Okay, you understand that bagpipe music is written in A, right? Actually, it is A with a flat seventh, so only two sharps (C# and F#). Your lowest note is normally going to be Low A. Now, find some sheet music for a Christmas carol. Odds are good that you will find something in F (one flat note - looks like a little b in the key signature) or C (no sharps or flats). Heck of a lot seems to be written for piano, so they go with keys that use mostly white notes on the piano.

All right. You have your carol, you have a seet of blank musical staff, you have a pencil, and you have your practice chanter. Good.

Look at the first note of the carol. Okay, if your first note is a C (low C, the note below the staff with a line through it), write a low A on your blank staff. If it is a D (just below the staff, no line) write a B. For an E, write down C; for an F, write D and so on. I imagine that with a light table I'd be able to just place the sheet music on it, offset the blank staff the right amount and trace, but for now I actually scribble it out by hand.

Don't worry about grace notes and ornaments until the end. Just get the main notes down.

The practice chanter is your double-check. After each line, play what you wrote and make sure it sounds right. I often find myself writing the same note that is on the original, not transposing it. A quick run-through will reveal any obvious mistakes of this type.

When you have the whole tune written out in A, play through again. Sound right? Good. Now, you can either decide what grace notes to play and write them in or you can fudge it as you go. At any rate, you have now completed the first transposition and it took you less time than you normally spend browsing on XMarks. But it was dull, so it felt like forever. With practice it does get faster and it helps a lot with understanding music for pianos and other, lesser instruments.

The whole concept is to shift the notes up the musical staff to turn them into notes that can be played on the bagpipes. Some folks can do this in their heads as they look at the music, but that comes from a lot of years of practice. Confuses the heck out of me.

Sometimes you will come up with a note that is outside of the range of an octave and a note (the range of a bagpipe). Auld Lang Syne is the classic example for the bagpipe. We can't play it as written, so we actually drop the highest notes an octave below how they are written. It sounds a little odd when you are trying to sing it, but it works out well enough on the pipes. An A is an A, no matter what octave it is in. Just sounds sort of odd to go down when you expect it to go up. But that's okay because it is part of the charm of an instrument with a limited range.

Does all of that make sense? If not, please try it once and then tell me if it makes sense. Just reading how to do it can be a little odd, but doing it just as I have suggested ought to be fairly straightforward. If you have any problems, please PM me and I will try to clear them up.

-Patrick