Fixing the Death Grip, Tuning Bagpipes by Ear, Playing with the Piper’s Metronome — Live Bagpipe Q&A
by Jori Chisholm, Founder of BagpipeLessons.com
Last Updated: June 3, 2024
In today’s live video, I’ll answer your more of your questions about many important bagpipe topics., including: Drone Reed Set Up & Adjustment Optimal Humidity Levels for your Tone Protector and Tone Protector Reed Case The Foundation Reed and more…!
Watch the video and scroll down to read a summary or the full video script.
In this video, I answer questions from pipers, offering detailed advice on improving timing and rhythm using a metronome, specifically my Piper’s Metronome app. I explain the importance of maintaining a steady beat in various types of bagpipe music and provide tips for beginners on using a metronome effectively. I also discuss tuning challenges, recommending the Braw Bagpipe Tuner and the InTune Mic for precise tuning, even in noisy environments. I emphasize the value of these tools for both immediate improvement and long-term skill development. Additionally, I share marketing tips for solo pipers and give insights into mastering the birl technique, promoting my Bagpipe Essentials Masterclass for in-depth learning.
Key points:
🎵 Metronome Importance: Using a metronome is crucial for maintaining a steady beat in bagpipe music, which is essential for most tune types except piobaireachd.
📱 Piper’s Metronome App: My Piper’s Metronome app, designed specifically for pipers, offers features like time signature presets, rhythm options, and customizable sets.
💡 Using Metronomes: Beginners should start simple with metronomes, playing scales at a moderate tempo to develop timing and rhythm.
🎧 Tuning Challenges: For precise tuning, I recommend the Braw Bagpipe Tuner and the InTune Mic, which isolates specific sounds for accurate tuning.
🧰 Bagpipe Tool Kit: My Precision Tuning Tool Kit helps address various chanter reed and tuning issues, enhancing overall playing quality.
🎼 Practicing with Tools: Tools like the metronome and tuning devices help pipers develop skills over time, not just serve as crutches.
📈 Marketing Tips: To get your name out there as a solo piper for gigs and live events, it’s essential to do a really good job, market yourself well, and always be prepared and look sharp.
🧠 Growth Mindset: I encourage my students to have a growth mindset. If it’s hard to play with a metronome, it means you need it. The harder it is, the more you need to practice with it.
🎵 Birl Technique: The birl is a specific technique with multiple ways to play it. Most top players play the seven-birl because it’s the most reliable. Check out my Bagpipe Essentials Masterclass for detailed videos on techniques.
🔊 Learning by Ear: While tuning by ear is a great goal, using tools like the InTune Mic and Braw Tuner helps you experience in-tune bagpipes, which improves your ability to tune by ear over time.
Summary:
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Importance of Metronomes: Using a metronome is crucial for maintaining a steady beat in bagpipe music, essential for most tune types except piobaireachd.
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Piper’s Metronome App: My Piper’s Metronome app offers features like time signature presets, rhythm options, and customizable sets, designed specifically for pipers.
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Starting Simple with Metronomes: Beginners should start simple with metronomes, playing scales at a moderate tempo to develop timing and rhythm.
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Tuning Challenges and Solutions: For precise tuning, I recommend the Braw Bagpipe Tuner and the InTune Mic, which isolate specific sounds for accurate tuning, even in noisy environments.
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Precision Tuning Tool Kit: My Precision Tuning Tool Kit helps address various chanter reed and tuning issues, enhancing overall playing quality.
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Practicing with Tools: Tools like the metronome and tuning devices help pipers develop skills over time, not just serve as crutches.
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Marketing Tips for Solo Pipers: To get your name out there as a solo piper for gigs and live events, it’s essential to do a really good job, market yourself well, and always be prepared and look sharp.
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Growth Mindset in Practice: I encourage my students to have a growth mindset. If it’s hard to play with a metronome, it means you need it. The harder it is, the more you need to practice with it.
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Mastering the Birl Technique: The birl is a specific technique with multiple ways to play it. Most top players play the seven-birl because it’s the most reliable. Check out my Bagpipe Essentials Masterclass for detailed videos on techniques.
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Learning to Tune by Ear: While tuning by ear is a great goal, using tools like the InTune Mic and Braw Tuner helps you experience in-tune bagpipes, which improves your ability to tune by ear over time.
Video Transcript: Hey everybody, Jori Chisholm here. Thanks for tuning in to the YouTube channel. I’ve been excited to do some of these live Q&As, trying to do one once a week. So here we are. It’s a Friday morning here in Seattle, and I’ve got my second cup of coffee.
I’m going to answer some of your bagpipe questions. Thanks to everybody who’s been emailing in, messaging through various social channels, and emailing. So, thanks very much. If you’re watching on the replay or live, please put in the comments where you’re from, how long you’ve been piping, and if you have any questions I can answer for you. I’ll do them live here, or if you’re watching the replay, I’ll talk about them in my next Q&A.
Great, so the first question I’m going to talk about is…
I email people who join my email list, sending out helpful tips, useful information, and links once in a while. One of the things I ask is, what are your greatest challenges? I get some great responses from that.
So, this is in response to one of those questions. It’s about timing and playing with a metronome. This is a really common issue. A metronome does one thing really well, which is give you a specific and steady beat to play along with.
The reason this is such a big deal for musicians, especially for pipers, is because of the style of music we play. We have piobaireachd on one side, but once you get away from piobaireachd, all our other types of bagpipe music have a strong beat and a steady rhythm, whether it’s a marching tune like a 2/4, 3/4 March, or 6/8, or one of our dance tunes like a strathspey, reel, or jig. All these tunes need a constant, steady rhythm throughout, whether fast or slow. That’s what the metronome helps with.
There are lots of different metronomes out there. In the old days, we had the metal sort of tick-tock pendulum thing. Now, there are apps. A few years ago, I created the first metronome app just for pipers. It’s called the Piper’s Metronome, available for Apple and Android, and it’s very popular. We’re getting people signing up every day, many thousands of people with great reviews. So, check it out at PipersMetronome.com. It’s free to try out almost all the features. After you’ve used it for a while, you’ll get a message asking you to pay for the premium version to get a few additional features.
I hope you will check it out. It’s called the Piper’s Metronome, and you can find it at PipersMetronome.com. I’ll just show you a couple of things that I really like about it. It’s got this ring display circle. What I like about it is it’s really easy for your eye to follow the changing color in the ring. One of the things we are always working on as pipers is to play on the beat and not ahead of the beat. You can really see if you’re right on the beat or a little bit ahead. Often, pipers come a little bit ahead with our various embellishments.
Another thing that the Piper’s Metronome has is a bunch of presets built in to make it really easy to get going. If you’re going to play a 4/4 March, you just hit the button for that tune type, and it changes to four beats per bar. Once around this ring is one bar or one measure. If we go to a 3/4 March, it’s one, two, three—so just real easy to get started with your time signature based on the type of tune you’re playing. It also has rhythm presets. If you’re going to play a 4/4 March, it can do simple beats, eighth notes, or dot cuts. There’s no other metronome that has the bagpipe tune types and rhythmic combinations built-in.
If you go to a jig, a 6/8 jig, it gives us two beats per bar. If you go to the rhythm button, you have options like quarter-eighth or three-eighth notes. If we go to three-eighth notes, we get that cool triplet sound—tick, tick, tick. There are no dot cuts in jigs, so that’s not even an option built in here. So, check out PipersMetronome.com. Try it for free, and if you like it, sign up for the full version to get more features. You can create custom sets like a pipe band medley, where you can have multiple tunes with different time signatures and tempos. That’s a really cool feature that pipers love, especially if you’re in a band and want to put the whole medley in there.
Once you’ve created a set, you can share it. An example is a piper in the band putting in the band’s medley or MSR, the different tunes, the number of parts, transitions, custom transitions, and tempos. You can save it and share it with your friends. Someone can create the set once and share it with everyone in the band, and they get the exact set and can’t mess it up. If someone thinks it’s a little fast, they can slow it down on their app without affecting the master copy.
Also, if you decide to change something in the band’s medley, you can take the tune out, save it, and everyone who shared that set will see the new version next time they open it. This change is hosted on our cloud-based service, which is one of the things we have to pay for, and that’s supported when you buy the full paid version of the app. It’s very inexpensive compared to buying a metronome gadget from Amazon or a music store, and the Piper’s Metronome has way more features than any standalone metronome. So, please support the app; we’d love that.
Also, there are some cool features for helping with expression and pulsing, which are important for 2/4 marches, strathspeys, or reels. Check out the videos on the YouTube channel about the Piper’s Metronome. I’ll put some links in the description below. If you’re trying to get started with a metronome, I encourage you to start simple. One challenge I hear from students is that they hate using the metronome because it’s hard. It is hard if you haven’t gotten used to it, especially with a challenging tune that has lots of technique, different rhythms, and a challenging tempo. Adding strict metronome timing can be tough.
So, here’s what I recommend. If you’re new to playing with a metronome, keep it slow and simple. Start with the basics—play the scale, tapping your foot to a simple beat. Then put that into your metronome. Play up and down the scale with your metronome. If you don’t know what speed to play, the metronome has a tap button. Tap it at the speed you want to play, and it will measure that tempo. Practice playing along with your metronome at that speed, listening for the click sound, watching the circular ring color change, and making little adjustments to your tempo.
You might find that you’re playing a little too fast or falling behind and need to adjust accordingly. Fine-tune the speed on your metronome. The idea is to find a moderate tempo where you can practice being in time. It’s like being in a lesson where I set the tempo for you, and you adjust your tempo to match mine. That’s what you do with the metronome. It keeps a specific tempo and keeps it constant, so if you feel like you’re getting ahead or behind, that’s you—not the metronome.
Once you get comfortable using the metronome and making tempo adjustments, start using it with the tunes you’re working on. I encourage my students to have a growth mindset. If it’s hard to play with a metronome, it means you need it. The harder it is, the more you need to practice with it because it indicates you’re struggling with keeping a steady or specific tempo.
Next question comes from PMC. I’m struggling with top-hand dexterity exercises, especially with the doubling on F, E, and D, and edres, the back half of crunluaths, trying to avoid the dreaded finger freeze.
So, let’s review that. We’re talking about F doubling, E doubling, D doubling, edres, and the back half of the crunluath, which is the edre. These involve the top-hand gracenotes, particularly the E and F gracenote. It’s a common challenge for pipers, often due to hands being too tight. Most people are right-handed, so the left hand (the top hand) is the non-dominant hand for most pipers. Even if you’re left-handed, tightness can still be an issue, especially when squeezing the bag.
If your pipes are hard, inefficient, or not set up right, or if your bag is too big, blowpipe too long, or even if everything is set up properly, the strain can radiate down to your fingertips. The Alexander Technique, which studies body mechanics and movement, talks about how tension in one area of the body can radiate to other parts. This certainly seems to be the case with piping, where squeezing hard on the arm can cause tightness.
First, make sure your hands and fingers are in the optimal position on your chanter. We don’t use our little finger on the top hand, so we have thumb, pointer, middle, and ring fingers. The thumb and ring finger are the shortest and should go on the chanter first. This helps keep your hands as relaxed as possible. For the correct position, place your ring finger first, then your thumb, and then drop the other two fingers down. You don’t want to be on the tip, nor locked out, but reasonably straight with a little curve.
For some, like me, due to finger length, my thumb and pointer finger end up in a specific position. If you have a longer thumb relative to your pointer finger, you may end up more on the first digit, but my thumb’s not long enough for that. We don’t want to bend our fingers excessively, so aim for a position that minimizes tension and strain.
Next, practice basic note transitions and scales, focusing on tension in your hands. Some people squeeze the chanter too hard. Keep your hands relaxed with fingers on the holes but without adding unnecessary tension. Play some basic note transitions and then add in some note transitions with G gracenotes. Pay attention to your form—good form means keeping your hands relaxed and close to the chanter, avoiding excessive squeeze and lifting fingers too high. High finger lifts make playing chaotic and sloppy, while tension inhibits quick, clean finger movements, making it hard to play fast tunes like jigs.
Now, let’s look at some doublings. Practice basic note transitions and then add in top-hand doublings. The exact notes and exercises are up to you. I have great exercises on my YouTube channel. Check out the dot-cut fluidity exercise, the power GDEs exercise, and the Strathspey triplets. I’ll be adding more exercises to the channel.
If you join my BagpipeLessons.com Inner Circle, you get access to weekly live Zoom classes that I do for members, as well as access to a lesson library with hundreds of tunes, exercises, videos, product demonstrations, online courses, and everything in the studio. Check it out at BagpipeLessons.com/membership for tons of exercises. Whether you’re using exercises from my Inner Circle, books, photocopies from your instructor, or just making them up, your goal is keeping your hands relaxed. Think about soft hands. Soft, soft, relaxed hands.
If you feel like your chanter is getting away from you, or you need to squeeze to cover the holes, or if the gracenotes aren’t coming out crisp, that’s all stuff you need to work on. It is totally possible to play clean, controlled, and fast with consistency and play difficult stuff with your hands relaxed. In fact, it’s required that you play with your hands relaxed. Any top player who can play fast tunes, dot-cut tunes at speed with consistency and control, their hands are relaxed. Otherwise, you’re fighting against yourself, putting in a lot of extra tension, which slows you down, messes up your timing, and causes crossing noises and missed doublings.
Playing the bagpipes is a finesse thing; it does not require brute strength. Anyone who tells you to lift your fingers off the chanter or squeeze hard for control and clarity is wrong. I love speaking to people about this because it’s really an important topic. Check out my video on the YouTube channel about crunluaths and crunluath-a-machs for a detailed breakdown of multiple ways to play them. It might be more information than you want, but it will help you keep that top hand relaxed and controlled.
When you talk to a beginning piper and ask them to evaluate their own playing, they usually do a good job of identifying mistakes and successes. That’s fine, but it’s a very beginner level of evaluation. You want to start thinking about the next level. Don’t just think about whether you got the note in or missed it. Consider how you got it in. How was the speed of the doubling or the edre? What was the size of the gracenotes? What was the separation? To get to that level of detail, you must play with good form and keep your hands relaxed.
When practicing, focus on keeping your hands relaxed. If you’re not used to doing it, it will be hard at first, and you may think your technique is getting worse. That’s good; it means you’re making a meaningful change. It’s expected that when you change something fundamental like your hand position on the chanter, your execution consistency might get worse before it gets better. Stick with it. It won’t take long before your consistency, speed, and quality improve. Stick with it; it’s really worth it.
Okay, I think we’ll do one more question, and then we will wrap it up for today. Let you get on with your day, or if you feel like doing more piping, check out other videos on the BagpipeLessons.com YouTube channel.
Last question: My challenge is tuning the drones to the chanter. I have some hearing loss not related to piping, and when I believe my drones are tuned, they are not. Is there a method that works better than using a tuner?
Great question. There isn’t a better method than using a tuner because it’s an amazing tool. Let me grab my tuner here. The tuner does a couple of things. I’m talking about the Braw Bagpipe Tuner app. There are other tuner apps, but the Braw Bagpipe Tuner app is my favorite and the best. It works in conjunction with my microphone, the InTune Mic, along with the Tone Protector, my most popular and successful product.
The InTune Mic allows you to clip it right on your drone or chanter and isolate the sound of that component of your pipes to get it tuned. It connects wirelessly with your phone. This is why it’s such a big deal for pipers. There are great tuner apps, but the problem is practical: if you have your tuner sitting in front of you, it won’t work because you have four sounds coming from your pipes—the chanter and three drones. The only way the tuner knows what it’s listening to is if it can isolate one sound. You’d need the microphone built into the phone right next to the chanter or at the top of your drone, which is hard to do while playing.
The InTune Mic works by allowing you to place your phone wherever you want. You can mount it to your blowpipe with my Piper’s Advantage Bagpipe Phone Mount. Then, clip your InTune Mic wherever you need to tune. This setup only hears the specific drone or chanter, which works really well. People are super happy with it because you don’t need to have an ear for it or guesswork. It works even in noisy environments by isolating the sound.
Pipers have tuned their pipes by ear for generations, which does work but is a difficult skill that can take a lifetime to master. Even for experts, it can be impossible in noisy scenarios. With the InTune Mic and the Braw Tuner, you can tune your pipes at band practice or in noisy environments. This wasn’t possible before. The InTune Mic isolates the sound, much like if your ear was right up to the top of your drone.
If you want to tune your pipes by ear, that’s a great goal. The Braw Bagpipe Tuner and the InTune Mic make it faster, but you can still learn to tune by ear. The best way to learn is to use a tuner. The InTune Mic and Braw Tuner will get your pipes in tune quickly with precision, teaching you what in-tune pipes sound like. This helps train your ear over time.
The metronome does something similar. The Piper’s Metronome helps you play steadily at a specific tempo, with precision, so your embellishments come right on the beat. Practicing with the metronome develops your internal sense of timing. The bagpipe gauge also helps by showing your pressure, allowing you to improve steadiness instantly. The goal is not to always use these tools but to develop skills over time so you can perform well without them.
Before the iPhone and the Braw Tuner, I experimented with other tuner apps that helped develop my ear. People exposed to well-tuned musical playing from the start have a better musical ear. Being around well-tuned bagpipes, listening to recordings, and developing your tuning sensibility helps. Using a tuning device like the InTune Mic with your Braw Tuner helps you experience in-tune bagpipes, which improves your ability to tune by ear over time.
A challenge you can do: tune your pipes by ear, record it, then use the InTune Mic and Braw Tuner to check. You might discover that while your tenors are spot on, the bass needs adjustment. Over time, you’ll learn how to fine-tune your pipes by ear.
These tools are not a crutch but learning devices that accelerate your progress. Whether it’s the metronome, the bagpipe gauge, or the InTune Mic and Braw Tuner, each helps you immediately and trains you to improve over time. Experimenting with these tools will help develop your musical ear, and being around well-tuned bagpipes will enhance your tuning sensibility.
Do you have any tips for getting your name out there as a solo piper for gigs and live events? You just have to do a really good job. Marketing yourself well is important. Ensure any performance you do is great, whether it’s videoed, put on TV, or on YouTube. You should look sharp, your pipes should sound good, and you should play well. You don’t need to be a world champion, but for whatever level you’re at, be solid. Some pipers don’t prepare well, which can make pipers look bad. Always be ready and prepared with your tunes, tuning, and technique, and look sharp.
Lastly, someone asked about tips on learning the birl. The birl is a specific technique with multiple ways to play it. Most top players play the seven-birl because it’s the most reliable from every note on the scale. Other birls might be easier to learn initially, but they don’t sound as good and are less consistent. Check out my Bagpipe Essentials Masterclass at BagpipeLessons.com/masterclass. It has 31 detailed videos on every piece of bagpipe technique, including scales, gracenotes, GDEs, crossing noises, doublings, D throws, birls, taorluaths, and grips.
This Masterclass is free for members of my Inner Circle. If you’re interested in group classes, check out the Inner Circle at BagpipeLessons.com/membership. If you’re on YouTube, click subscribe and the bell icon to get notified when I go live or post new videos. This helps YouTube promote my videos to other pipers.
My BagpipeLessons.com Precision Tuning Tool Kit came out recently, and it’s selling well. Check out the Tool Kit for all your pipe chanter reed and tuning issues. Whether your reed is too hard, too easy, or the right strength but not vibrating fully, the Tool Kit will help.
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. I think we’ll wrap it up there. Have a great day, and happy piping. Mahalo. Thank you.
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