Southlander Brendon Fairbairn is keeping his Scottish ancestry alive to the tune of the bagpipes.
The talent runs in the family, his wife Fiona and their two children Liam and Jessica competed with him at the New Zealand Pipe Band Championships in Invercargill at the weekend.
Photo: Brendon Faribairn
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Fairbaim interest in bagpipes was sparked by a neighbour when he was growing up.
“He used to come home and help with the lambing every year and it just sort of took off from there.”
Fairbaim's now been playing since he was 10-years-old.
He says children can start to learn from about 6-years-old, learning the basics on a practice chanter for a year or so to get their fingers ready for a set of bagpipes.
“As you can imagine, it’s actually physically quite demanding and coordination, there’s a fair bit going on as well. So, it takes a year or two.”
Southland has a strong presence of players and most tuition is funded and organised by bands, he says.
In the old days bagpipes had sheep skin leather bags but with advances in technology, Fairbaim says gortex and plastic are very common.
It’s the top players who have gone back to traditionally made bagpipes, looking for an edge where they can.
But, taking ten times as much work, traditional bagpipes aren’t cheap and they wear out after a few months to a year.
Not only is Fairbaim an A grade solo piper, he makes bagpipes too, by hand. He also specialises in restoring old bagpipes, which can be 70-150 years old.
He says there’s probably only a handful of independent makers in the world - of the half a dozen sitting in his workshop he says he pretty much knows who made each of them.
They used to be made from ivory and African blackwood but now days they’re made from imitation ivory, Fairbaim says.
Makers are still searching for a good replacement for African blackwood - the wood needs to be very dense.
“I’ve been playing around with native timbers actually…still not just happy with anything 100 percent yet but yeah, I’ll keep looking.”
He’s trying to be sustainably responsible, so only using timber that was milled in the 50s and left in the forest.
Once you've got yourself some bagpipes, playing them is an intensive art.
“You’ve got four reeds, one in each of the drones which are the bits out the top and then one in the chanter, which makes your melody. The drones go at a set tone. At the bottom of the bit you blow into there’s a foot valve so when you’re blowing, that breath is going into the bag and then keep them at the required pressure and if you bury the pressure, the tone changes because pressure across a reed changes the tone. You want to get them all constant blowing [as] evenly as you can.
“It’s one of the real big hard things to teach kids because it you slack it off, your pitch will drop and if you blow a wee bit harder your pitch will rise…when you take a breath, you use your arm to squeeze and maintain the pressure at the reeds and when you breath back in again you don’t just pop your arm off, you’ve got to use it as a regulator on the bag.”
When it’s done right, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, Fairbaim says.