About: A New Compleat Theory for The Highland Bagpipe The Scottish Highland Bagpipe, now heard around the globe, has long enchanted musicians and listeners for it’s brilliant tone, humming drones and its profoundly stirring music. Mirroring Joseph MacDonald’s unprecedented and encyclopedic treatise of staff notations of the Highland bagpipe (1760-1803), Dr. Matthew Welch’s A New Compleat Theory for The Highland Bagpipe charts the complete (or the archaic “compleat’) trajectory of the use of the Highland Bagpipe up to 2020. Terse and insightful, this treatise will educate both the piper and composer. Included in Part II is a selection of Dr. Welch’s critically acclaimed compositions for the bagpipe in an array of traditional and modern forms.
“This book is a significant contribution to piping, to the progression of traditional music, to composition, and to the exploration of entangling musical philosophies. It is brilliant, baffling, obscure, obvious, and quite simply wonderful.” - James MacHattie, Director of Education at the College of Piping, P.E.I.
About A Piper’s Thesaurus of Scales and Patterns Being a piper, performer, improvisor and teacher for over three decades, I have devised many of my own exercises to develop facility around the chanter. These were fashioned in order for me to better perform composed music and also use as building blocks for both live-improvisation and written composition. A Piper’s Thesaurus of Scales and Patterns presents 200 exercises laid out in a systematic manner that explore diatonic, pentatonic and harmonic resources on the Great Highland Bagpipe. Just about all of these are dually suitable for the novice and professional. They all feature repetition, for improving agility, and creating sustain in improvisation. Only a rare few require control of the alternate fingerings that produce C natural and F natural, by now commonly used on the Highland Bagpipe.
There are many books that have exercises for the Highland pipe’s ornaments (aka grace-notes and/or embellishments): this book has none in attempt to put the focus on the pitch content. In essence they maybe played “legato,” or smoothly as written or ornamented ad libitum. I have spent many years playing these and will continue to do so, as they have built much of my personal technique and teaching practice. Those looking to improve their playing and creativity will gain much from these 200 riffs. A Piper’s Thesaurus of Scales and Patterns is dedicated to my son Mason Reid Welch-Lueck.
Dr. Matthew Welch is an award-winning and critically acclaimed opera composer, bagpiper, multi-instrumentalist, conductor, recording artist and dad living in the SF Bay Area, California, USA. He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts at Yale University’s School of Music. https://www.matthewwelchmusic.com
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