BOOKING:
...we like to perform at your event as well...
The form below is especially purposed for not binding booking requests. For questions, suggestions and other general things, please use our general contact form. Further means to contact us are also listed on the contact page.
In the following you can find firstly some informations which are supposed to help you planning your event with us. We also gladly provide advice from our side, but for some topic we are not able to give advice in advance, as we're usually not as used to your location and occurrences as you are. Please take the following topics into consideration when you plan your event:
Climatic influence:
Our bagpipes are wooden wind-instruments. Therefore humidity and environment temperature have big influence on duration and result of their tuning. The bagpipes are not simply "plug and play" as e.g. a keyboard - it needs a certain operating temperature and humidity, therefore it has to be "warmed up" before every operation. Only then it's possible to get it tuned properly - and that's neither easier nor faster with more than one instrument.
A quotation from MacEges handbook for scottish bagpipes gets this very good: "The great highland bagpipes (GHB) is a perfect musical instrument which was developed over several centuries, but it has certainly also diva-like/capricious sensitivities despite its archaic appearance."
Timing:
You should consider about 30 minutes for warm up and tuning. Between tuning and the gig itself, not too much time should be elapsed: As hard it is to tune the instrument, as fast it's untuned again. Stronger climatic changes (temperature, humidity, ...) are not tolerated by the bagpipes.
If we for example shall play on a birthday in winter (in a heated room), but due to surprise effect we have to tune outside, the fiasco is virtually inevitable: With entering the room, the bagpipes are abruptly out of tune - and due to this, guests and the birthday child also.
We're surely aware that rarely any event runs exactly with the planned timeline. A good communication between pipeband and organizer is the key to a loud but great event.
Volume:
The great highland bagpipe is a quite loud instrument. It's originally purposed for open-air applications without amplification. Therefore it should be difficult to confuse a pipeband with a chamber orchestra...
Please tell us if possible the size of the location or room (so we can propose a proper cast for the event) and please also consider a location for us to warm up and tune the instruments (we're not choosey on this, but it should have comparable climatic properties as the location of the gig itself and should not be too far away from it).
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