As you may remember from my last mention of this topic, some songs are very difficult to arrange for bagpipe. Today, I was lucky enough to find a song that was easy.
I found myself today with the best problem an artist can have: a hyper focused muse. I could not focus on anything else until I had set the hymn “How Can I Keep From Singing” to bagpipes. Unlike the anthem that I previously discussed, this son was far easier. It’s pentatonic,1 and only occupies an octave, from the dominant to the dominant. As you may remember, the bagpipe has a range of an octave and a second starting from the subdominant. So, I put the song in the key of d, added a few grace notes, and was done. It’s nice when things go well.
5 notes to an octave↩︎