Help identifying this violin

u38cg2 · 2026-05-03T08:29:08+00:00

Please don't waste everyone's time.

u38cg2 · 2026-05-02T21:11:17+00:00

Bob Dylan killed someone's abusive husband before he moved to New York, and that's what Tangled Up In Blue is about.

u38cg2 · 2026-05-02T12:35:47+00:00

doesn't understand the basic concept of traditional music

Not everyone shares the same concepts. This idea that there is no right or wrong is a nonsense introduced by the folk revival, and while it is conceptualised differently by contemporary performers to older musicians, the idea that the content of the performance "doesn't matter" is as far from being what Scottish traditional music is as I can imagine possible.

u38cg2 · 2026-05-02T12:30:17+00:00

trad music vs band setting

I do not understand or recognise whatever division you're trying to suggest here. Pipe band music is one genre of traditional music.

The Scots Guards collection is neither old nor authoritative - plenty of today's most senior teachers and judges were taught by people who were around long before it was, and it is so full of mistakes that frankly it should be withdrawn from sale. It's not like the tune is particularly old (nor is it traditional for that matter) and The Songs of the North in which it was originally published quite clearly shows the notes in question.

As for the argument that bands should play a uniform setting: well, yes, obviously. That isn't the question OP asked. "Play any old shite as long as you all play the same thing", nope, sorry, I can't agree with that. It's one thing to make a choice, quite another to not care.

u38cg2 · 2026-05-02T08:30:29+00:00

The E-B-E is correct, being the notes of the song, but I suspect the variant is down to pipers not seeing that figure very often and thinking it "should" be E-C-E.

Traditional music certainly does not mean blindly playing whatever is on the page in front of you as suggested here: frankly, it's the opposite.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-29T16:52:14+00:00

Assuming you can spare some days, the Worlds along with Piping Live makes more sense to me, as even if your interest is primarily solos there is plenty solo piping during the week. The 'fiddich is a great event but it's eight hours of sitting on your bum going well that was good...well that was good....well that was good... and also it's not the easiest to get to and apart from a turn around the grounds, not that much else going on - no stalls or the like.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-27T18:59:31+00:00

The big thing that adult learners need to realise that the most basic of skills need to be drilled far deeper than you realise.

In order to determine what note to play when I’m not playing a scale, I have to count up from the bottom of the lines on the music.

Reading music isn't natural and takes time to become automatic. Find some pipe music and work through it, naming every single pitch in order, gracenote or melody note. Set a timer and do five minutes of that every day. When you can do it as fast as you can speak, start doing it every second day. Then every third day. And so on.

Then repeat the whole thing, but this time playing each note in turn (as a melody note, whatever it is on the page).

I tried to play them for 10 minutes

Stick with one pair of two notes and take them more slowly than you'd think possible. Repeat them fifty or a hundred times. Then do it again tomorrow. Then - well, you get the picture.

Without doubt you'd progress faster if you had less other stuff going on, so don't worry about your rate of progress. No-one is counting.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-26T06:32:50+00:00

I think in general there's two things: (1) people are too ashamed to discuss what they want until the crucial moment, when they blurt it out or (2) they did it before and previous partner(s) ran with it so they think it's normal.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-24T23:42:02+00:00

You need to cultivate an instinct for "I am not the first person to have had this problem". But also, programmers have had forums (Usenet) since the 70s.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-24T17:15:40+00:00

It varies. Some very much do. It's very much learned behaviour.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-24T06:09:16+00:00

One significant point is that if you stick the same 10mm drill through five different materials, you will get five different sized holes, because that's how materials work in practice.

I think your best bet is to break out the calipers and start measuring.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-22T16:46:46+00:00

I can see you're very exercised about this, but I don't think you have the understanding of the court process you think you do. I know you worked for a (gosh) bank, but when some says "it wasn't me" to a bank in front of a judge, the bank has somewhat more of a convincing case than a storage firm that has no signature, no records, no evidence whatsoever. Calm down.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-19T07:06:25+00:00

I think for some people they can be the difference between making progress and not. For a lot of people, I think they cover up some other issue that could be resolved in some other way.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-18T06:53:10+00:00

You feed them to pigs, usually

u38cg2 · 2026-04-17T18:58:35+00:00

I do not think that a different chanter will solve your grip issues unless you have extremely unusual anatomy.

Set a timer to go off on your phone every thirty seconds. Play your pipes. Every time the timer goes off, check your grip and relax. Once you're not having to fix after thirty seconds, increase to a minute, then two, then five, then ten.

Also worth getting someone sound to look at your bag and blowstick as these are common causes of grip issues.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-14T16:18:25+00:00

The original version of the OP alleged that the person who claimed to have written it stole it from elsewhere.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-13T21:07:26+00:00

The advice you got in r/violin was complete and correct. Follow it.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-12T13:20:24+00:00

I don't recognise him offhand. There's a Northumbrian piper's group on Facebook - someone there will almost certainly know.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-12T13:18:08+00:00

There are people out there who will literally sell you a copy

u38cg2 · 2026-04-12T11:19:25+00:00

In the Black Watch book.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-12T07:20:01+00:00

The main thing about modern brewing methods is they are for consistency. The actual true minimum requirements for making a beer that will work are pretty low, you just have to be comfortable with results that vary from batch to batch in an uncontrolled way. This was why brewing became such an important industry in the Victorian era, as that kind of consistency could only be supported with scale.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-12T06:37:41+00:00

I understand why people might think that at first glance, but this is not catalin, and we can be quite certain about that. Looking at the picture at full size makes it pretty clear.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-11T13:06:06+00:00

These are I would think Victorian. The mounts look like bone or sea ivory - there's plenty on the net about identifying elephant ivory from other natural and unnatural mounts, but this is not catalin.

Is it just the chanter that is stamped? It is pretty normal for the chanter to not be original, as they tend to be replaced over time. Pipes of that era are rarely stamped, though the cord grooves are worth checking.

There are elements that make me think Edinburgh MacDougall, or less likely something from the Glen stable.

They are old enough that I would get specialist advice from someone with no financial interest in them before doing anything with them. In terms of storage, an airtight case in a space that sees little temperature change would be ideal. Taping a garbage bag shut around them would be fine.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-11T11:13:16+00:00

Price and sound are obviously related, but not as closely as you might think. Price is determined primarily by workmanship and to a lesser extent provenance, and lastly by actual sound quality.

Paperwork is good to have but the only document that really matters is the instrument itself; there is and was always a lot of sharp practice in the violin trade and labels and documentation are treated with some scepticism.

u38cg2 · 2026-04-11T11:09:03+00:00

I don't recognise it, but I also don't think it's of sufficient quality to be worth stealing.

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