Your monthly news from the New Hampshire Scottish Music Club

Volume 37, No. 4, December 2025

“Having fun with Scottish Music”

Our December 14th Gathering

Mari Black will be joining us this month for a workshop on expression, style, and arranging. We will be working with a rather unusual set, including the slow strathspey “Miss Mariane Oliphant” (link: with bowings or without bowings) and two jigs, “Mrs. Oswald of Auchincruive” and “Lisnagun.” See the event page for more details.

Tune Tales

Each month our Tune Master, Alan Wilson, selects a few tunes to explore and writes a blog post sharing their history and fun facts about them. This month he takes a deep dive into the three tunes we’ll be playing at our workshop. Click here to read the latest edition.

November Workshop Summary

Our workshop with Peter Macfarlane covered marches: how to give them movement without lift and weight without heaviness, where to put emphasis, how to use dotted and cut notes to create contrast, and what tempo works best. Especially memorable was the idea of throwing a dotted note, demonstrated by tossing a bean bag. Peter kindly provided us with his workshop notes, which you can read here.

Scholarships Reminder

We received two grants for scholarships this year. Any member who wants to attend a summer program, take lessons, take online courses, etc. is welcome to apply.

The application form is on our website: https://www.nhscottishmusicclub.org/scholarships

Join Us for Board Meetings

Ever wonder what your Board does? Join us for Board Meetings! All meetings are open to our members. We meet (usually) the first Wednesday of the month at 7 PM on Zoom. Meetings are an hour or less and we would welcome anyone who is interested to see how we run the organization. Send an email to nhscottishmusic@gmail.com and we’ll send you the Zoom link.

Back Issues of Granite Skyes

If you are new to our organization and would like to learn more about us, or you have been with us for many years and are waxing nostalgic, you can read many years worth of our monthly newsletter, Granite Skyes, here.