The Bagpipes and the Recorder!!

[wgority]

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While the College of Piping tutors (as well as the National Piping Center tutors) are superb resources, I would paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes by saying that "A piper who is his own instructor has a fool for a teacher".

As I said, these are superb resources, but a beginning piper does not have a sufficiently well-trained ear to pick up a lot of the problems and subtleties that arise in early work on the practice chanter.....and for that matter, later when transitioning to pipes either. No amount of prerecorded material or written material can equal the immediate feedback available from a live human being with years of experience listening to pipes. When I was starting out, I drove 2 hours each way for lessons to get the best available instruction that I could. (yeah, yeah, yeah - I drove it uphill both ways in 18 feet of snow and blinding blizzards in mid-July)

Find a qualified and serious instructor even if you can only meet once a month and have to travel great distances to do so. A beginning piper will advance more quickly and learn more accurately. It will prevent having to unlearn bad finger position and technique later in the game. I have a student right now who purported himself to be "self-taught" and "having 2 years experience". I've had to completely dissect his technique and I can assure you, it's damned slow going. I've seen and heard too many self taught pipers through the years who can't even tune their bloody drones properly!

Bagpipes aren't an instrument that you can pick up and just learn. There have been organised schools of instruction of piping for well over 400 years. There's a reason for this. It may well be a horn with only 9 notes, but it's a complicated instrument and playing it correctly is a demanding proposition. As a piper for 25+ years, I ask anyone who wants to learn the instrument to take the time and make the effort to please learn it properly. Take the time to learn proper technique and develop an ear for the tunes and tuning. It's not enough to know how to hack your way through Scotland the Brave and Amazing Grace. Bagpipes are a wonderful, frustrating, giving, demanding, beautiful instrument. If you learn properly they will give a lifetime of joy and pleasure.

It's the self taught and "St Patrick's Day" hack-pipers who make our instrument a joke and cause serious pipers have to work harder to uphold and defend our instrument, reputations and our craft.

The foregoing is not meant to offer offence or disrespect to anyone here. There are exceptions to every belief and I'll even admit I've known a couple very good self taught pipers. They are, however, far and away in the minority of that group. These are opinions I've developed over the years and are based on long observation and consideration. You may disagree with me or them and that's you right.

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