Crossing noises are a common problem in playing the bagpipe. They are false notes created between top hand notes and bottom hand notes when the hands open and close in the wrong sequence. For example: The first and most popular crossing noise happens between D and E....
Do you have 10 years of experience or 1 year of experience 10 times? Interesting question, isn’t it? I have found in the music world that there is a difference between people who play instruments. In the bagpipe world there are people who have been playing 10 years...
A student came in last week with his new set of pipes. He had had them for only a few weeks. I asked him: “Well? How did it go?” He told me that he hadn’t done anything with them. After speaking with him for a few minutes I realized that he, like most people who get...
The greatest and the worst thing about teaching bagpipes is the amount of music written for the instrument. I personally love the amount and variety of music for our instrument. The problem is with new people. Because of the great variety of not only printed music but...
I probably have said this before: The only qualification to being a bagpiper is to be able to play a list of tunes by memory on the bagpipe. I find that as I work with my students, they get into the “plate spinning” mode. They’ll play the “tune of the week” and spin...
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