Advice from G S McLennan: “There are those who can …

George Stewart McLennan was not just a great player and composer; he was an important contributor to the evolution of the music of the Great Highland Bagpipe. In his approach to technique (meaning embellishments and associated phrasing) he was on the vanguard of the music’s transition from the 19th to 20th centuries.
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Strafe Strafferson: What’s with the Crazy Piping Notes?

There’s a crazy phenomenon in the piping world [ok, yes, there’s more than one, but I’m only talking about one of them here]. This phenomenon has to do with what might be described as the crazed strafing of notes on a pipe chanter; the random rat-a-tat-tat of notes on the chanter. This sort of unhinged insanity sounds like this: “upanddownthescaleupanddownthescalerandomtoptobottomnotesrandomtoptobottomnotes”.
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The Golden Rule of Good Practice

“Practice what you can’t do”.

That’s it.

M.  

A New Jig: “Well Away” (Score & Sound File)

I knew I’d been away too long from these pages when it took me 20 minutes to track down the once-memorized dunaber login and password. Thanks to the notes on my trusty Blackberry: found. Continue reading A New Jig: “Well Away” (Score & Sound File)…

Technical Style

When it comes to technique there’s no one single, absolute and correct way to make things happen. By “things“, I mean the effective movement of fingers. “Technique”, simply stated, is the way we move our fingers to allow just the right amount of air to flow out of our melody-making chanter, the right amount of air to make gracenotes sound and appropriately place rhythmic flourishes (also known as embellishments). To me, that’s technique. Dead simple.
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The Secret to Never Missing Technique

So, when it comes to bagpipe music, it’s “all technique all the time”. With nine notes, no rests, no sharps, no flats, no dynamics, technique is pretty much all we have to create rhythm. We’re not so big on understated embellishments.

OK. So the secret to reliable technique: first, it’s a given that you practice hard.
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