Birthdays are a joyous time: family, friends, presents, cake, ice-cream, good laughs, and surprise bagpipers who pop out of nowhere and nearly give people heart attacks.
I knew they were serious about the “surprise” factor of the birthday party when a lookout relative waved me down in my car a few blocks from the beach house in Manzanita, Oregon. ”Hi, you must be Mark the bagpiper.” Greeted the man. “Follow me.”
We snuck and slinked our way around to the back of the house, and entered the basement. I could hear the thriving sounds of the party commencing overhead. The man then illustrated the master plan of surprising his 90 year old Dad, who has loved bagpipes since he was young. The birthday boy and the party crowd would be lured to the outside deck, which overlooks the coastline. Once there, it was my job to quickly take position on a nearby hill and play Green Hills, a traditional and well known favorite.
I think I might have seen something like this done on Oceans 11, and to me it is so much fun.
My only concern was with the lack of time to tune my instrument. Bagpipes are a very temperamental piece of work: nearly every environmental aspect is a factor on how the instrument will sound. Depending on how hot or cold, moist or dry an environment the bagpipe can become so sharp or flat that it can actually change the key of the instrument.
While a little worrying, playing without tuning (and still sounding good) is not impossible. I quickly did some educated guesswork on the tuning of the pipe with the environmental factors in mind and prepared for show-time.
Before I knew it the time came: the birthday boy was in position, I power-walked out to the hill, and struck up my bagpipe to the tune of Green Hills. The entire party turned around and began to cheer. Once the tune was complete I took several requests shouted down from the party crowd, and all were entertained.
After the surprise attack and requests came to a close, I found myself surrounded by about 8 young children who were interested in trying to play the bagpipe. From here I took turns positioning the bagpipe on a child’s shoulders and giving him/her a quick “how-to” lesson and setting them loose! Most turned a shade of blue in the face, some managed to get some squeaks and squawks out, and few actually played some notes! I believe the record for notes played that night was 5- and that’s pretty good for a first timer!
Posted via email from Oregon Piper’s posterous | Comment »
page.
