Pipedream

by Demetrio Villegas

Duffy is quite well known for playing his bagpipes at a couple of parties and events. Considering it’s not often to see such an instrument on a college campus, I sat down with him to talk about the pipes.

You want to start by introducing yourself?

“Yeah. I'm Jack Duffy. I'm the traveling bagpipe guy. I play lacrosse. Go to Anti-phill, you know.”

Why the bagpipes?

“So, I started on the Irish whistle. It's kind of like...the same sort of instrument as a bagpipe. The bagpipe trainer is very analogous to the tin whistle. It's a nice instrument, but I don't want to spend that long with it. You know, It's not simple, but it's like... I don't know, it wasn't enough. I started learning the bagpipes. The reason I like them is because every note that the bagpipe has (there's nine of them) sounds exactly like that note. Like, I don't have perfect pitch, but I can tell you that's a B. Because the wind notes interact with the drones.Like, B just sounds like A-B against the drones. And for a piano or guitarist, it's not like that. So that's the tonal reason, at least for me. And the crowd response is pretty good too.”

Are the drones a note or a part of the instrument?

“Drones are the three things that stick out of the shoulder so, drones are in A. I get three A's—two tenors, one bass. And the chanter is tuned—it's A Mixolydian. So every tune resolves on A pretty much.Yeah, the three drones, they just play one note the entire time. And that's where the harmony comes from, and the tension.”

You started from the Irish whistle and then transitioned to the bagpipes. But was there anything specifically that caught your attention to it?

“Yeah, so I remember I heard someone play "Danny Boy" on the pipes. I really didn't like it. I was like, I could do a lot better. They were making them sing, right? And the way I heard them sing was not the way I heard people playing on the pipes. I'm like, I can make it sound like the voice, you know? Instead of just, we're just playing the melody. So it was that.I remember I was learning, I was like getting into it. I remember like... it was like 5 a.m. I was driving cross-country, practicing. I heard one song and I'm like I need to learn these, you know?”

What kind of song was that?

“The song was "The Mist Covered Mountains of Home," but not actually, not a very good band. To be honest, I didn't know that at the time. But it was like the first note, it starts on a B, and it was like, they had that B like perfect. I'm like, oh, okay, I get it you know? They really fired me up. So I was like oh, we're in these now. That B note, that was it.”

How long you've been doing this?

“So you start with basically a recorder. I started with a recorder like three years and nine months ago. Then I got my full set like three and a half years ago, and I started running on there in the Henley basement.”

you started learning freshman year?

“ It was a grind. It was like three hours a night just in the basement, just hammering away. The way the pipes are, it's really, really hard for the first like two years, and then it gets so much easier once you get a couple of hoops. Like once you realize you need to play a hard reed, you can play the easiest reed ever.”

What are aspects of the bagpipes that no one really talks about?

“I'll talk about the instrument and the music. So if someone has a bagpipe and they're struggling to play it, that's not how it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be... You should be able to play for a very long time without getting tired. If they're huffing and puffing, it's either the drones are set too hard or the reed is set too hard. I played a gut buster when I started. It was like, the reed they sent me, like you couldn’t squeeze the bag with your entire body. It would not make a make a sound. So you use a knife and you scrape it off and you get it wet and abuse it to make it easier. I play around a 22-inch one because I heard one of the best pipers of all time, when he was ordering reeds, he would order for his grandson. He said that for my beginning grandson, who had never played before, it could be the easiest reed possible. And he would play that reed and win championships because the easier it is, the longer you play. So I'd say that's a pretty important thing. If someone requests a song, it's not, ‘I can't play it.’ It's like, if it wasn’t written for the pipes, you cannot play it. It's just not going to be right, you know? And then see that the music itself, bagpipe music is mostly dance tunes. So it's like jigs those are all like maybe 30 seconds to a minute long, and you play each part twice”

Why are the songs so short?

“Okay, then there's the other half of the music and those songs are 10 to 15 minutes long and no one plays it anymore because they're 15 minutes long and you play the same melody like 100 times in a row. Which will, if you're still asking the question about who I'd do that with, I'll lead you into that.”

We could segue into that.

“I would resurrect the blind piper Iain Dall Mackay who died in 1750 because he knew how it was supposed to be played. Or he was one of them that knew how it was supposed to be played. So there's a section of music that we have where the only source for it is a written manuscript, not sheet music. It's written down in syllables. So if I want to play a note, I know what notes those are. I don't know how long they are. But this guy would know. So the duet would be me sitting there with a tape recorder and recording everything. Because the way it is now, I'm guaranteed it's not how it should be played. There's just no way. So I want to get that reference. I like the way it is now. Most people don't. if I played it for someone who wasn’t a piper, they'd get mad at me because it doesn't sound good. But it's really fun to play. It's very meditative because you're just feeling the music. I mean, those notes are so long that you just sort of get lost in the tone and the harmony. And it's fun to play. It's fun to think about. It's not fun to listen to. I do like there's the version that I play that's like the way it's supposed to be played. And I also like to play my own versions because it's fun to experiment with, and they're good melodies. It's just very, very regimented”

Any other influences that you kind of want to talk

So there's basically your style of play as well. So there's there's two kind of halves of piping for me. There's the scottish side and there's the Irish side. The Scottish side is mostly taken from, like, the British army like how they wrote everything down. And when you read a bagpipe tune, everything is written out. So every single note, you play it exactly like that. And you learn those because they're and when you read a bagpipe tune, everything is written out. So every single note, you play it exactly like that.

Irish Whistle v Bagpipe Trainer

And you learn those because they're difficult. The other half is the Irish side. So if you compare the two companions of music the Irish side is like, they give you the melody and nothing else. You make up all your own grace notes, how you want to emphasize everything. So that's a lot more creative. And there's a sort of style of Irish singing that almost sounds Middle Eastern.It's like a sort of wailing and there's a lot of vibrato and nasal stuff. It's called sean-nós. And when I'm playing a song, I try and sound like that. Joe Heaney is the best one who ever did it. He was singing stuff and there's no rhythm to it. I like it a lot. Most people don't. I don't know, I think it's nice. I want to sound like them and the ornaments I play that aren't in the Scottish side are supposed to come from there like slides, and where you sort of roll a note and do another note or vibrato and stuff. But you don't have to play that in Scottish piping. And then, I guess the other thing is I started learning the Irish pipes literally like a week ago. The style is completely different. So that's also an influence for me”

What’s the difference between Scottish and Irish pipes?

“Scottish pipes are a weapon, okay? Like, they'll damage your hearing, you know? There's the ones that I play, you stand up with the three drones. Scottish pipes are mouth-blown. That's important. Irish ones have a bag and bellows, which are like air pumps. So you don't do anything with your mouth. They have the trainer that goes on your knee. Then it's kind of like how an organist will play with his feet, there are buttons on the drones you hit to play harmonies. So it's like the worst-designed instrument ever, but it sounds phenomenal.You can talk and drink while you play with them. That's a pretty big plus. You know, when I'm playing the Scottish pipes, I can only drink during Amazing Grace. It's so slow. But Irish ones are nice. They sound... I don't know. They're just like, the way you... you can color every note to sound like singing. It's the closest to singing as we can get because there are eight different ways to play each note. So you can color them, and it's beautiful. I don't know. It's like the final boss in fighting, I think.”

What are some overrated instruments?

“Overrated instruments? Guitar. There's a famous piper who said... someone asked him as a joke “ what's the best thing to use a drumstick” and he said an open knife. So you'd puncture your drum, you know. The spoon... no, actually, those are all properly rated. But the spoon's a shaky egg. I don't like pianos, guitars. I don't like violins or shells like fiddles. I think I don't like drums, especially. I don't like a drum kit. If there's a good song and a drum kit comes in, I'll turn it off.”

Really? I feel like drums are like the most universal instrument too.

“I like snare drums because I played with a snare drummer one time and I was like playing and he was just like freestyling along with me freestyling along with me and I thought I was sick. But like, the thing is what people will do is they'll buy an Irish bodhrán (I'm not saying that right) Irish drum. It's a goatskin thing and you smack it with it like this.And they won't learn any tunes. They'll just play it for jigs or something, and it's like — no.”

Yeah, I can see that.

“They won't learn the melody or they won't learn the actual rhythm of the tune. You have to learn all the tunes on the drum too. They just think you can show up with a drum”

They just play like the same three notes.

“Yeah, it's a universal problem. You have to learn the rhythm. You're not a metronome, you're a musician. I don't know. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. Underrated instrument, though? When someone's dancing and their feet are making sounds along with the music — that's fire. “

What’s it like piping at Chapman?

“It’s great because the response I get from it is always awesome, that’s what makes it fun”

Anything else? Any shoutouts?

“Shoutout to Anti-Phil”