May 8, 2017
I always want the best for people. I want them to succeed. If they do, they show everyone else that they can succeed, too. When someone pays me to teach them how to play an instrument, my goal is to make them good at this task. There’s much involved in teaching...
May 7, 2017
A New Beginning! Here we are…nearly at the beginning of another summer. A lot of people, especially younger people, dread this time of year as it signals back to school time. Even as we grow into adults, we still tend to work on this same schedule. The end of...
May 6, 2017
This is a video that I did a while back. I hope you all enjoy it. If you have any questions, please let me know.
May 6, 2017
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to a pipe band colleague who has been involved with the same pipe band for the last 30 some years. I asked him how his band was doing and he told me that they were burning out. He said that attendance and membership were down....
May 5, 2017
A person becomes a “bagpiper” when they can play a list of tunes on the bagpipe by memory. As I’ve written previously, every tune that we learn to play must be memorized. I recently had a slightly intense discussion with a student because I told him...
May 4, 2017
I was reading a post on a popular bagpipe chat room and ran across a string of messages about a certain type of pipe bag failure. As I was reading these messages, I thought they were funny because the people writing them had no real perspective on bagpipe parts. When...
Apr 23, 2017
Every once in a while I go through stages where I think that I want to do something else other than what I am currently doing. In September, I thought that I wanted to play with a top grade pipe band. I went to practice for a month. I loved playing with those...
Apr 23, 2017
When we start a new project, we are excited about it because it is new. As we get further into the project, we forget why we are doing it and often lose interest. As a person who teaches people to play the bagpipes, I find that part of my job is keeping the student...
Apr 19, 2017
I get a kick out of people who say that “winning isn’t everything”, though we as a society spend a bloody fortune following things having to do with winning and losing. We go to sporting events of all kinds, we watch competitions on TV, and are glued to the current...
Apr 16, 2017
I had an instant message conversation with a fellow bagpiper this morning about a particular person who had inquired about instruction through Facebook. He told me that he thought that this person was autistic and he was concerned. It’s interesting that he said that...
