Bagpipe Q&A: Essential Gear, Playing with Good Form, Winning the Worlds, John D. Burgess, and more! - BagpipeLessons.com

Bagpipe Q&A: Essential Gear, Playing with Good Form, Winning the Worlds, John D. Burgess, and more!

by Jori Chisholm, Founder of BagpipeLessons.com
Last Updated: July 23, 2024

This video provides comprehensive guidance on the necessary tools and accessories for bagpipers, emphasizing the importance of each item. It’s important to have consistent practice and connect with your inspiration behind playing the bagpipes. I’ll share insights from my experience with the SFU Pipe Band, highlighting the emotional and communal aspects of playing in a band. This video also touches on piobaireachd, a traditional form of bagpipe music, and its variations, showcasing the depth and challenge of mastering this musical style.

Watch the video and scroll down to read a summary or the full video script.

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Summary

  1. Essential Gear for Beginners: To start playing bagpipes, beginners need a set of pipes, a pipe chanter, reeds, a bag, and drone cords. These items are the absolute minimum for a playable setup.

  2. Tone Protector and Moisture Control: The Tone Protector is a humidity-controlling chanter cap, and the Dri-flo system is recommended for moisture control inside the pipes.

  3. Tuning Toolkit Essentials: The BagpipeLessons.com Precision Tuning Toolkit includes a reed poker, elastic bridles, tuning tape, and a sanding pad to fine-tune the instrument.

  4. Perfect Angle Blowpipe Positioner: This accessory helps adjust the blowpipe angle, reducing strain on the teeth and improving comfort during playing.

  5. InTune Mic for Precise Tuning: The InTune Mic is a wireless microphone that clips onto the drone for precise tuning with smartphone apps, making it easier to tune in noisy environments.

  6. Bagpipe Phone Mount: This mount attaches the phone to the blowpipe stock, providing a convenient way to use tuning apps and other functionalities during performances.

  7. Bagpipe Gauge for Steady Pressure: The Bagpipe Gauge measures and displays the pressure inside the pipes, helping pipers maintain steady bag pressure, which is crucial for a good sound.

  8. Staying Motivated to Practice: Jori emphasizes reflecting on the inspiration behind playing bagpipes and committing to a regular practice schedule, even if it’s just for a short time each day.

  9. Balancing Piping with a Busy Life: Being proactive and organized is key to fitting practice into a busy life. Avoid distractions and prioritize important activities to make time for piping.

  10. Playing in a Band: Jori shares his experience of playing in the SFU pipe band, highlighting the unique and motivating communal experience of playing in a band, especially at high levels of performance.

Video Transcript:  Hey, everybody. We’re live. Thanks for coming. Welcome back. My name is Jori Chisholm as you probably know, from BagpipeLessons.com. I have been doing these fun YouTube lives over the last few months. They’ve been really great. More and more people are tuning in and this is your chance to ask me a question live and I answer some of the questions that I get through my website and through my social media channel. So if you are joining live or if you’re on the replay, just put in the comments your name, and where you’re from, how long you’ve been piping and we’ll get into it. 

So I see Officer Snap is with us again and we also have Mark Lamont. So guys, just put in the chat where you’re from and a little bit about yourself and if you’ve got any questions in there. 

So the first question from Officer Snap says, “When purchasing your first set of pipes, what tools and accessories would you say are necessary, almost necessary and just good to have on hand?” 

That’s a great question. So when I set up pipes for students or for people who reach out to me through BagpipeLessons.com, I give different options. So what’s kind of the basics is what you need just to get started with your pipe. So that’s if you want to talk like the absolute bare essentials, would say you need your pipes and when you buy a set of pipes often they come fully set up, but you can also get them what they call Sticks Only.  Sticks Only is the three drones, the blowpipe, and five stocks. So the three tenor stocks, the blowpipe stock and the chanter stock. That is Sticks Only and I do sell the R.G. Hardie Acetyl Bagpipes which are plastic or poly bagpipes.  I have those in my shop, just put those up this week.  Sticks Only that’s what you get, and that’s if you’re looking to have the lowest price point and to customize your pipes yourself for exactly how you want them.  The next level up is what I call the Basics. In addition to the pipes, you need a pipe chanter, you need your reed, so you need a set of drone reeds and a pipe chanter reed.  You need a pipe bag, and then you need cords, the drone cords to hold your pipes together, that’s the absolute minimum that you need for a set of pipes that is playable.  That’s the pipes with the pipe chanter, your drone reeds, your chanter reed, a bag and the drone cords.  Now in addition to that there are some things that I recommend you’re going to want to get: a chanter cap for your pipe chanter. So when you’re not playing, you can pull it out. 

And of course, you want to have the Tone Protector which is a humidity controlling chanter cap, which is my invention and my best selling product. I’m also going to recommend a moisture control system. My favorite is the Dri-flo. So the Dri-flo is canisters that go inside your bag and attach to the bottoms of your drone stocks. And what they do is they have silica gel, which is a desiccant, and it absorbs the moisture from your breath. So as the air you blow into the bag travels through those desiccant canisters, the silica gel absorbs the moisture. And then by the time it gets to the end of the canister to your drone reed and to your drone, the air has been mostly dried out. So it’s nice and warm air. So I’m going to recommend the dri-flo system. 

The next thing I’m to recommend is my Tone Protector Reed Case. Get it for your backup pipe chanter reeds or some extra reeds. Maybe one you’ve already played that you still have kicking around that might have some more life in it. Or just some new reeds you haven’t played yet. 

You’re going to want to have a roll of hemp. So black or yellow waxed hemp. A couple of the things that I like I recently released in my BagpipeLessons.com Precision Tuning Toolkit.  So that has some things that are going to help you get your pipe chanter in shape. One of them is going to be your Piper’s Ultimate Reed Poker for opening up your reeds when they get too easy. It also comes with the elastic bridles for your pipe chanter reeds when they get too hard. It comes with a roll of my favorite high performance black tuning tape that’s pre-cut to the half inch width. And it comes with a sanding pad, which you can use for sanding the blades of the reed when the reed is a little bit, needs to be freed up a little bit. And that’s often if you have a crowy top hand or if the reed just isn’t responding properly. So we’re just adding more and more things here to make your piping experience a little bit better. 

Cool, so InTune Mic, I mentioned the Bagpipe Phone Mount. That’s what this looks like. It touches your blowpipe stock, and then you can mount your phone right on your blowpipe, and this is super fun for lots of different reasons. It’s great for tuning. You can see your tuner right here. You’re basically completely, not only wireless, but you’re completely mobile. So this is perfect if you’re at the Highland Games and you don’t have a music stand or a place to set your phone. You got your InTune Mic, clip to your pipes, you got your phone here, works great. And then I also recommend my Bagpipe Gauge for learning to blow steady. I’ve got a new video coming out soon about the Bagpipe Gauge, but this is really the secret if you want to have a great sound. There’s a lot of things that go into having a great sound like tuning. The InTune Mic is for setup.  So having a good set of drone reeds, having a good pipe chanter reed that is properly stored in your Tone Protector. But in addition to the skill of tuning and the equipment and the skill of setting up your equipment, the skill that you need to have a great sound is steady bag pressure. So that’s where this Bagpipe Gauge works so well. You plug the stopper with the tube into one of your drones. I do the middle tenor, but you could do the outside tenor. You could do the bass. I typically don’t do the bass because if you cork off a drone, it doesn’t make sound. So corking off one of the tenors doesn’t affect the sound as much rather than the bass. And then this comes up a little strap that you can mount to your blowpipe as well with my deluxe strap. And you can just look at it right in your blowpipe. It does one incredibly powerful thing, which is it measures and displays the pressure inside your pipes. If it’s wiggling back and forth, it means you need to be steadier. So the amount of movement, and how much the extremes of the movement will show you how steady you are. We call it steady blowing. It’s really a combination of blowing and squeezing with the arm, but really, ideally it would go to a specific number and it would hold it there. Now, if you look at the scale right in the middle there at the top, it says 30. That is 30 inches of water and that’s kind of in the green zone there. Most pipers are right around 30. I have used the gauge with hundreds of pipers over the years and I’d say 99% of pipers are in that green zone between 25 and 35. Once you get over 35, if you like playing hard pipes like that, go for it. But most pipers I know, they’re suffering and they’re suffering in terms of their comfort and you also are going to be suffering in terms of how well you can play because you’re just working too hard. You’re blowing too hard, you’re squeezing too hard, and you lose your dexterity and it’s just overwhelming. 

 

Check out the Bagpipe Gauge. It gives you two pieces of information. It shows you how steady you are and it gives you an exact reading of how hard your pipes are. A real common issue that we all face from time to time is something doesn’t feel right with our pipes and it can sometimes be a question of, is there something going on? Is there something wrong with my pipes or is it me? And the first thing that I will ask a student who’s having issues, I’ll say, “Well, what does it say on the gauge?” And that’s the first thing to do because you want to know if the pressure is way off or, is the pressure in the range of where it should be? And if it’s in the range where it should be, then it could be that your pipes are taking too much air, meaning you have a leak. So the pressure level is right, but you’re having to push too much air through those pipes because of the leak. Or it could be that there’s something going on with you physically, like you haven’t been playing enough and you’re a little bit out of shape. So that’s what the gauge is really good for. So that’s what I have sort of on my list. There are other gadgets as well but that’s what I have on the list for sets of pipes. 

 

The absolute basics would be just getting a set of sticks. Then you need to add the drone cords, the pipe bag, and reeds to be playable. But then after that, there are other things that you are definitely going to want: your dri-flo moisture control system, your Tone Protector Reed Case, your Tone Protector Chanter Cap, you’re going to need some hemp and some brushes, and you’re probably going to want some things to get your pipes set up and tuned like my tuning toolkit with the poker and the elastics and the sander and the tape. And you’re going to want my Bagpipe Gauge and the phone mount and the mic. So that’s kind of a bunch of my products, but that’s been what I’ve been doing over the years is figuring out the things that pipers struggle with. And these things are things that I’ve struggled with myself over the years and with my students and try to seek solutions to help pipers out. And then if it doesn’t exist, try to see if there’s something that I can come up with that’s helpful for me and helpful for my students. 

 

The original Bagpipe Gauge was just something that I made a one-off trying to find the right gauge online and trying to find the tubing and trying to find a cork and trying to put it all together. And I encouraged my students. I said, “Well, here, I built one. You can build one.” And most of them wouldn’t do it. It’s too complicated to go and try to get all these parts. Some of these are really hard specialty parts to find, like this little attachment here. So I said, “Okay, I’ll make a batch of them.” I made a batch of these Bagpipe Gauges. And they really loved them. And now I have them manufactured. And it’s a really cool, slick little package. And you can keep it right in your pipe case. Cool. Great question.

Officer Snap is from Huntsville. Fantastic, have some friends down there. I have never been down there. Matthew said, “Piping since Thanksgiving Day 2000.” Great. I didn’t know that, Matt. That’s cool. It’s a very specific day. That’s excellent. LEO is from Montrose, BC, Canada. Cool. Great. So Mark says, “I thought solo piping was the end all, be all, until I attended my first band rehearsal. Then I was hooked. Listening to the roll-offs and the drone striking in is awesome.” 

I agree. I mean, I love the sound of a solo bagpipe. I have to say, I agree with you that when you are in a band and you have that visceral experience of being in that group and having all those bagpipes kicking in together, it’s just an amazing sound. I played in the SFU pipe band for 19 years as one of the world’s top bands, and won the world championships with them. A lot of great things about the band. Great friends, fun experiences, tremendously challenging and engaging fun tunes, cool arrangements, but I got to say right at the top is the experience of playing in that circle with 20 to 30 bagpipers all playing at that world-class level, pipes, chanters all in tune, and it takes a lot of work and there’s a lot of moving parts to get that band to be at that level of cohesion and unison of playing and tuning.  But when it happens, it’s just an amazing experience.  So you can experience that at every level, but certainly for me playing in SFU for all those years was absolutely one of the peak experiences that I’ve had as a musician. Something I looked forward to each year were those performances, where the tone and the playing all came together. We won the Worlds in 2008 and 2009 and I remember coming off and the player next to me, I mean it’s a very emotional experience, it’s a lot of pressure, so you can think about it like sports highlights, like a tennis match. There’s just so much concentration and tension, and then the player hits that final point, and then they win and they collapse. It’s like that kind of feeling, it’s a huge relief and a sense of accomplishment and it’s just a very emotional experience after all that tension. Then it’s instantly over.  So it’s a very similar feeling at the Worlds.  You have this performance, you’ve been leading up to it for the whole year, maybe for your whole career, it’s an amazing experience.  Then you come off and I remember feeling that sense of emotion and excitement especially when it’s one of the greatest performances you’ve ever been a part of.  The piper standing next to me was just overcome with emotion and he said, “I just never thought that I would play, I just never thought I would play like this, that it could sound that good.” So it’s just an amazing experience. And regardless of what level you’re at, you have that ability to, when you’re in a band, to push yourself and to have that amazing communal experience. 

 

I think that’s one of the best things about playing in a band, is you do have that team to rely on and you have that team that is relying on you. So they are supporting you, but you also need to do your part. So in that way, it can be very inspiring and motivating because you want to be a good team player and you want to be a contributor and you want to be a person that raises the level of the band and that can be tremendously fun and inspiring to be part of that. Yeah, Mark says, “It’s like winning the Stanley Cup.” Yeah, I mean, it’s to play in the Worlds. It’s a great experience to play in the Worlds at the grade one level and be in a winning band. It’s fantastic. You never forget it. But I don’t think about it every day. I don’t have any trophies or medals displayed in my house. I know some people do. Those are great memories, and I’m very proud of those accomplishments, but I don’t need them hanging around my house. Also, don’t hang my college diploma up, either. It’s in a box somewhere. That’s just my thing. 

 

OK, Officer Snap, “Which is your favorite of the starter tunes and which gave you the most trouble?”

 

Wow. OK, that’s going way back for me. My first tune was ‘Scots Wha Hey,’ 6-8 Slow Air from the College of Piping Green Book. I think that’s a fantastic tune. I teach that as the first tune. The second tune that I teach is ‘Going Home,’ which is another 6-8 Slow Air. Hard for me to remember which gave me the most trouble in terms of tune, but I do remember the hardest thing for me when I was learning to play was the bottom hand and the thumb. So I remember it was like my first or second lesson. I just remember having this pain in this thumb here. Now, I was a kid when I started, and I was a pretty small kid. I was the smallest kid in my class in school. Had a little bit of a growth spurt later, but I have had small hands, and I remember just really having pain in this thumb muscle here on the bottom hand, and that is very common. I actually remember being in tears. Part of it was sitting at my parents’ kitchen table with the chanter maybe up like this in a strange angle. So you want to have the chanter sort of vertical-ish, rest on a table or a counter that’s fine, maybe you rested on your knee, maybe you’re just holding it, but you don’t want to be up here like this. I’ll sometimes see people that they rest their forearms on a table and they’re doing that terrible, terrible idea. You want to try to play in a neutral position.  This is how the pipes are going to be, where your forearms are parallel to the ground, or maybe slightly down, not up and not way down. So you want to try to replicate that with your practice chanter. Obviously the practice chanter is maybe a little bit higher than the pipes, but ish, close ish. 

 

So I would say if your hand’s, if your thumb’s hurting, that’s normal, but you want to try to keep those hands soft, keep them as soft as you can. If you’ve been following my teaching, you’ve heard me talk about the two pillars of good technique, of good bagpipe form. And that is keeping your hands as relaxed and loose and soft as possible, right? So the opposite of being tight or stiff or rigid or squeezing, we want to get rid of all that. And I have condensed that down to one word and that is ‘soft.’ You want to have soft hands on the chanter. I’ve heard people say, “Oh, you want it to be like you’re holding a full tube of toothpaste and you’re just squeezing it just enough so that you can see that little bit of toothpaste coming out of the top.” Or I heard a kid at a workshop say, “My teacher says, it’s like you’re holding a baby bird. Just, you don’t want to squish it, but you don’t want it to get away.” OK, those are all fine analogies. The way I think about it is you want to just have the absolute minimum amount of pressure needed to cover the holes. And for most pipers, most of the time we have too much pressure, right? So the chanter doesn’t change a sound if you squeeze too hard. That’d be a cool invention if you had that. If somehow you would get an auditory signal that, “Oh, I’m squeezing too tight.” So instead what you have to rely on is your own sense of pressure. And what I would recommend is you go back to playing something really, really soft, or sorry, really, really easy, and just try to relax your hands as much as possible. You know, just even playing the low G or playing a scale and see if you can relax your hands. And eventually, your fingers will slip off the holes, but until you get to that point, you can go softer. So soft hands, that’s number one. And then the second pillar of good form is to keep them low. We don’t need to lift our fingers really high. We just keep them nice and low. Now you will see pipers who raise their fingers high and even really good pipers, but it’s not needed and it slows you down. On a long note, you can do whatever you want. Da-da-dee. On a long note, you can lift those fingers high. It doesn’t help you, but it doesn’t really, it’s not as important. And on short notes, they have to be really, really close to the chanter.  There’s just no way to play these quick 16th notes and 32nd notes and cut them the way that we like to in our pipe tunes if you are lifting your fingers really high off the chanter. So soft and low. Those are the things you want to do. Low and soft. Great. All right, great comments in here. 

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Mark Lamont says, “Watch a video of John D. Burgess. His hands are softly on his chanter. Amazing player who’s considered the first real piping prodigy.” 

I agree with the first part. Two comments, not so much on the third one. John D. Burgess was an absolutely fantastic player. I knew him in his later days. He was past his playing days. But I remember he judged me a few times in Scotland. Fantastic person and a real character. Just think of these glamorous movie stars of the past generations. He was like that. He was a true star of piping. And his personality, he backed it up with his track record. He won the gold medal in Scotland, which is the top prize at age 16. So he was a true prodigy. I don’t think he was the first one. There’s certainly one of the great talents of the piping world. And there’s a fantastic video of Burgess playing. If you just look up John D. Burgess, Seamus McNeil. And those are two great characters of piping. And I think there’s a BBC or some television program. And it’s John Burgess playing pipes. And there’s two things, multiple things about it. It’s a masterclass in how to play with ease. So I mean, it just barely looks like he’s blowing bubbles in milk with his blowpipe. Drones don’t move. Everything is just really still. And then the fingers hardly coming off the chanter. 

So that’s the gold standard right there to not only look like it’s easy, but to actually have it be easy. So when you watch that, it’s like, wow. He makes it look easy. Well, I would argue that it looks easy because it is easy for him. So how can you do something like play the bagpipe and have it be easy? Well, practice getting in shape, but also doing things properly. And that goes right back to your early stages or wherever you are in your piping career and practicing in a way which you play with a lot of ease. Keep the hands soft, keep them low, make sure your pipes are optimized so that they’re as efficient as possible. I think when you watch a great athlete, like Roger Federer, one of the great tennis players, he just had so much smoothness and finesse with his playing. Obviously he’s an insanely powerful athlete. And you say, “Well, it just looks easy for him.”  And I think certain things that he could do that were exceptionally difficult were easy for him because he’d optimized his technique and because he’d practiced it, right? 

There’s a lot going on when you’re playing the pipes. We have the fingering, we have the technique, we have the timing, we have our tempo, we’re marching around, we’re blowing our pipes. There’s multiple things going on and it’s impossible to focus on all of them. But in order to be good, all those things have to be good, even when you’re not thinking about them. So how can you play a good birl without thinking about it? How can you keep a steady bag pressure when you’re not thinking about it? How can you keep a steady tempo when you’re thinking about something else? Well, the way we do that is by practicing things properly and getting enough reps and enough practice that it’s good enough on its own. So it requires you to get automatic so that these things just happen on their own. So you can think, “Oh, what’s the next tune that’s going to be coming up here? Oh yeah.” And when you have that thought about the next tune, that your hands don’t just fall off the chanter or that you forget to blow. In the early stages, you have to think about the blowing. And I’ve seen this with students when they go from the practice chanter and they transition to the pipes, you have to think about blowing and squeezing and all the mechanics of it because you’re new to it. But then what happens when you’ve practiced it enough, it becomes automatic. And if you read about the theories of motor learning and blowing your pipes or playing a birl, these are all motor skills. There’s three stages. The first stage is where you have to think about every step and you’re using words and rules and it’s the verbal stage. And then the final stage is the autonomous stage where these things happen automatically. The middle stage is called the associative stage where you’re kind of in between, you’re thinking a little bit about it, but some of it’s automatic. So that’s how you do it. You work on all these things separately and your skills get better and they become more optimized and they’re more consistent. And then eventually they become autonomous. 

So another way to think about it, it’s like in the cartoons where the cartoon character is tempted in making a decision, and there’s a little angel and little devil that sort of pop up on their shoulders. And it’s as if the angel and devil, they’re like two little characters inside that person’s mind or their soul, kind of like pulling them in each direction. Well, it’s almost like you could think about each one of these skills that you’re doing at the same time, they’re like little characters. It’s like, “Oh, well, here’s the little birl, little character, and then here’s the blowing character and here’s what tune comes next character.” So there’s all these little entities. This is all hypothetical sort of metaphoric here, but it’s as if they’re these little entities and you train each one. When you practice, “I’m going to work on my blowing. I’m going to work on my blowing. I’m going to work on my squeezing. I’m going to work on my birls. I’m going to work on my memorization.” And you focus on that thing with the goal that when you’re playing, and when you can think about one thing, and you’re blowing or your birls, or your crossing noises, or your memorization, that those little elements, that they do the right thing even when you’re not with them, even when you’re shining the spotlight of your attention somewhere else, that you’ve practiced them properly and sufficiently so that they do what they’re supposed to do automatically. 

OK, let’s keep looking here. “Yeah, well, your pipe should be easy for you to play.” That’s a direct quote from Malcolm McCray, who’s an Australian piper who lived in Scotland for many years. Top prize winner, respected judge. And at a piobaireachd workshop that I was at with Malcolm years ago, he said the exact words, “Your pipes should be easy for you.” And what that means is that you want to have them optimized. There’s a lot of things that go into that. So you can watch my YouTube video called “Why Are My Pipes So Hard?” There’s lots of reasons your pipes can be hard. But if they’re easy for you, everything has to be right. Sizing, blowpipe, sizing of bag, proper drone reeds, good drones, drone reeds optimized, adjusted, pipe chanter reed with the Tone Protector. So it’s got the right amount of moisture, the right strength. It’s a good reed. It’s efficient. It’s been broken in. And you, you have to be in shape. You can give a perfect set of pipes to someone, absolute optimized pipes. But if you’re not in shape and you’re rusty or your physicality isn’t there, it’s not going to work. So you have to be in shape. Your pipes have to be dialed in. You’re working together. Your pipes should be easy for you. That’s the secret. So you look at a top player and they’re just busting out complicated tunes or the most beautiful piobaireachd with every note just perfectly dialed in. How do they do that? A lot of practice, but they’re probably in the zone. They’re feeling comfortable. Everything is dialed in. They’re not struggling and hoping, right? 

I read a very interesting book a couple months ago, and it was written by a former Google data scientist who’s obsessed with basketball, sports in general. And he looked at all the statistics, like the entire statistical record for the National Basketball Association, our professional league here, and did all this data analysis on it. And the book is called “Who Makes the NBA?” All kinds of really interesting statistics about height and hand size and different physical attributes that they measure and what is predictive of success and sociological factors. Is it an advantage to be from a certain background? Is it an advantage to have a father that played in the NBA? All kinds of really interesting statistics. Well, one thing that he looked at was the ability to perform under pressure. So the ability to perform under pressure would be, in basketball, what’s your shooting percentage in the last couple of minutes of a game when it’s within five points? And they compare that to every other time. So they can define what’s a high-pressure clutch situation based on the score and how close it is to the end of the game. And then they look at how well a player does there compared to everything else. And this was an amazing statistic to me. They found that zero players are better in the clutch. That they found no NBA player who is better under pressure than when they’re not under pressure. They found some players that were the same. And those were the great players. The great players are the ones that whatever their shooting accuracy is throughout their whole career, when it gets to the crunch time at the end of a game, under pressure when it’s close, they’re the same. Nobody gets better. Most people get worse. They are not as good under pressure when the game is on the line. So that is a really interesting statistic to me. And that matches with my experience, which is, if you are in a competition scenario, you should not expect that you’re going to do better when it really matters. 

Like if it’s a big competition, it’s the gold medal, it’s the World’s, maybe it’s just a performance you’re doing. It’s a non-competitive performance but you really want it to be good, do not expect that it’s going to be better than what you’ve been doing before when you’re not under pressure. So that informs us if you want to do well when it really matters, you need to be doing well in the days and weeks and months leading up to it. So in SFU we had the saying “cruise and win” and “cruise and win” means you have to be at that level of performance to win going into the thing. Don’t expect it. “Oh gosh, we’re getting close now, it’s going to get great at the end.” It just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen to elite basketball players. It’s not going to happen to you. 

All right, we’re getting close to the end here. “What is the simplest definition of piobaireachd?”

Great question. So piobaireachd is a Gaelic word which literally translated means “bagpipe music.” But we refer to it as a type of bagpipe music in which the tunes are long, maybe five or seven minutes up to 20, 25 minutes. And they consist of a theme and variations. The theme is typically quite slow and involves a lot of nuanced phrasing and expression. And then with each variation, it has the same basic melody that you heard in the ground. And you represent those melody notes in a slightly different way with a different rhythmic context, different embellishments and gracenoting, and a different tempo. 

So there are tunes that have a ground in one variation. Typical would be a tune with a ground and maybe between five and 10 variations. There are tunes that have even more, maybe up to 20 variations. So a variation might be a taorluath variation. So you play all of the notes that came across in the theme in the ground, but then you play them with a taorluath on each note. Or a crunluath variation, which would be your melody notes with crunluath. There’s a variation called a dithis variation where it’s your theme note and a short low A. There’s a siubhal variation where you play your theme note and then a higher note. There’s a really cool variation in a tune called ‘Fair Honey,’ where you have your theme notes and in between each one you have a jili, which is a high A doubling. So there’s all kinds of really cool different types of variations. These piobaireachd tunes are still being written, but many of them are quite ancient, hundreds and hundreds of years old. A lot of our great tunes came from the McCrimmons who are on Skye and the McCrimmon family. They were the hereditary pipers to the McClouds and for many generations they had a piping school up on Skye and wrote a lot of these fantastic piobaireachd tunes. There’s still new tunes being written. 

This book came out a couple years ago, the Shasta Collection. And this was a compilation of the tunes that were submitted to a tune writing competition. And I wrote a few of the winning tunes. The first one I wrote was for my teacher, Collin McKenzie. It’s me and Collin, and it’s ‘Collin McKenzie’s Salute.’ So written in the old style, I didn’t try to make them sound particularly modern. I wanted to try to write a tune that was in the style of the classic piobaireachd. I’m not sure on the exact number of piobaireachds that we have, but in terms of that canon of tunes, excluding the modern piobaireachds, I think we have probably 250 to 300. So really, really cool. And it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but the pipers who love playing piobaireachd, they really love it. I think some of them might disagree with me, but I think it’s some of the most challenging and most interesting and most satisfying music to play because of the subtlety and the expression that you get to put into it. So if you want to look up some tunes, some great tunes that I recommend you look up, one would be ‘The Lament for the Children,’ ‘The Lament for Donald Dougal Mackay,’ ‘I Got a Kiss of the King’s Hand,’ ‘The Lament for Patrick Ogg McCrimmon,’ one of the all-time greats, it really features this high G note, which is a very mournful note. And some beginner piobaireachds, the first tunes that I usually teach people, is a tune called ‘The Munro’s Salute.’ Another tune is called ‘The Little Spree.’ ‘The Munro’s Salute’ and ‘The Little Spree’ I have for download in my shop. It’s a tune lesson download, you get the sheet music, recording of me playing the tune, and also a recorded lesson of me talking through the tune. I also have in my shop a lesson, it’s actually recorded of a masterclass that I gave on one of my all-time favorite tunes called ‘Too Long in this Condition.’ ‘Too Long’ is also on my album Bagpipe Revolution. And I did it as a duet through multi-tracking. I recorded the melody part, and I recorded a harmony part for it. And I really love that track because it’s something that I’d always wanted to do, which was to play a piobaireachd and then record a harmony part with it, and get the harmonies really, really tight.  You get some really cool sort of sonic kind of effects with the full rich lush sound of the bagpipe played in harmony. So you have two chanters going and six drones going. 

Mark Lamont throws in the comments, “A ‘Flame of Wrath’ is awesome.” 

Yeah, ‘A Flame of Wrath for Squinting Patrick,’ fantastic tune. That one is one of the most aggressive rhythmic and driving tunes, really matches the title, ‘Flame of Wrath.’ Great. Excellent. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining in and for putting in the comments. This is really fun. I’m going to keep doing this. I’ve got a little bit of traveling later in the summer. But when I’m around, and if I can get to it from the road, I will. I’ll flip on YouTube, and we’ll have a little conversation. Check out my YouTube channel, BagpipeLessons.com. I’m posting videos all the time. We’re doing long videos, live videos, and doing shorts. Every day we’re posting new shorts. Check out my social media channels on Instagram and Facebook, BagpipeLessons.com. And if you like this information and you want more of it, I do live classes every week on Zoom. And you can join me live with the other members of my BagpipeLessons.com Inner Circle. Check that out at BagpipeLessons.com/membership. And of course, there’s my shop, BagpipeLessons.com/shop with all the Tone Protectors and the toolkits and Bagpipe Gauges and all that stuff. Let’s be in touch. Thanks, everybody. Hope your summer is going great, and we will see you next time. 

Thanks, everybody. Mahalo.

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