The full title is the Blue Book of Contemporary Bagpipe Music, but some folk of shortened this to either “The Blue Book” or “The Big Blue Book“.
To be honest, this wasn’t it’s original planned named, (but we won’t get in to that) and with a tight schedule and lots to be done, a simpler approach was required.
The blue used on the cover is Pantone 300 – also known as NHS Blue. This gave a bit of a homage to the NHS Scotland staff that the proceeds of the collection was going to go to.
With a mixture of 37 composers to work with, the main challenge was getting the layout and format of the tunes consistent and visually satisfying. In this case, I worked with my good friend, Lorne MacDougall. He helped to convert some of the supplied files in to Sibelius format to allow us a bit more time to get the book together.
75 compositions, a mix of marches, strathspeys reels, hornpipes, jigs, slow airs, waltzes and dance tunes. What more could a piper want? You don’t need to know the composers personally to get the newest tunes. At least 50 of the tunes in the collection had never been in a collection before. It was such an honour to work with Paul Brown at Kingdom Thistle Pipe Band Supplies to produce such a unique collection. One that is an essential addition to any pipers library.
Available to order direct from Kingdom Thistle Pipe Band Supplies and all good retailers.
