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Note: Today’s post is by David Hester, who has been exploring an alternative approach to Piobaireachd playing. David's website, altpibroch.com, has gained a huge following. Just a quick post to let you know: The Alt Pibroch Club Musical Materials site now contains every single known, extant pre-1851 manuscript of pibroch. Every. Single. One. They date as early as 1741 and go up through Angus Mackay's Specimens of Canntaireachd. Some are even full color, high-resolution images, where you can actually see the beauty of the hand calligraphy and ink colors. Why is this important? Well, we take it for granted that this stuff should just "be there" for us. But that has not been the case for the entire history of pibroch. At first, you learned from a master, who taught you orally.  After everything went to hell in the Scottish - British history, people had to scramble around and document these tunes by hand, before ...