Christmas Gift Ideas from the Rae Macintosh Musicroom

If you have a musician in your family you may think you’ve seen every music-related item there is to see; a visit to the excellent Rae Macintosh Musicroom in Shandwick Place will soon prove you haven’t.

Whether you want to spend £5 or £500, the Musicroom offers a huge range of gifts, from maracas to mugs, teapots to telecoustic guitars and djembes to ducks (yes, ducks…).

Ukuleles are this year’s must-have musical instrument – portable, easy to learn (or so I’m told…) and available here in a multitude of colours and styles from £22.50. Lots of music and ‘how to’ books too.

The Musicroom hosted a ukulele workshop with none other than the amazing Tricity Vogue this summer; you can read The Edinburgh Reporter’s article about it here.

Vinyl has made a big come back; for those too young to have a record player (and those too short sighted to have hung on to their old one) the Musicroom has a selection – including the GPO Attache in its rather cool case and the immensely retro GPO Memphis.

If your musician loves the musicals, the shop has a great selection of scores – everything from Mamma Mia to Les Miserables, Wicked and Frozen, with many offered on a Buy One, Get One Half Price deal. And naturally there’s also an immensely comprehensive stock of sheet music of all kinds, with a particular emphasis on the Scottish.

Instead of that horrendous talking toy, why not get your children their first musical instruments? The Musicroom has junior guitars from £39.99, tambourines from £6.99 and maracas from £10.99 – it’s still noise, but who knows? Your offspring might turn out to be the new Eric Clapton. They’ve even got junior bagpipes…ideal for waking up Daddies – and that special instrument of torture beloved by music teachers everywhere, the descant recorder. Anyone for Three Blind Mice at 5am on Friday?

The Musicroom does, of course, cater for the serious musician too, with guitars – including the Fender CD60, on special offer at £129 – saxophones, clarinets, keyboards, trumpets and plenty more, plus music stands, gig bags and all the plectrums, reeds and mutes you’ll ever need.

And if you want something a little bit alternative, how about an African drum (from £12.99), a guiro (that’s wooden frog to you and me) (from £8.99) or, for the Christmas Meditator, a beautiful singing bowl (£28.99)?

But perhaps you’re looking for something smaller – a stocking filler, or a little gift for the musician who has everything? These Nanoblocks were going down a storm when we visited the shop; there are also lots of mugs, socks and pens, kitchen equipment (guitar spatula anyone? piano teapot? or what about some Too Hot To Handel ovengloves?), guitarists’ soaps and saxophonists’ handcreams.

Best of all may be the chocolate pianos and (if you happen to share my juvenile sense of humour) this paddling of rubber ducks. I’m sure Mozart would be flattered. (The gold one is Strauss. Apparently.)

Rae Mcintosh Musicroom is at 41 Shandwick Place, tel: 0131 221 0041. The shop also holds a database of local music teachers and offers a re-stringing service on instruments, with a usual turnaround time of about an hour.