Feb. 26, 2026
“The Village Walk” is my first tune for Scottish smallpipes. It’s a simple pipe jig that I composed in 2023 during a Christmas vacation in Naples, Florida.
I tried to walk from my mother-in-law’s condo to a neighboring development for lunch, but kept running into unexpected fences and locked gates in Naples’ car-centered landscape. If this tune is about anything, it’s about a long and roundabout walk when a beer and some food seem just out of reach.
On the two-mile walk back, I started singing the first line of a jig. I recorded a voice memo and adapted it into this tune.
Download sheet music.
MIDI playback:
Download sheet music.
The tune is straightforward and fun to play, and the simple structure encourages many variations. Here’s a version with bagpipe gracenotes.
The tune is heavily influenced by “John Barbour’s 50th,” a lovely jig that I first heard in a 2020 post from Rosalind Buda. I used the same part endings (BCB A), so both tunes resolve in a similar way.
When I bought two sets of smallpipes from John Barbour in 2023, I asked him about the tune. He replied:
"My wife, Susan, commissioned Duncan — son of Hamish and brother of Fin — to write the tune as a 50th birthday present for me. That was 20 years ago! It was first played at my birthday celebration at Castle Lachlan on Loch Fyne in Argyllshire."
One version of the tune sounds like this:
MIDI playback:
Thanks to Ciar Milne for encouraging me to start composing.
