I was recently teaching a lesson and my student (who is a member of this Studio) was struggling to play through his new tune on the practice. He became exasperated and finally exclaimed "I was just...
There are many things that go into the thorough and complete preparation of a tune for competition or performance: learning the technique, memorizing, getting the tune up to speed, proper expression,...
Let's revisit an important topic: deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is different than just playing your pipes. In his Fortune magazine cover story, Geoff Colvin defines deliberate practice as:...
Today, we revisit a very important topic for pipers. We've talked a lot about the need for clean fingering, controlled tempos, separation of grace notes in doublings, and all those important details....
I like to try and develop methods and techniques that will help my students make faster progress towards their piping goals. Recently, I've asked my students to complete a brief pre-lesson...
In the earliest stages of your piping journey, you first learned the nine notes of the bagpipe scale. Then you probably were introduced to simple grace notes: first played on the same note, and then...
Today's post features a new exercise for developing strength, control, clarity, and consistency of thumb grace notes. Also called High A grace notes, the thumb grace note is the fourth most common...
Have you ever been listening to a recording of a pipe tune and wished you could listen to it a slower speed? Have you ever wanted to record your own practice and listen back to it at a slower...
I recently came across this great blog post, with some helpful reminders for staying focused and motivated to work towards achieving excellence. Author Erik Barker's blog has the tagline "I want to...
Here you’ll find hundreds of lessons, videos, audio files and more. This content is designed to help you learn and improve in every area of your piping. Not seeing a topic you’d like to learn more about?
Email me hereand we’ll cover it in an upcoming lesson!
