How to Play the Great Highland Bagpipe

About 100 years ago, the traditional bagpipe became standardized in its modern form as the Great Highland Bagpipe. The three big pipes, called drones, are enclosed in a leather bag that's typically covered up with a colorful decorative bag. Playing the Great Highland Bagpipe is a complex procedure, but you can do it with practice.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Realize that learning to play the Great Highland Bagpipe requires a careful, systematic approach. It's a complicated instrument and there's a lot to do at the same time in order to create great sounding music and not ear-splitting squawks.
2. Purchase a quality instruction book with audio accompaniment (tudor) and a good quality practice canter. Master the canter before working on the bagpipe itself.
3. Practice breathing techniques and bag control with a Goose. A goose is a bagpipe without the three drones. Move onto practices on a full bagpipe.
4. Apply steady pressure to the reeds with your breathing techniques and bag control. This is what creates the music. Unsteady pressure just creates noise.

Tips & Warnings

• Invest in as much money as you can when buying a practice canter. An unreliable canter will make it more difficult to learn to play the Great Highland Bagpipe. And you'll be able to use the canter as a convenient way to practice new tunes, even after you've perfected playing the bagpipe.
• Make sure the Great Highland Bagpipe is properly tuned. As a beginner, this is much too complicated a task, so get a skilled piper to do it. An out of tune bagpipe will make learning to play it even more challenging.
• You may need to build up strength and endurance because when you play a Great Highland Bagpipe, you will use muscles in unaccustomed ways.