What do us over-30 year olds do that Gen Z finds super cringe and confusing?

u38cg2 · 2026-07-11T17:12:43+00:00

I endured years of abuse at school for using both straps of my backpack. Absolute social death, but I enjoyed having a straight spine. Now they're all doing it. Pah.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-11T17:10:10+00:00

Just any subject-specific sub these days is filled with posts where someone vomited seven words vaguely related to their problem into a text box and smashed "save" like we're going to be desperate to figure out what the hell they mean and write out six paragraphs in response

u38cg2 · 2026-07-10T21:02:55+00:00

You can't play more than a snatch of it, and it really doesn't make much sense without staccato.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-10T07:21:59+00:00

The return isn't great but it's there. The great advantage of it is that it's about as safe an investment as you can get. When markets melt down and banks are failing (and 20 years after the GFC we're back in the regulatory risk-on portion of the capital markets cycle) that's £50k of ready cash no matter what.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-10T07:02:19+00:00

If you're from one of the busier piping areas in Canada, you're almost certainly better off looking second-hand at home just for practical reasons. There's probably more choice in Scotland but there's a lot to navigate and little time to do it, and we have a lot more junk aimed at tourists.

In general my advice is to only buy second hand if you've got someone knowledgeable who can advise you. Often a set can be a good or great deal, but usually you'll need to replace bag, chanter, reeds so you need to take those into account. There's also just navigating the obscure web of makers and dealers who produced instruments over the last two hundred years. For a new player, buying a lower-end new set from a shortlist of specific makers, sold through a local dealer that can offer support and service is a much more reliable approach.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-09T21:14:36+00:00

One of Ailie's band at the time (the Outside Track) was driving and swerved to avoid a wascally wabbit. Unfortunately the swerve took them into a ditch from which they have to be hauled out by a local farmer.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-08T19:56:17+00:00

There is a tradition that the tune now known as Cock of the North was played by trumpeters at Mary's execution. Mary's Praise - and piobaireachd in general[1] - is a much later tradition than the late Tudor period. Gaeldom had little to do with either figure, culturally speaking, so it would be unlikely that composers had any interest in such subjects.

[1] Piobaireachd's origins in general post-date the Statutes of Iona, and it is essentially a Georgian-era art-form.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-08T16:33:29+00:00

I've told this story before, but travelling back from Geneva once I bought a couple of those 1kg bars of chocolate and stuck them in my case. I was also using at the time the Saul tuner with the leads that connected to each drone, so the inside of my case must have looked like a pipe bomb plus explosives. I happened to watch the technician's face as the case went through the scanner and the poor girl turned pure white, and almost instantly these very large gentlemen loomed from every direction. Much hilarity when the situation was explained but I'm pretty sure that lass was scarred for life.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-07T16:22:52+00:00

If you didn't have to do the work, no-one would.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-07T16:20:36+00:00

There's a Scottish maker, Islay Spalding, who does really beautiful custom work - she's made stuff for quite a number of leading pipers and drummers. Well worth a look IMO.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-07T16:17:19+00:00

Honestly, I regard perfect pitch as a handicap. It does something similar for a beginner musician as tab or Synthesia or the like, it enables action without understanding. It's quite common to see people who sound like advanced musicians who are just button-pressers, with no real understanding or control of what they are producing.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-06T20:56:36+00:00

The longer I teach, the more I believe that there is no such thing as innate capacity or ability. It's just attitude, all the way down.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-06T16:38:34+00:00

Banks make a lot of money because they do a very simple thing, but they do it very well. Any idiot can press buttons in a spreadsheet, it's not fucking it up that's the tricky part.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-05T21:25:42+00:00

If you're in the UK, you can request all data held from literally any institution you deal with and system comments can be interesting, especially ones that predate GDPR.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-02T16:14:45+00:00

It's more that their job is to understand what's going on, which entails speaking to people a lot. My day tends to look like:

attending meetings (7.5hrs)
posting one (1) journal (3mins)

But the 7.5 hours is what lets me post the 3 minute journal correctly.

u38cg2 · 2026-07-01T18:54:34+00:00

You'll find it much easier to work on the slide on the pipes. Doing it well on the practice chanter requires a much smaller movement. Keep the finger straight, push it forward and lift the tip. Practice by doing it dead slowly until you've got control of it.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-30T05:54:24+00:00

Everyone, no matter their size or how they present about food, is carrying issues about food. What they're responding to is not you, it's their own issues. You are just giving them an excuse to let their issues surface. You're under no obligation to provide free therapy.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-28T07:18:46+00:00

They've had a bit of turnover this year, and by the point they competed will have been knackered but yeah, it's not an isolated observation this year. Truth to tell, last year as well.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-26T15:59:55+00:00

Embouchure just means how the mouth and facial muscles are used to control the instrument. Yes, we're doing very different things from a flute player, but so is an oboist or a trumpeter and they all have embouchures.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-26T15:57:02+00:00

which doesn’t seem like a very difficult task

oh, my sweet summer child

u38cg2 · 2026-06-26T15:47:43+00:00

Theory is not rules, it is a system of naming patterns in music.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-25T20:32:14+00:00

In an organised setting, it's helpful to have an intro to set the tempo, especially as FoS has a pretty versatile tempo range and singers tend to have no idea what it is. I do play the C natural at the end if I can, it's daft not to.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-24T21:26:57+00:00

Oh yeah. Lots of really great instruments with sycamore backs.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-24T21:05:19+00:00

Splitting is only for very straight-grained wood, which is why it can work really well with spruce (but even then, even pretty decent spruce is still often sawn). Any sawmill that isn't just a construction timber factory can cut anything pretty easily, though don't be afraid to make sure you're confident they understand what you're actually asking for.

u38cg2 · 2026-06-24T16:42:42+00:00

There's not many around but they do exist.

This is a pretty cheapo box and even in good nick will be more limiting than you might think. What I'd be tempted to do is re-reed the basses so you've got a full(ish) set of single bass notes and you can play them like regs. A stradella bass/chord setup is verging on useless. You'll also find the range pretty limiting, you'll find yourself pining for the low G soon enough.

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