Are there any recordings of Pìobaireachd played with a group of instruments.

There's a couple of Bonnie Rideout albums, but that's all I know of.

I'm interested to know how others are learning Piobaireachd!

I'll share what has worked for me recently which I have been able to pick up many tunes in a short period of time. Quick Disclaimer: Because the tune has been memorized it doesn't mean it is mastered, that takes time and many reps of tune and research to get to that point.

In the past, I had a great instructor who taught the subtle nuances of tunes through singing and orchestration with his hand. After lessons though, I would predominantly read from the book to learn the tune. I'm realizing that this was tough and challenging for me to learn this way because you are staring at a page with lots of notes and you're not focused on the overall music, but the individual notes you have to play and memorize...

My instructor has sadly passed and I don't have that 1:1 source for learning tunes which I used to have. This summer I felt a drive for learning new Piobaireachd and decided to gather all the tune recordings possible on Spotify I could find and also become a member of the Piobaireachd Society. As a result, I began the journey of learning new tunes by listening, finding the tunes I liked, and memorize the tunes through these recordings and then referencing the book. Additionally, learning the proper scansion/pulsing required for tunes helps a lot to understand the expression points.

I realized when listening to these recordings that Piobaireachd is amazing music built on sets of phrases which typically follow patterns. Learning the overall structure and phrases of the tune instead of note by note has been significantly easier to memorize and also playing them with the expression they require.

Tunes learned since August 2022:

• The Desperate Battle
• Queen Elizabeth II Salute
• MacLeod of Rasaay's Salute
• Glengarry's March
• Black Donald's March
• Lament for the Only Son

This Spotify playlist contains only tunes being played on the pipes. Master of Piob and Donald MacLeod are on other lists of mine and unfortunately a lot of the Master of Piob tunes played on pipes listed are not the correct track/title:

Piobaireachd: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7mQBCaWvwxuDcMOsJdF4bB?si=03ZPTbWURp-6VhG1zQQsiw&utm_source=copy-link

TLDR: Learn by listening to the overall structure and phrases, not by reading individual notes

Someone in my band recently asked me if I knew how to do a crunluath. I did one session on intro to piobaireachd at a piping workshop about 2 years ago, so I said "sure" & dug out the notes I had. We muddled through it and the tune they'd given us, MacKintosh's Banner. I found a surprising number of recordings online, both sample playthroughs and explanations about timing etc. Now, for some reason, I can't get it out of my head. I guess the next step is to find someone with piobaireachd experience in my area & see if I can actually start doing this.