Jun 5, 2020
One of my students came to his lesson feeling a little discouraged because he couldn’t yet keep up with my teaching CD. He was talking about bailing. The truth is that he is doing reasonably well on his bagpipe project. The problem, as I see it, is that people...
Jun 5, 2020
Stop, drop and roll is what we teach people to do if they are ever on fire. We need to have something like that when it comes to practicing. Practicing isn’t about playing something over and over again until something happens. What we need to do is practice...
Apr 22, 2020
A while back, I wrote about how developing a tune is like baking chocolate chip cookies. To review, the first step in making chocolate chip cookies is the dry mix; the flour, salt, and baking soda. In tune development, it is the rhythm. During this Covid-19 pandemic,...
Mar 27, 2020
Here is a tune written by a friend from Bulgaria. This tune includes: the video lesson The Tune in .pdf Some Prep Drills in .pdf Audio includes The tune in parade Speed The Tune in Big, Slow and Open The rhythm sung to the melody The prep...
Feb 23, 2020
This is a great tune. A hornpipe. If you’re a bagpiper that hasn’t ventured into 2/4 competition marches or dance tunes, this is a tutorial on how to read the rhythm and develop the tune. Tunes are the greatest teachers of technique. I hope you enjoy this...
Feb 19, 2020
Have you ever heard of a bagpipe stand? A bagpipe stand is a cradle that holds your pipes when they are not being played. Why is a bagpipe stand important? Well, the problem with most portable instruments is that they often spend too much time in the case. You know...
Feb 13, 2020
That’s what I said: “Building any tune is like baking chocolate chip cookies!” Let’s think about that for a minute. When you bake chocolate chip cookies, you initially start out with the “dry ingredients”, right? First we combine the flour, the baking soda and the...
Feb 2, 2020
Recently, I took a poll amongst fellow pipers and piping students in order to learn what kinds of problems/challenges they faced in learning to play the bagpipe. The biggest problems by far were memorization, musicality, and rhythm. Personally, I happen to believe all...
Dec 4, 2019
Learning to play the Bagpipe is about coordination and muscle memory long before it is about the actual music. I find in working with my students that they don’t do enough repetitions. If you have a gym membership and go regularly, each exercise has a number of “reps”...
Oct 28, 2019
Because I offer a free lesson consultation to new students so they can try me out, I was contacted by a prospective student in New Zealand a few weeks ago. After going back and forth on finding a time to meet, we met for about 40 minutes last week. This gentleman...
