I've had a few emails this week from people who are blowing their guts out and don't have a lot of endurance. The problem could be two fold. 1) Their bagpipe isn't air efficient. 2) They don't know how to blow and squeeze. I am going to address those issues today:...
Throughout the last month, I have found myself sitting on my studio floor on numerous occasions, re-hemping pipes for my students. I hope they were watching. The Great Highland Bagpipe is almost a living, breathing life form! It needs care to work properly. Often, my...
A good maintenance kit is essential to maintaining a set of bagpipes. Forty years ago when I started playing the pipes, we played it the same way they did for hundreds of years. We played elk-hide or sheepskin bags that were sealed with “seasoning” that usually...
In my last blog post I told you about my student (the flight attendant) who was having a problem trying to find time to practice her bagpipe. We went back and forth on that for some time, trying to find her a solution. Just to recap: My flight attendant student...
If you were like most bagpipers during the St. Patrick’s holiday, you spent a lot of time blowing your instrument. In spite of having a moisture control system, your bagpipes are probably water logged at this point. I tried tuning a fellow bagpipers drones over the...
A customer calls me and is a little distraught. ""I've only had my pipes for 18 months and I found a crack"" he says. Let me just say that any good reputable bagpipe maker is going to use the best blackwood available in the market place to put in his/her instruments. ...
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