Friday Two Cents: Pipes and Drums Realization
May 22, 2020 Leave a comment
‘If music be the food of love, play on.’ William Shakespeare
With the Covid 19 pandemic I, like many others, am at home. I have been trying to keep myself active with exercise and of course indulging in my many hobbies. Yet despite keeping busy with self projects, I do find it difficult to stay positive, even at the best of times. I am finding the isolation and restrictions taxing. Television is not helping with the 25/7 coverage of the pandemic, and while watching movies has helped me escape for a time, it is mostly a source to distract me while I workout. I have found that listening to music while doing my hobbies and tasks around the home brings me out of the doldrums of the current situation.
However, during one such moment, I made a surprising realization about the music I listen to. You see, studies have shown that listening to music you enjoy increases dopamine levels, whereas listening to music you do not enjoy increases your stress levels or cortisol. The key is to achieve a balance and music can help. I discovered that during certain activities I am listening to military marches and enjoying it.
I had played and studied music since I was 10 years old and I enjoy many different types of music. It came from what my music teacher once said about enjoying music. He compared it to food. You wouldn’t eat the same food everyday, so why listen to only one type of music? Enjoy a buffet of music from marching bands to classical symphonies, hard rock to dance, jazz to pop, and many, many others. Yet I had never realized how much the military marching bands, Pipes and Drums included, were so much a part of my enjoyment of music. Not until my latest Green Army Men endeavour.
Recently I took out my Green Army Men from storage and I have been enjoying posting their daily adventures to social media. But I decided to add some imagination and creativity to this experience. When I was younger, I would always create different vehicles, bases, ships; anything really to enhance my experience with my Green Army Men. I even named the different groups of my Green Army Men. There’s Grey Wolf Brigade, 16th Battalion and the Royal Marines. I have always loved one military unit and I named a group of my Green Army Men after to honour them: Black Watch.
Black Watch’s proud history started in 1881 as part of the Childers Reforms. In it, the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot (The Black Watch) was amalgamated with the 73rd (Perthshire) Regiment of Foot to form two battalions of the newly named Black Watch (Royal Highlanders). People are uncertain of where the regiment’s name originated. Yet in 1725, following the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, George I authorized General George Wade to form six “Watch” companies to patrol the Highlands of Scotland. They where deployed to disarm the Highlanders, bring in criminals and hinder further rebellions in that part of the kingdom. The force was known in Gaelic as Am Frieceadan Duhn “the dark” or “black watch”. In 1862 Canada had its own Black Watch. It was raised as part of the 5th Battalion of the Canadian Militia and then renamed in 1914 as the 5th Regiment (Royal Highlanders of Canada). Before the Second World War, they adopted their current title, The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada.
I was extremely fortunate on my trip to Scotland to get a kilt with the modern Black Watch Tartan. Every time I wear it I do so to honour all past and present members of the Black Watch and all service personnel. Therefore, I wanted my Black Watch to have a proud tradition and an entrance into the current developments in my story, The Green Army Men Adventures, that would be traditional and honourable to the original Black Watch history. With this in mind, my first thought went to a Pipes and Drums parade/march. Growing up I played the trumpet and participated in many military marches and parades so this seemed the most appropriate.
The first thing I did was draw out the uniforms for the Pipes and Drums band in Illustrator. The easy part was that the uniform would be the same for everyone except for a few differences. Therefore I drew the jacket, kilt, socks and shoes, Piper’s Plaid (Great Kilt) with Plaid Brooch, Headgear – Feather Bonnet and other essentials such as Dirk, Crossbelt, and the Sporran. Drawing the instruments and drum major’s baton came next. The head came from my caricature in the comics I create. Once all the pieces were created, I assembled them, creating all the musicians of the Pipes and Drums band. I created one Drum Major, bass drum, several snare drums, and of course a large contingent of pipers. There were four characters but in total 20 musicians for the marching band.
I printed and cut out each musician, folding the base for it to stand up straight. I lined them up and there I have my marching band. Yet how would I be able to have them march into the battle field like the Highland warriors of old? I used an app that creates stop motion animation. I used this app with the students at school from ages Kindergarten to grade 5 so I am very familiar with it. The way you use the app is to take a photo of an object you want to animate, move it a little bit, and then take another photo. You repeat this process and once you play each photo one after another, it looks like the object is moving.
Yet to move 20 band musicians, about 80 Green Army Men and a large tank would be quite labour intensive. Therefore I placed each soldier and musician on a piece of paper so I could move the paper a little at a time to get the feeling of movement/marching. In the end I took over 120 photos of the band, Black Watch, Green Army Men, and the tank to create a one minute video. I then added music to go with it. Of course I used ‘Scotland The Brave’ for them to march into the battle.
It took a long time to create the stop motion animation but I am happy with the results. Yet when I posted the video to Youtube a feeling came over me. The best way I could describe it is a sense of pride or euphoria I felt whenever I played in the bands when I was younger. I had not played for many years and yet creating this band, animating the actions, and adding music brought all those feelings back again. That is when I realized how much the military marching band was such a large part of my life. I had this sense that I made something from my heart that was a tribute to the real men and women, both past and present of all Black Watch units. It was not simply an animation I could use in a story or a learning tool for the students, but something more personal. It was not until I added the music that this feeling came over me.
The art of music is a magical and wondrous thing. It can bring up your spirits from the depths of despair, to soar at heights you have never imagined. During these difficult times, I never realized how much music has brought up my spirits and what type of music has helped me to achieve this. This has been a wonderful and joyous realization and I owe it all to my Green Army Men and the music I played many years ago.
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