The Bagpipe Society

Review: The Register – a Second selection of music for bagpipes by Dave Rowlands

This is Dave’s second book, following on from his first one - Drone Rage - reviewed here a few issues ago. Unlike the first it is virtually all traditional material except for one by John Kirkpatrick - ‘Bread and Jam Waltzer’ - and adding up to 72 tunes in total.

At first glance I thought that you would have to have a set of Swaynes or similar to play them, but a closer perusal of the contents showed that about half were playable as written on single octave pipes and a few more with only slight modification as most pipers are familiar with doing.

Whether you like the tunes or not is a matter of personal choice I suppose. Suffice it to say that if you share Dave’s taste in pipe music you’ll like what is presented here.

Most of the tunes are from the British Isles with a couple of French and the odd

Spanish and Belgian ones. In the back of the book are notes on the sources of the tunes and whether Dave has made any alteration to them to make them more pipey. Personally I would have liked some more information on the nationality of them as well, as some of the sources were old collections of British and Irish music, so just knowing the source tells us little about the tunes origins. There were quite a few tunes that could be from the English side of the border rather than the Scottish, and I would have liked to know which was which.

Having played through most of the tunes on pipes (those tunes I had the range for) and recorder (those I hadn’t), there were a few I particularly enjoyed. ‘From Night Till Morn’ for example and Dave Faulkner’s version of ‘The Lilly’ - I’ve always liked this when I’ve heard him performing it. Nice now to have the dots as well.

All in all an interesting collection and I look forward to the next…

The Register costs £12.50 inc. P&P and is available directly from Dave Rowlands, 49 Shandon Rd., Broadwater, Worthing, W.Sussex. BN14 9DX or you can pay with credit card or Paypal from http://sites.google.com/site/daverowlandsbagpiper/home