Is it possible to learn without an instructor?

I was perusing the Bob Dunsire Forums and saw this as a topic in the “Beginners” section. As I am not allowed to post anything that might be construed as selling my own business, I have decided to address that issue here. I sell a lot of “Bagpipes...

If you have a passion, failure is a temporary inconvenience!

How do you handle failure? Do you take it personally or do you accept it as a reason to do more? I find that we have created a generation of people who expect a prize from every endeavor whether they’ve earned it or not. Everyone gets a trophy today for just...

10 Repetitions Creates a Memorized Tune?

What if it only took you 10 times playing through a tune for you to memorize it? Would that interest you? Learning to play a new tune is a process. The problem is that if you start playing the tune quickly with a lot of bumps and snags, it will take you forever to...

Fail My Way First!

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...

Now’s the Time!

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...

Reading a 2/4 Competition March

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.

Is your Pipe Band Dying a Slow Death?

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....

A Bagpiper is a Person Who Can Play A List of Tunes on the Bagpipe

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...

Bagpipe parts and their expected life

​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...

So….What do you want to be when you grow up?

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...