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Home/Library/Learning Tunes/St. Patrick's Day Ready: Your Complete Guide to Parades, Gigs, and Outdoor Playing
🎬 Class ReplayAll LevelsFree Preview📅 Posted March 11, 2026· 50m

St. Patrick's Day Ready: Your Complete Guide to Parades, Gigs, and Outdoor Playing

The Short Version

Moisture control is the whole game when you play outside in the cold. Cold air can't hold the water in your breath, so it drops out inside your pipes. A water trap tube at minimum, plus a desiccant system on the drones, is what keeps your tuning stable and your wood from cracking.
Tune cold, at home, and don't warm the pipes up first. If you play in for fifteen minutes at home and then drive to the gig, your drones will be sitting at a pitch your chanter has left behind. Get quick at tuning drones to a cold low A and leave it there.
Cork the middle tenor and remove a third of what can go wrong. Nobody will miss it, you keep the bass and one tenor, and if things blow out mid-gig you have one drone to nudge instead of three. Practice with it corked first, because the pipes take less air.
Video🔒 Members Only
St. Patrick's Day Ready: Your Complete Guide to Parades, Gigs, and Outdoor Playing
50m · Full class available to Inner Circle members

⏱️ In this class

04:17place up unfamiliar an in Setting🔒
05:02you pipes Keep can as as the assembled🔒
09:14water air puts cold pipes in your Why🔒
10:52tube and The trap bottle water🔒
14:14work and Canisters, Dry how they Flows🔒
16:09Why weather crack cold in bagpipes🔒
20:11Regenerating your gel silica🔒
22:40and chanter the warming Warming yourself🔒
26:53Why a easy is the risk an reed cold in🔒
29:29tune no to time when there's Tuning🔒
32:37tenor Corking middle the drone🔒
37:55the everything moment out you finish Drying🔒
40:24which oil to and use Oiling your pipes🔒
44:56worth having Why set is a plastic🔒

About this class

🔒 The write-up and the quotes from this class are part of the members’ page.

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📜 Full class transcript

🔒 Members Only
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