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KYLE WARREN - Eat, Sleep, Pipe, Repeat 

KYLE WARREN - Eat, Sleep, Pipe, Repeat 
Private Label 

Kyle Warren is a four-time World Champion piper, recently returned from five years in Australia. Before his time in Australia, he graduated with a First Class Honours from the Scottish Music Piping Degree at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, was a member of the Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band, and also a full-time member of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. Despite a wealth of other significant achievements, recording pipes on the Disney Pixar Oscar winning movie Brave may be the one which earns him the most street cred outside of the piping fraternity. Being Pipe Major of the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland puts him in a good position to have his finger on the pulse of the musical needs and tastes of many of the younger players, and his time with the Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band means that he is fully conversant with the classic repertoire.

This is his second book of tunes. It is a well-presented music book with an attractive cover and is a good mix of new and old. The music is clearly laid out with a decent sized font, together with an introduction and notes which are helpful to the reader. There are plenty of attractive tunes here. The young enthusiast can dive right in at the beginning with Kyle's own compositions of jigs through to all the various formats, reels and strathspeys presented in reverse order - to slow airs. The latter half of the book takes some well-known tunes from various decades and displays them in their original form, then on facing pages are Kyle's arrangements of those tunes in different time signatures. This is an appealing feature, tempting the reader to dip into these tunes once more. The book features modern tunes, such as the Heavy X-treme by Chris Armstrong, and traditional tunes such as The Grinder, once a favourite played by the City of Glasgow Police Pipe Band.

One improvement I would have liked would have been the addition of a CD of the music played by Kyle. This would make some of the tunes and arrangements more accessible, as not every player can fully get to grips with sight reading arrangements and time signatures. CDs attached to books might be something whose time has passed, but links to online audio would be a good alternative. This minor criticism aside, Kyle Warren has given us a pipe music book that stands out from the herd. My recommendation is to go and buy the book and enjoy the music.

www.kylewarrenbagpipes.com

Allan Hamilton

 

This review appeared in Issue 136 of The Living Tradition magazine