I am a long term Piobmaster user, with well over a thousand Piobmaster files in my collection. Around 18 months ago I got a new Vista equipped laptop, and spent a fair bit of time re-installing Piobmaster and transferring over my plethora of pipe tunes. All seemed to go well enough, until it came to actually running Piobmaster. It just wouldn’t work on Vista. There was a Regedit problem, and I found out a way around it by foutering with my User Account, but no matter what I did, the playback wouldn’t run. I was also disappointed that the Piobmaster player software that runs the Alasdair Gillies and Piping Centre CD-Roms doesn’t work either. I have heard that a Vista complaint version of Piobmaster is in development, but after waiting a year for further news, I decided I was going to have to look elsewhere for my piping software needs.

I found that Bagpipe Music Writer Gold runes fairly well on Vista, but I found it tricky getting used to inputting code after so many years of dragging and dropping. Also the playback sound was really awful on my pc, it reminded me of a “musical” bagpipe fridge magnet that was once given to me that said hello to the bottom of the bin within 48 hours of me receiving it. I then downloaded Celticpipes. I was immediately on more familiar ground, as Celtic pipes works by dragging and dropping off a series of palettes. It imports my old Piobmaster and BMW files easily and has no problems running on Vista. One thing I really like about it is that you can switch from portrait to landscape views without any problems. With Piobmaster the notes would all crush up into the first two bars if you made the switch from one to the other. In fact there are options to the way that notes are spaced, you can lay them out exactly as you would like, or you can have the software space them out evenly. It seemed to find importing BMW files less problematic than Piobmaster files. With Piobmaster there is an option to halve the note value when grouped, but I found that when files that had been created with this option were imported, the note values were exactly twice the length I had expected, if they had been grouped/tied. ( I had seen this before sometimes when embedding Piobmaster OLE files into Word). However, this was very easily sorted, as on the toolbox there is a function that allows the user to increase or decrease any note value by selecting the note and clicking. I found that this was quick and easy, and soon my Piobmaster back catalogue was being transferred into Celticpipes CEP files. 

Although I am used to using Piobmaster in Word to make booklets and tuition material, I was a bit concerned that CEP files can’t be imbedded into word. However, by exporting the Celticpipes file to a JPG or PNG, it slots into Word quite easily. You can then add any header or footer text you like. I want to spend a bit more time on this and see how it handles larger piobaireachd, but I'm very impressed so far. If you click here you can see my own layout of Lament for the Old Sword, in which I have tried to emulate actual timings. The only thing I'm daunted at is converting over 1800 Piobmaster and BMW files into CEP files, sounds like a full time job.Now I was up and running with converting my old files, I started playing about creating new ones, and I discovered many impressive strengths possessed by Celticpipes. 

The after-edit features are superb. You can add and delete new bars, even lines, change time signatures, even transpose whole pieces without any of the work going awry or crashing. It’s no problem, for example, writing out a tune such with a four bar per line structure all the way through, then adding a five bar line to end with, as per the Killaloe example. You can for example build up a piece, and then add lines underneath for seconds. You can then play back both parts simultaneously to see how it sounds. It also allows you to open several tabs simultaneously, which is a real boon for copying and pasting. Celticpipes is also multi instrumental, you can lay out scores for the Highland bagpipe, Highland chanter, tin whistle, flute, pipe band style side drum and even Bodhran.  The sounds are pretty good for most of the instruments but perhaps a bit weak on the pipes side, with faint drones, but it’s not bad, certainly better sounds than with Bagpipe Music Writer. Where the playback sounds do score highly, however, is that you can modify embellishments to the exact length you would like to hear. Of course this makes piobaireachd that much more interesting. 

You can also create your own custom embellishments from a huge piobaireachd movement right down to the tiniest blip For example, I was mildly annoyed that La Baum has an embellishment from High G to E finishing on F that I couldn’t see in the palette. It took me about 10 seconds to create my own. Once you have completed your file, you can not only save it, but you can export to a selection of formats, including ABC, BMW, MIDI, and JPEG. I am finding it very useful indeed and would recommend it to anyone. It is multi platform, working on PC and MAC and retails for £39, which I think is a good deal compared to other piping softwares. If you go to the Celticpipes website www.celticpipes.net  you can download a free 30 day trial and evaluate it for yourself.