RAY SLOAN

I vividly remember the day I first heard bagpipes - other than the ubiquitous Great Highland Bagpipes. It was in 1964 as an 11 year old at school in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne when my Art Teacher emerged from the store room strapped-in to an instrument driven by a flapping arm attached to bellows, that instrument was the Northumbrian Smallpipe. I remember being absolutely smitten by the sound of the pipes at a time when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were the preferred sound of my generation, little did I know that 16 years later history would repeat itself when I myself became an Art Teacher and later a Piper/Pipemaker. That experience as a young boy never left me but it was not until as a young man of 24 that I was financially able to achieve my dream and buy a set of pipes - thanks to a tax rebate !... It was as a maker of Northumbrian Smallpipes that I first established myself as a Pipemaker building my first set in 1980. I went on to send pipes to many International destinations, but it..