Summary: A doubling gives a one, two pulse in between notes on a bagpipe. Learn how to separate melody notes with doubling in bagpipes with free video lessons from a bagpipe teacher.
Neil Hubbard has taught the Scottish Highland bagpipes to individuals and groups since the early 1990's. In addition to coaching the Seattle Firefighters Pipes and Drums, and providing...read more
"There are a number of different ways to separate the melody notes in bagpipe music. The easiest and most simple is a single grace note and then the other most other common way is to have a grace note which are known as doublings. That gives you sort of a one, two pulse in between a note. You can play a doubling on any note on the chanter. You can come to it from any note on the chanter. So, for example, if you were playing a C doubling, you can come to it from E or F or A or any other note. And what these do is they add not only space between the notes, but sort of sometimes a bubbly effect and it's a way of breaking the music up a little bit. Since the bagpipe has continuous sound and you don't sort of pick your hand up off a keyboard and move it to another spot on the keyboard, this is a way of creating some space in the music."