Farewell To Nigg

  1. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    This is a fine 4-part retreat march for the bagpipes composed by Duncan Johnstone in the mid 1970s. My version is played on octave, mandolin and guitar with the octave and mandolin alternating and sharing the melody throughout.

    Recorded using an Audio Technica Perception 120 into REAPER using three tracks, one each for the three instruments. The video was made using Movavi Video Editor Plus 2020.



    https://youtu.be/3zn3l_uH7Tc
  2. Frankdolin
    Frankdolin
    What a great tune and arrangement John! Beautifully played and a really great use of slide. Wonderful ,peacefull video as well.
  3. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    Brilliant John. I played this about ten times over and over while I cleaned the dishes. Love the stately rhythm and slides. Really helped with the job in hand too, thanks!
  4. Christian DP
    Christian DP
    Pleasing to the ear, pleasing to the eye and pleasing to the mind, John!
  5. John W.
    John W.
    Definitely Scottish… Was Mr Johnstone referring to the place, or the people…or both!?
  6. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Thanks so much, everyone. Frank and Simon, the slides are actually mainly hammer-ons and pull-offs, which I use to try to get a "pipey" flavour into pipe tunes played on the mandolin. A poor substitute for the wonderful ornaments that pipers employ in their playing.

    John W, the story I have heard about the origins of the tune is that it was the winning march in a competition run by the College of Piping (situated in Glasgow) to mark the launch in 1974 of the first oil rig from the Highland Fabricators’ Yard at Nigg. Nigg is a village on the Cromarty Firth north of Inverness and was one of the main yards building rigs for the North Sea oilfields during the boom years for oil production. Duncan actually taught at the College of Piping for a few years before later opening his own piping school in Glasgow.
  7. Robert Balch
    Robert Balch
    Very well done John. A most enjoyable tune and such a good production.
  8. Simon DS
    Simon DS
  9. David Hansen
    David Hansen
    Exceptional playing John, who would have thought a mandolin could sound like bagpipes? I first heard this tune performed by fellow Scots; Shooglenifty. Their version is a little different!!!

  10. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Many thanks, David. Shooglenifty certainly give the tune a very individual and distinctive treatment! There is a very lovely version by Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas (fiddle and cello).
  11. Mandophyte
    Mandophyte
    Super sound, but how do you pronounce their name? Is it Shoo-glen-nifty, Shoogle-nifty or Shoog-len-ifty? Or some other?
  12. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Thanks, Mandophyte. The pronunciation is as you suggest in your second possibility: Shoogle-nifty. "Shoogle" is a Scots word meaning "to shake". We talk of something being shoogly if it is unsteady. A person who is in a precarious position in his life or work is often described as having "his jaiket hingin' on a shoogly peg! "Nifty" means neat or smart; we might describe someone who dances well as being a nifty mover. So I imagine the band coined the compound word to describe their musical style as cleverly and constantly on the move(?) If you listen to the video David Hansen posted above you may well agree with the band's choice of name.
  13. David Hansen
    David Hansen
    I'm surprised, I thought everyone knew Shooglenifty, along with bass, drums, fiddle, banjo and guitar, they feature a MANDOLIN player. Iain M. MacLeod wrote a lot of their early tunes including this one:



    Enjoy!!
  14. gortnamona
    gortnamona
    superb John
  15. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Thanks very much, Lawrence. Always good to get positive feedback from fellow players.
  16. bbcee
    bbcee
    Great stuff, John, I really like the effect you were going for (and executed well).
  17. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    Oh my goodness, I knew what shoogle meant but now that you Gents mention it again, it reminds me of the time I learned the word.
    I was a teenager.
    (Nifty in the South means something technically clever, a design with insight perhaps.
  18. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Thanks, Bruce. I think the octave is a better choice for interpreting pipe tunes as it has a longer sustain and the hammer-ons and pull-offs are more easily achieved than on the shorter-scaled mandolin with its higher string tensions. On this tune I combined both and I think they worked quite well together.
  19. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    It’s also the extended, regular pace that you’ve played there John, with recurring accents per measure, really good.

    And great track David, it certainly has the atmosphere of factory work.
  20. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    Outstanding, John, the sound is somewhat eerily ethereal, like a march of ghosts (which would make sense, since Scottish ghosts would be the only Scots ever to retreat, their bodies staying put). But I guess much of that is due to finely gauged wet tuning
  21. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Thanks again, Simon, and thank you Bertram for ascribing "ethereal" to my playing and suggesting it may be due to "finely gauged wet tuning". I am afraid that any wet tuning you are hearing on this is more likely to be more realistically defined as "not totally in tune". Just today I restrung both octave and mandolin with new sets of strings and even I can hear the difference they give.
  22. Simon DS
    Simon DS
    Just found a tune by Shooglenifty, it’s title’s a bit daunting but I love the tune and the rhythm.
    Here’s the TAB, because at this rate i may not post it till next year !
    X:1
    T: The Arms Dealer's Daughter
    C:Angus Grant, Shooglenifty (E mixolydian)
    R: reel
    M: 4/4
    L: 1/8
    K: Emix
    B2AG EBGE|e^dBe dBGA|B2AG EBGE|DF~F2 DFAF|
    B2AG EBGE|e^dBe dBG/A/B|=cBAd cBcB|ABAG E4:|
    |:e2^dB fdBf|^dB=gB fedf|e2^dB fdB=c-|=cBAc B4|
    e2^dB fdBf|^dB=gB fedf|=gfea gfgf|1 a=gfg fe^df:|2 efe^d e2GA||
    T:The Arms Dealer's Daughter
    C:Angus Grant, Shooglenifty (but D mixolydian)
    R:reel
    M:4/4
    L:1/8
    K:Dmix
    A2GF DAFD|d^cAd cAFG|A2GF DAFD|CE~E2 CEGE|
    A2GF DAFD|d^cAd cAF/2G/2A|_BAGc BABA|GAGF D4:|
    |:d2^cA ecAe|^cA=fA edce|d2^cA ecA_B-|_BAGB A4|
    d2^cA ecAe|^cA=fA edce|=fedg fefe|1 g=fef ed^ce:|2 ded^c d2FG||
  23. Bren
    Bren
    Thanks John, I have been practising this a lot lately, trying to transpose it to the lower strings.
    Which isn't that difficult to do once, but remembering it seems to be!
  24. Don Grieser
    Don Grieser
    John, the interplay between the octave and mandolin is really well-conceived and executed. Definitely can hear the pipe origin of the tune when those 2 are playing together. Great playing.
  25. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Thanks, Bren and Don. Bren, I have the same problem with the tune and have to confess I was reading it from the notation when I was recording it. So hard to get the four parts in the right order (especially 3 and 4 in my case) - but then it is a pipe tune!

    Thanks for the encouraging comments, Don. Always interesting trying to get different instruments to suggest the "proper" one for the tune, but we Scots, especially on the West Coast, are great fans of playing pipe tunes on fiddles and mandolins and accordions where the norm is to sharpen all the G naturals that the pipe chanter plays!
  26. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    "not totally in tune" is alright with me, John. There's nothing better than a happy accident. I found out how to reproduce that accident in a controlled way and, more important, why it has that effect (you can get me out of physics, but you can't get physics out of me), that's all
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