Resounded to the skirl of the bagpipes

Kirsty Macnicol
The Southland Times
October 29, 2001

A DISUSED studio at Classic Hits ZAFM in Invercargill resounded to the skirl of bagpipes at the weekend as the City of Invercargill Caledonian Pipe Band cut its debut CD, Pipin ' Hot.
Scheduled for release by Christmas, the recording features a selection of tunes from the band's annual Celtic rock stage show.
Pipe major David Pickett said that although it had been a big weekend, with recording sessions lasting well into the night, the result was well worth it.
"We're really pleased with the tunes that we've put down," he said. "In the five years since Pipin ' Hot started we've done more than 90 different tunes so we put a lot of time and thought into which of them should go on the CD.
"We've also had a brilliant sound engineer in Rob Mayes, who's been really great in understanding what we want to achieve with all the dynamics of the different instruments." Studio 1 at Classic Hits in Invercargill was chosen for the recording sessions because it was big enough to cope with the number of musicians involved and for its superior acoustic qualities for the pipes.
Trevor Morton was the pipe major of the band when it last used the studio in the early 1980s.
In those days the pipe band regularly played for the National Programme, both live and prerecorded.
"It was regarded as one of `the' recording studios in its day," he said.
In the weekend sessions, the instruments were recorded on different tracks.
However, in the 1980s the full pipe band played together. The volume of the drums proved difficult to manage in the small space.
"The drummers played behind big walls with windows so they could see the pipers playing and my foot going up and down," Mr Morton said.
The impetus to record came from the tour of Canada in June and July when members were inundated with requests for CDs.
Southlander Murray Burns, formerly of the band Mi-Sex and now a record producer and composer in Australia, will oversee mastering of the final tracks in Sydney.
Orders for the CD are being taken on the band's website www.pipinhot.co.nz