Teach Yourself Bagpipes by Lindsay Davidson
bringing quality 'piping instruction to you for freeBack to Welcome page
How to Practice
Order of Study
Rhythm and Reading Music
Exercises
Tunes
Bagpipes:
Transition to Bagpipes
Tuning a Bagpipe
Getting Better:
Using Midi files
Intermediate exercises
Advanced
Band repertoire
Links:
Where to buy equipment
Links to teachers
Links to Organisations
Links to pipe bands
Links (other)
These exercises are indexed according to the specific area they are seeking to challenge.
It is appropriate to repeat here that the most important part of learning to pipe is about understanding - it is a matter of thinking more than moving one's fingers faster.
When having difficulty, please go back to the 'how to practice' page and find out at which of the five stages of the learning process you are tripping up. Nine times out of ten this will identify the problem and at the same time make obvious the solution. Often, it is enough to simply go through the five steps again and the problem disappears.
However, there are times when certain physical aspects need to be strengthened.
Speed of finger movement is less important than understanding the role of proportion in music. Having good technique is not about being able to play more doublings in a tune than anyone else, and faster, but it is about being able to decide exactly what the fingers do and when to make the clearest and most understandable musical statement. Often the relative lengths of gracenotes in embellishments go out of balance when someone speeds up, and this is when things start to go wrong.
Stamina is also important, both mental and physical. The five stages of learning will challenge mental stamina, the 'two minute trick' will address physical stamina in blowing, and here, you will find a number of exercises to address finger stamina.
Please click to go to the following pages for exercises concerning:
Stamina
Dexterity/Gracenotes
Doublings
Grips 1
Grips 2
Taorluaths 1
Taorluaths 2
Birls
Hand Position and the Scale
Crossing sounds
G Gracenotes
D Gracenotes
E Gracenotes
G,D,E Gracenotes exercise
Strikes
Throws
Doublings - general principles
Low G Doublings
Low A Doublings
B Doublings
C Doublings
D Doublings
E Doublings
F Doublings
High G Doublings
High A Doublings
Grips
Taorluath
Birl
Tachum
Hara
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