of music inside. It is a minor compromise, hopefully piper-friendly.

The second peculiarity of these scores is related to the new technology which so rapidly developed in recent years. We now have the opportunity to follow a given score while listening to it from the computer's speakers. It is a terrific learning tool because we can now have a direct relationship between the score and the music. The very first attempts in producing "new" material had led though to scores which were extremely accurate - in fact it is possible to have specific scores for any style of playing - but difficult to be read, at least for an average trained piper. A lot of double dots, ties and dotted 16th or even 32nd notes were causing the score to be very unfriendly. Subtleties are obviously an important part of piobaireachd music, but they are also related to the personal taste and feelings of each piper. This led to the decision to slightly simplify the scores, in a two-step process that, even if time consuming, would have hopefully allowed to produce the best junction between scores and music. First a "least wrong" score was prepared, avoiding all the four "confusing" categories listed above. Then, relying on Roddy MacLeod's playing, we produced a more accurate acoustic file using the flexibility of the Bagpipe Music Writer Gold software, that allows you to alter the length of each note. In this way we were able to efficiently match score and music, without causing the score itself to be too difficult to be read.

Along with the valuable MP3s showing Roddy MacLeod's playing, you will find the related Bagpipe Music Writer score; each tune is also accompanied by a printable PDF file where the canntaireachd version of the tune is written above every line, in order to provide students a direct link between the ancient teaching method and the staff notation score. We hope that this effort will be appreciated by pipers and students worldwide.

Let me end this presentation with my sincere thanks to Roddy MacLeod who has been a warm supporter of my work since my very first attempts and who gave me lot of suggestions to improve and refine it.