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Great Highland Bagpipes
Piping Through the YearsPeople often ask when I started playing bagpipes. Pictures (below) tell the story. At an indeterminant but early age, I constructed my first set of pipes (Tinker Toys and a blankie). It was a start, or a least a clear signal to my parents. To learn to play the pipes, you must begin on the practice chanter to learn the proper fingering. There is no bag and no pipes. Just a chanter, a book, and a teacher. (To learn to play the highland bagpipes, you really need to find good instruction. It is difficult to teach oneself the pipes correctly and well without a knowledgable teacher.) I started on the chanter somewhere in my sixth year. After a year-and-a-half to two years on the chanter, I got my pipes. They sure were big and heavy in those days. Pictured two years later, my first competition, at the Delaware Highland Games at Fair Hill, Maryland. In the picture on the right, the little fellow is my great-nephew. The first time he heard the pipes, he was mesmerized. He has a toy set of his own. The photo at the bottom is from 1965 and the blonde-haired piper on the left is my old friend Burt Mitchell, reknown in the U.S. as an outstanding piper and teacher. (Burt directs the piping program at Virginia Military Institute, provides a special flavor to Ceili Rain, and is also pipe major of the band Warpipe.) |
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