LIVE Q&A with Jori Chisholm: World Championships, Tone Protector Success, and Top Piping Tips
by Jori Chisholm, Founder of BagpipeLessons.com
Last Updated: September 19, 2024
Join me for a special live session, answering your bagpipe-related questions! Whether you’re curious about solo piping, pipe bands, or general tips on improving your technique, this live Q&A covers it all. Learn about the latest updates from the piping world, including competitions in Scotland, and discover insights into piping ergonomics and blowpipe positioning. Stay tuned for expert advice on building muscle memory, rhythm training, and much more. Tune in now to enhance your piping journey!
Watch the video and scroll down to read a summary or the full video script.
Summary
World Pipe Band Championships: Inveraray and District won Grade 1 at the “Super Bowl” of pipe bands, featuring top bands from around the world.
Top Solo Competitions: The Argyllshire Gathering at Oban and the Northern Meeting at Inverness are the most prestigious solo piping events, restricted to the best pipers globally.
Tone Protector Success: The Tone Protector is used by many top bands and solo pipers, including winners like Craig Sutherland and Nick Hudson.
Upcoming Events: The Glenfiddich Invitational, featuring winners from major competitions, is highlighted.
Ergonomics Video: A new video on piping ergonomics, focusing on blowpipe comfort and issues related to teeth and jaw, is in the works.
Piping Tips: Emphasizes learning correct technique for muscle memory and the importance of foot tapping to maintain rhythm.
Viewer Interaction: I answer audience questions about my favorite tunes.
Closing: Encourages viewers to subscribe and stay tuned for more content.
Video Transcript: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Sorry about the little glitch there. It was having a camera problem. But we are going. Well, thanks, everybody, who’s tuning in live and watching on the replay. It’s been a while since we did one of these lives. But it’s good to be back.
It’s September 6th. And that means in our household, it’s back to school time. My kids are back in school. And even before I had kids, this was always the time. It was sort of like the start of a new year, a new piping year for me, because it was right after coming back from Scotland. And for many years, our Highland Games season was here through the summer. And then going to Scotland to do all the top competitions over there in August, and then come back in September after Labor Day, back to school, and the start of a fresh year for piping. So that’s kind of the mindset that I’m in.
I didn’t go over to Scotland this year, but I was still very excited to watch some of the videos of the top competitions over there and check in and see what was happening at the Worlds with the pipe bands and at the top solo competitions. If you’re watching live, or you’re on the replay, say hello. Go in the chat and introduce yourself and say where you’re from, and if you have any questions.
This is what we’re going to talk about today. I will take your questions. I have some questions prepared that I’ll go through. But if you have some questions that you want to ask, we can do that too. So what’s been happening in the piping world over the last month in August is that all the top solo events are happening in Scotland and also the biggest day of the year for the pipe band calendar, which is the World Pipe Band Championships, happened.
So congratulations to Inverary & District, winning the Worlds in Grade 1, which is the top category. And the Worlds is a huge event with hundreds of pipe bands from around the world. It’s sort of the Super Bowl for bagpipe bands. So a huge fun event, a lot of pressure, a lot of expense that bands go to to get prepared. Bands from around the world come and want to perform.
If you’re not familiar with the Worlds, there are different categories. There are two categories for under 18. They’re called the juvenile bands. So there’s a novice juvenile and juvenile, which is sort of the top youth band category. And then in the open categories, which have adults. It goes from grade four, three, two, and one. And grade one is the top. And there’s usually around 25 bands in grade one. And those are the very best bands. Now, these are the equivalent of the professional teams in sports. Although in pipe bands, they’re not professional in the sense that people are getting paid. They’re still amateurs, but very, very high level players. So it’s really cool to watch the performances. You can watch them online. I’ll put a link in the description below. But it’s a cool thing that they do in Scotland, which is that the BBC films the Worlds. And you can watch them for free. I think in Scotland or within the UK, you can actually watch them live streaming on the day. But for the rest of the world, we get to watch the replay. So really cool.
The grade one bands play four times over two days. And I think the BBC has the performances from the second day on the Saturday. The performances from Friday, I think some of them are up on YouTube. So I’ll put the links in the description below when we’re done here. And you can watch those videos. Really, really cool playing. I would say, an extremely high standard in those grade one bands. And it was great to see my old band, the SFU, the Simon Fraser University pipe band. Great to see them back up in the top three. And they were the first band in the world to use my Tone Protectors, going back seven years now. Amazing. The Tone Protector came out in 2017. So they’ve been using them as part of their winning strategy. They have some new chanters they’re playing this year. I was just in touch with pipe major Alan Bevin. He loved their new chanters. And Tone Protectors are working great for the band. So it’s really cool to see them in the top three.
Moving on to the solo front: on the solo side, the two big most prestigious and historic solo piping competitions in the world are the Argyllshire Gathering at Oban and the Northern Meeting at Inverness. And they take place in the second part of August, sometimes really September, a week or two apart. And these go back a couple hundred years, very historic. And it is really a thrill and a goal for many of the world’s top solo pipers from around the world, to play at these events. They are not open to everybody. You have to apply to get in. And it’s restricted to about 75 pipers, I think less than a hundred players at each one of those. And it’s really the very, very best of the best. So you think about tennis or golf, what are the elite events? There’s a lot of great events with a lot of great players, but where all the great players go. It’s Oban and Inverness, so really cool. I played there for many years and I played in the Gold Medal for many years. I played in the former winners March, Strathspey, Reel, and it’s just a really cool event and none of it’s live streamed. They used to record some of Inverness and put it on the Pipeline Radio Program, but that’s gone now I think. So you’ve got to go there in person to watch it.
I’m always very interested to see how people are doing at those events because I’ve played there for many years. Yeah, I still have a lot of friends who play, you know, at Oban and Inverness and it’s just interesting to see what’s going on over there. I’m also very interested to see how my Tone Protectors are doing. A lot of the world’s top players are using my Tone Protector invention and I’ve got to say, it is a huge thrill for me to see players playing at the highest level, having success at the very pinnacle of piping, using my Tone Protector.
If you follow BagpipeLessons.com on Facebook, I’ve been trying to post anytime that someone’s winning a competition playing the Tone Protector, one of my products. I’ve tried to point it out there, but some of the highlights would be Crick Sutherland winning first place in the Gold Medal uses a Tone Protector. Nick Hudson who lives in Houston, Texas, winning the clasp at Inverness uses a Tone Protector.
Pipes|drums.com has a really cool feature where they will ask top players to do an inventory of everything that they have in their pipe case. Sort of a peek behind the curtain. What equipment are you using? Bagpipes, drone reeds, other accessories, tuners. And it’s called Starbox. It’s a star, meaning they’re a piping star. And then what’s in their pipe box? And they just did a feature on Nick. And he’s got eight Tone Protectors in his case, which is amazing. Seven chanters with Tone Protectors and the Tone Protector Reed Case. So that is just completely amazing and awesome. I thought I was super prepared when I was traveling overseas with five or six chanters. He’s got seven. But it’s obviously working for him. He’s winning the top prizes that you can win in the world, that any piper could ever dream to win: the Clasp and Inverness. So really, really amazing. Let’s see what are some of the other highlights here? I can’t even keep track of them all. There’s been so many, but let’s see what I can find.
So at the Argosia Gathering in Oban, 33 of the placings in the top events were won by pipers using the Tone Protector. So Golden Silver Medals, Silver Star, Gold Clasp, these are the top competitions. And many of them are being won by players using the Tone Protector. So that’s just amazing to me. This is what happened at the Northern Meeting. Gold Clasp: Nick Hudson, Gold Medal: Greg Sutherland, Silver Medal: Brody Watson Massey, AMSR: Nick Hudson, BMSR, John Dew. Just tons of prizes and I’m just thrilled by that. And congratulations, these players, they deserve all the credit. There’s so much that goes into it. I played at these events for many, many years and it really is all consuming. It’s not a job, but it takes as much time and dedication as a second job for these players. So the memorization, the fingerwork, the expression, the timing, memorization, did I say that? And then the tone and tuning is just a huge part of it. So congratulations to these players.
And then next month will be the Glenfiddich Piping Championship, the Glenfiddich Invitational. And that is the year-end invitational contest where they invite the first place winners from all of the top competitions from the preceding calendar year, including the winners of the Gold Medals, the class of former winners of March, Strathspeys, and Reels, the Masters London, the winner of the Glenfiddich from the year before, and 10 players. That’s at Blair Castle in Scotland. Fantastic event. I don’t think they live-stream that. Actually maybe they do. I can’t remember. But really cool.
Another thing I’m working on for the YouTube channel is a new video about ergonomics. Ergonomics is basically how your body interacts with physical objects. What I’m looking at is the ergonomics of piping. Playing your bagpipes, and in particular the blowpipe, because the blowpipe length and the position has a lot to do with your overall comfort and efficiency and your ability to play without pain.
So here’s a really cool thing about the piping world: is that we’re spread out throughout the world, but we’re connected through things like BagpipeLessons.com and through various social media platforms. And I put a message on Facebook today to say that I was interested in learning a little bit more about some of the issues that pipers can have with their teeth and jaws related to piping. And within minutes, I got all these messages from people in the comments. Dr. Gord Pollock reached out to me. Gord is a very experienced piper and plays all kinds of cool pipes and Highland pipes and Uilleann pipes and small pipes and all that stuff. And he’s also a dentist. And he just sent me a message: “Hey, I saw your thing on Facebook, and yeah, let’s have a chat.” So we hopped on a quick Zoom chat and I learned a lot from Dr. Pollock about some of the issues that pipers can face. Some of that I knew about: chipped teeth, sore jaw, pain in the head and neck and headaches. And I’ve experienced some of that. I’ve heard from pipers who have. And we talked about that. And he just kind of filled in the details on some of the really important things that you want to look out for in terms of your ergonomics, particularly as it relates to the blowpipe and mouthpiece, related to your jaw and your teeth.
I spoke to a piper several years ago who said he chipped his teeth, and he chips them every year from piping, and would have to keep getting new caps put on his teeth, and work done, all very painful. I’ve also talked to pipers who get this TMJ disorder (temporomandibular joint) where it hurts to open and close their jaw. So Dr. Pollock was very generous with this time. We had this great conversation. I took lots of notes and one of the things I learned is that your jaw is the only bone in your body that moves with two joints. You think about all your other joints that move, you know, your elbow is just a single joint. And your fingers are all single joints. But here we have two. It’s a bilateral joint I guess, or bilateral bone, I guess it’s two joints. That leads to a lot of problems if your jaw gets pushed to the side, or you have unequal pressure. So I learned a lot. I’m working on a new video for the channel about ergonomics, blowpipes, and integrating some of that cool stuff I learned from Gord about the teeth and the jaw and some of the issues that you can face, and also the things that you can do to try to help alleviate those. So look forward to that.
Well, I’ve got a couple questions here and I thought maybe I’d go through a few of these. And if you’ve got more questions, pop them in the live chat. Or if you’re watching this on the replay and you have a question about something that I said, or another question, pop that into the comments too and we’ll get to it.
OK, a question about developing muscle memory. What is muscle memory? It’s often referenced as key for learning embellishments and learning consistent technique. But what is muscle memory and how do we build it? Are there specific drills or repetitive practice we should do? How long does it take to develop reliable muscle memory? OK, great question. You heard that term muscle memory before? I resisted using that term for years because it bothered me. Because the memory is not in your muscles. The memory is in your brain. The learning is up here in the brain, in the various motor learning areas within the brain. I was a psychology major in school and I was really into brain and behavior and neuroscience and all that stuff. And the word muscle memory always bugged me. But OK, I got over that. We use it essentially to refer to this motor memory. And here’s the important thing that I think is important to understand, which is muscle memory is when you can do something, a movement that is short, and it’s always the same. So for example, a D throw. You want your D throw to be exactly the same. You want to be able to get to a tune and you think, “Oh, there’s a D throw there. And that D throw, that sequence of finger movements, that pattern happens sort of in one unit.” And that’s how I think about muscle memory, which is you have small units, little skills, or patterns that happen in your playing, in your finger technique, and they’re always the same, and you want them to be the same, and that’s what muscle memory is good for. Some people will say, “Well, the way I memorize a tune is I just play it over and over and over until my fingers know what they’re going to do.” I do not recommend that. That is not muscle memory. That is something else. I don’t trust that. I don’t trust that idea that, “If I just play the tune without thinking about it, or if I play the tune while watching TV or Netflix or something, that somehow my fingers are going to know what to do and my brain is doing something else.” The problem is, that kind of autopilot playing is very often disrupted when you’re performing. Because when you’re performing, you’re not going to be as relaxed as when you’re sitting on your couch playing your chanter, watching Netflix, trying to play it in an automatic way. You’re going to be thinking, “What’s coming?”
So my recommendation is to not “space out,” but really try to concentrate and think about what you’re doing. If your fingers know what to do, or if you can play automatically to some degree, that’s great. But you should also know, I think, in a different level of memory. If I asked you, “What’s the pickup note to the third part,” you should know it. You go, “Oh, that’s high A.” Or, “What are the pickup notes to the tune?” And you go, “Well, it’s E on every part, except for the third part’s high A.” So you should know that. And you could probably get through your tunes without that level of memory. But in my experience, you want to have lots of different levels of memory to confidently and reliably be able to execute your tunes without making mistakes. Or going off the tune is what we call it. Skipping a part, going into the wrong part, wrong note. I would not use muscle memory for that. I would say muscle memory is, “How do we play a seven birl?” That’s one thing, playing it from low A, playing it from B. You want it to be identical. It happens very fast. You cannot think about it. All you can do is go, “Oh, here’s a birl, initiate birl, and then the birl comes out.” That’s what muscle memory is for. How do you develop that? Well, it’s the same thing as how you would develop clean technique, which is you want to learn it properly. If you’re new to the movement, you want to learn it properly before you try to play it fast and do a lot of repetitions. You want to get it slow and clean and proper, and then gradually start to speed it up and do more and more reps.
It’s a mistake, I would say, if you’re thinking, “Oh, my birl isn’t very good.” Or, “That taorluath or that grip to E isn’t very good. I’m just going to play 1,000 of them, and then it’s going to get better.” I wouldn’t do that. Because as you play things over and over, they don’t tend to get better. They tend to get more permanent. So what I’d recommend is you get it correct, get it how you want it to be, and then start to speed it up. And improve how light and relaxed your hands are, and do lots of reps that way. That’s what I’ll do.
Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Repetition builds habit. And if you’re repeating something that isn’t quite right, be careful, because then it’s going to become more permanent.
Turbo Shandy asks, “Jori, what’s your favorite slow air?” There are so many great ones. But my go-to when I’m teaching is usually ‘Scots Wha Hae,’ and then the second one is ‘Going Home.’ I love ‘Going Home.’ It’s simple, it’s beautiful, it’s basic, but I never get tired of it. A tune that I almost always play when I’m competing on the boards is a warm-up, not in piobaireachd. Because the convention is when you’re warming up for a piobaireachd event, you do not play non-piobaireachd, so you wouldn’t play slower to warm up for a piobaireachd. But if I’m warming up for a light music event, I’ll play the ‘South Georgia Whaling Song.’ That’s South Georgia, as in down there by Antarctica. Beautiful tune, the ‘South Georgia Whaling Song.’ I learned it from Alasdair Gillies. Beautiful 6-8. I also love ‘Angus G. McCloud,’ which is a Donald McCloud composition, and there’s something about the flavor of that tune. To me it sounds very ancient and very moody and dark and mysterious. I actually play that on my Bagpipe Revolution album, so you can look that up. I think that’s on YouTube, ‘Angus G. McCloud, Bagpipe Revolution,’ and I just love that tune. There’s a great Dobro player on there, so Dobro and also pedal steel guitar. This is a very moody track. I was really happy with how that one came out, so that’s ‘Angus G. McCloud.’ So many other ones. If you have one that you love, stick it in the chat. What do other people like? The tunes that I teach quite a bit would be ‘The Flowers of the Forest.’ That’s the classic what we call the lament—played in Canada and in the UK for Remembrance Day. I love the ‘Dark Island.’ Probably some other ones I’m not thinking of.
Okay, one more one more question and then we will wrap it up. This is great, thanks everybody. Question is, “On correct foot tapping for rhythm, training says there is advice on tapping the foot to develop rhythm and beat awareness during playing. However, there’s no specific guidance on the best way to do this. Should I tap my foot on the beat or on subdivisions? Do I need to tap my foot for the entire tune or just during the learning phase?”
Great question, my goodness. So bagpipe music is very rhythmic, not including piobaireachd, although some piobaireachd is very rhythmic, parts of it can be, but all of our other tunes are very rhythmic and the tunes have a steady rhythm throughout the tune. We don’t have tunes that change tempos very much, or at all. So what I recommend is that you use your foot to help you develop that steady beat. So whether it’s a 2-4, you want to be tapping your foot or Marching, Strathspey, Reel, Jig, Hornpipe, Polka, Waltz, and even Slow Airs. You can march or tap your foot. I recommend it. I know there are other forms of music where you don’t do that, but I think bagpipe music, because it is so rhythmic and we want to have a nice steady tempo: use your foot. It works.
If you’re having trouble tapping your foot, what I recommend is that you play something really, really simple. So what’s the simplest thing you could play and tap your foot? Well, how about low A and B? A, B, A, B. So your goal would be to just go back and forth between those two notes and tap your foot, and you want to get your foot so it’s hitting the ground right as you change notes. So if you’re playing to the beat, your foot hits the ground. That’s the start of your beat. And if you’re changing notes on the beat, you’re changing notes exactly at the same time. You can add in that additional thing of using a metronome. Of course, my favorite metronome is the Piper’s Metronome. Get that at PipersMetronome.com. It’s for mobile devices, for iPhones, and also for Android. You can get it for your iPad, the iPhone apps on your Mac, which is pretty cool. So I’m on a new Mac, and I can use my Piper’s Metronome right now on my big screen.
You can use the metronome to keep a steadier beat, but if you’re just working on tapping your foot, I wouldn’t use the metronome at first. You want to practice playing your notes with your foot and get used to doing that. That’s an important skill. If you’re playing tunes and tapping your foot, I think you want to tap your foot all the way through. If you’re having an issue in a part of your tune, often you’ll know there’s something wrong there. But sometimes you won’t pick up on it, but you will pick up on it if there’s something funny going on with your foot. So your ability to tap your foot or your inability to tap your foot is a sign that there might be something in that section that needs a little bit of work. So I’ll notice that with the students. They’re tapping their foot just fine. And they get to a tricky part of the tune and all of a sudden their foot goes haywire, stops tapping all together. That’s a sign. And it should be a sign for you as a student that, “Oh, there’s something I’ve got to work on here.”
Okay, I’m going to play a little bit of the ‘South Georgia Whaling Song’ before we go. I think it’s 6-8 and has the unusual feature where it mixes the normal, the more typical dot-cut triplets with really even triplets. So you have dum-da-da-dee-da, dum-da-da-da-da, dee-da-da-da-da, mixing those two triplets. Really unusual in a slow air. It’s usually all dot-cut triplets, but those even ones give it just a really cool sound.
Glad you enjoyed the tune. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. We’re going to wrap it up there. It’s Friday. It’s 5 o ‘clock here in Seattle. Have a great evening. Have a great morning. Have a great weekend, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for tuning in. I’m going to keep doing these. I’m going to keep doing these YouTube lives. Thanks for supporting the channel. Make sure to subscribe and hit that bell icon. And when I do the next one of these lives, you’ll get a message right away.
Thanks, everybody. See you next time. Mahalo.
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