TUNES FOR EVERY OCCASION
These original tunes are playable online. Both the mp3 and manuscript music are also downloadable.
These tunes are all on Soundcloud.
To play a track, click on its red play button OR choose the "play in browser" option (if it appears). If you want to download a track, Soundcloud will require you to set up a free account if you don't aleady have one. Click on the small Soundcloud logo, top right (which will become orange). This will take you to the track on SoundCloud. Underneath the waveform find the ...More button and choose "download file". The track will download to your computer's designated downloads folder.
To download a track's manuscript music click/double click on the manuscript music. If you have a pdf reader your device will open the manuscript file. You can either save the pdf or download it using tools in your pdf reader.
An easy saunter with the dog until it periodically takes off, perhaps to chase a cat. Some unusual ornaments.
What a vine might sound like if it could sing – or is it Jesus singing to his branches?
Briar is my wife, and this outrageous piece in irregular time is the attempt of Scotland the Brave to keep going in spite of her!
This tune is almost unique because it has no gracenotes whatever. So, what's the result? Graceless? You judge!
My wife Briar supplied this very apt title. A March.
These overweight monks of very unsteady gait and shortness of breath are heading off to a retreat. One appears to tread on a brother’s foot. Fortunately there are more gracenotes as the piece progresses. This piece is best played with a hard reed prone to squeal!.
The Darwaza Crater, Turkmenistan, has burned with natural gas for more than 50 years. The tourist industry call it the Gates of Hell. The Fire Angel was a tune I had composed and planned to play on the rim of the Gates of Hell, but Covid messed up our travel.
This piece (a march) arose from a friend's remark that bagpipes sounded like the Loch Ness Monster with a cold. So the piece is composed to sound like that. Coincidentally the recording technique produced a flattened low G which could easily be the honking sound of nasal passages,
This jig is dedicated to Dr Ewen McCann, one of the best Highland dancers in New Zealand, his late father, Mr Bruce McCann being one of the best pipers. Dr McCann already has at least two other pipe tunes named for him.
Bagpipes and bands are rare in Japan, though Toyota has sponsored one. I collaborated with Professor Masaharu Hoshi of Hiroshima University over several years and on his 2011 retirement, I declared him an honorary “Pipe Major” of the group and wrote the tune for him - hopefully drawing on cultural subtleties.
This piece is nominally a hornpipe, but has four-note groups which are more typical of some Celtic Fiddle writing. They could be interpreted as a twirl. If Someone once walked on water ... why wouldn't he dance on a lake?
A greatly appreciated Lower Hutt Physician and an acquaintance that goes back to the late ‘60s.
Dr Ralph Brock-Smith's 70th Birthday
I was at this school as a pupil in the ‘50s, and Pipe Major one year when it had a Pipe Band. The school's centenary will be in 2026.
A 2/4 march. Whitehorse is a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, and the piece celebrates a controversial seminar held there
A piper's lament commemorating the lives of 2 Finnish Christian aid workers who were murdered in Afghanistan
Written to celebrate my sister’s 70th birthday. We celebrate 70 birthdays, but angels might also celebrate the birth itself – so 71 birthdays!
We commemorate his birth but never his birthday! So - in celebration of His birthday.
This depicts the epic all-night marches of Abner and Joab with their wounded after a fierce battle (2Sam: 2)
"An Beannachd" means "The Blessing"; a very important and neglected part of life
Although there are many solo Scottish Dances, this strathspey talks of a state in which Someone is always with you.
This is an echo and altered setting of a known tune called The Belfast Hornpipe
(French for "The Best Lock-keeper of All") Written to play to lock-keepers on the Canal du Midi, France, during a 2 week barge trip in 2018. A clue to the identity of the best lock keeper may be found in Rev. 3:7. (Français: Apo. 3.7)..
In commemoration of the NZ Hutt Valley Pipe Band - a nationally competitive band in its time, in which I played. (RIP)
This tune is dedicated to a relative Miss Piper Sercombe of Avalon, a suburb of Lower Hutt. (It imagines that the Arthurian Island of Avalon had a pyper, an antique form of the modern word.
There is a fundamental invisible dance to reality. This is why there is something rather than nothing
What would a Heavenly playtime be like? An exuberant Reel with lots of grace notes
This piece is nominally a hornpipe, but has four-note groups which are more typical of some Celtic Fiddle writing. They could be interpreted as a twirl. If Someone once walked on water ... why wouldn't he dance on a lake?
L’Chaim means “To Life!” and is the traditional toast for Israelis. It is clearly the best celebratory toast to him who is Life!
Flock House was an agricultural training centre near Bulls in the North Island, NZ, 1924-1987 - now a conference centre. The jig was written during a communications training course there
The safest jig must be on the strongest rock.
A rant is supposed to be an intense, long-continued speech, perhaps dance, or possibly playing of an instrument under the grip of a strong (often negative) emotion. The surname above is actually Irish, and the music is appropriate there. The name is also an Israeli word for “dance”. The piece is unlike any other rant I have been able to find, in that it is in ¾ time and sounds something like a wild reel
The tune is named after the Lammerlaw range in Otago, New Zealand, rolling hill country crowned with golden-brown tussock.
The initials of a remarkable friend in the USA who began helping others (like himself) out of unwanted sexual behaviour and orientation. A tribute.
A strathspey for a Scottish acquaintance of 37 years
A jig commemorating the life of our loveable, active and slightly dim-witted ruby-red cavalier King Charles Spaniel. It travels over the available range rather like she did – somewhat mindlessly
This tune was composed for a girl call Milya near Montreal, who wrote a chain letter to reach interesting people world-wide. When the letter reached me, I wrote this tune for her. She called her dog KitKat
An obsolescent swiss precision tool. This tune celebrates a Swiss English language Student who stayed with us for a month or so
Commemorating the long life and windup of the award-winning Hutt Valley NZ Pipeband. Numbers of pipers had died.
