A Piper's Tale Quotes

“For all the prizes, recitals and honours that grace Gordon Walker’s glittering career, he still likes nothing more than coming home back to play. “I do like my Burns Suppers in Ayrshire. I’ve piped in the haggis, addressed it and then piped it back out again.”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“If you put the practice in, you will gain the rewards later. The world’s your oyster, the sky’s the limit, and my advice to all young pipers is simply ‘Go for it’.”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“he would like to see some changes made to the way these events are organised. “The audience can be tense and I’d like them to be a bit more relaxed. Perhaps the organisers could do something to seat the audience at tables and chairs and have a bar open to let them relax and have a nice time. It’s not meant to be a competition.”   It’s an interesting view, and one not shared by a lot of his colleagues who enjoy the formality of recital,”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“It’s a pretty honest game in the solo world; it’s got to be.”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“At the end of the day, pipers who are coming to practice on a regular basis will play very well together, they will be very confident about playing with others around them as long as their instrument is operating one hundred percent and they can blow it one hundred percent.”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“was privileged to know the very last living exponent of this way of playing, Alex Currie from Cape Breton, and I can confirm that his style of playing was fundamentally so radically different from modern competition piping as to be unrecognisable as having come from the same tradition.”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“I’ve had pipe chanter reeds that have lasted me four or five years.”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“I told the guys that if we got through I was going to donate my left testicle to the band. Well, not only did we get though, but we eventually won the competition, so my left testicle belongs to the Chilli Pipers.”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers

“would like to see the medley competition starting without two three pace rolls. If it starts with a solo piper followed by the rest of the band then that works for me. If the band wants to start with the drummers playing a jig groove then that’s fine. If the drum corps wants to use snare drums with rope tension or have two or three bass drummers that’s okay as well. If you have your pipers cutting out half way through the medley and let the drummers take it away then do it. If”
― Fergus Muirhead, A Piper's Tale: Stories From The World's Top Pipers