Tartan Day NYC 2025: Carnegie Hall Event

[OC Richard]

This video of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo Pipes and Drums lifts the curtain a bit on what it's like to play in a pipe band.

People with electronic tuners are going around "touching up" everyone's drones while the drummers wait...and wait...and wait...

The Public, watching the Tattoo or a Parade, generally only sees the end product, a well-tuned band.

After the tuning is done Pipe Major McLaren calls off the tunes, singing the first bars of the first tune to get everybody on the same page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Qk1vFzQFs

Unfortunately the camera is nearly always on the pipers standing around NOT getting tuned rather than the pipers getting tuned.

As best I can tell there's PM McLaren, a guy in mufti, and one or two other pipers doing the tuning. They have a big pipe corps which would take forever for just one person to tune. It takes long enough with three or four people doing it! (Just ask the drummers.)

[jsrnephdoc]

As best I can tell there's PM McLaren, a guy in mufti, and one or two other pipers doing the tuning. They have a big pipe corps which would take forever for just one person to tune. It takes long enough with three or four people doing it! (Just ask the drummers.)

I mentioned in my other reply this morning that the "tuners" were working feverishly to get a Glasgow area high school band in sync, but THEY had properly kilted students in sufficient number scurrying around to get it right. The notion of using 21st Century iOS to make a 19th century instrument sound good is just SO bizarre, but it actually works wonders.