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Home/Library/Expression & Musicality/What Makes This Tune Great? Lament for the Children (Piobaireachd)
🎬 Class ReplayAdvancedFree Preview📅 Posted April 9, 2026· 1h 8m

What Makes This Tune Great? Lament for the Children (Piobaireachd)

⚡ The Short Version

The Lament for the Children may be the greatest of all the MacCrimmon tunes, and title and music match perfectly. With a lot of piobaireachds the title and the music have nothing to do with each other. Here the yearning, the grief and the acceptance are in the notes whether or not you know the story behind it.
It's a compound tune, closest to 6/8, and that rolling lilt is what gives it its flow. The Piobaireachd Society prints it in 6/8, which I think is right. The Kilberry has it in 4/4, which never made sense to me. You still can't set a metronome to it, because so much of the expression comes from holding notes past where the notation suggests.
Your job is to deliver the performance, not to get lost in the music. Getting lost in it is the audience's job. Yours is to know exactly where you are in the tune at every moment, because on the pipes essentially all the expression is timing.
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What Makes This Tune Great? Lament for the Children (Piobaireachd)
1h 8m · Full class available to Inner Circle members

⏱️ In this class

10:09D. John Burgess the the Children for Lament playing🔒
11:43How comes the of much from emotion the title🔒
13:16the and The story tune behind MacCrimmons the🔒
14:59boy smallpox, and Patrick lived the who Mor,🔒
16:44on Can piper a a stamp put tune personal this🔒
20:22What in signature time is this tune🔒
27:45tune Why this better fits than 6/8 4/4🔒
31:57reveal Colouring the phrases repeated to score🔒
33:33Double F, echoes D, E, on and B🔒
37:55ground pacing and The doubling the variations🔒
44:46you learn music tune sheet can't this from Why🔒
46:14better piobaireachd A tune your first for🔒
47:46Bobs of and lineage the Balmoral Teaching🔒
52:49Livingstone the tune on learning Bill🔒

About this class

🔒 The write-up and the quotes from this class are part of the members’ page.

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📜 Full class transcript

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I'm gonna back. a playing pause can about In Welcome a for Okay, everybody. minute. there and We'll you, Hey, start we it. talk for something just here second.
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