Do you want to really get the pot boiling, so it revs up more and more throughout the arrangement? Or start bold and have it taper off and end with a tear? Or do you make one big broad statement, painting a noble landscape? I've been known to tinker with arrangements for a year or two. |
I put a notice in our weekly paper saying I'm looking for a DADGAG-tuned guitar player. Harmonically, Celtic music is not fancy, that's the beauty of it. When you're playing tunes with a very limited tonal palette, you want open, bleak, sparse playing that doesn't color the music too much. |
I'm not so interested in the more modern period. It's a little too English baroque, too genteel and sweet for me. I'm much more attracted to the old bagpipe tradition, going back hundreds of years. The vast majority of my material I get from pipers. They developed this sound that evokes the wide-open, lonely landscape of the Scottish highlands. |