Beginning Piping Book for an experienced musician

[crew2447]

Some instructors teach via Skype or using other on-line tools. Learning piping from a book is rarely sufficient for bagpipes. Most pipers will recommend that you find an instructor. Your music background and experience will certainly help you, but the bagpipes are a very peculiar instrument. In particular you might seek out Jori Chisholm http://www.bagpipelessons.com/ . (Jori is pronounced Yori). Also Murray Henderson http://www.hendersonreedmakers.com/tuition. Both gentlemen are award winning pipers and excellent teachers.
Good luck.
Clyde

[EagleJCS]

Most pipers will recommend that you find an instructor. Your music background and experience will certainly help you, but the bagpipes are a very peculiar instrument.

I'm a piper and I recommend a piping instructor.

My Pipe Major is a newly retired professor of music (primary instrument was violin) and she has a piping instructor (and attends piping summer camps for further instruction).

Our Pipe Major emeritus jokingly said that our current PM 'spoke pipe band with an accent', meaning that - as Richard pointed out - some terminology transfers from one idiom to the other and some doesn't.

[catdaddyxx]

I'm looking into the skype instructors.
Trust me, if there was only one within 100 miles I'd be there in a heartbeat.
But, 200 miles just isn't feasible with an active son, my charity involvements, teaching guitar and choir in school, and my own students in piano, trumpet, and voice.

I'm not aspiring to impress other pipers or enter any competitions. I've wanted to learn the pipes for years. It's just that now, I have the financial ability and family support to finally give it a go.

Thanks for all of the suggestions!

[OC Richard]

I'm not aspiring to impress other pipers or enter any competitions.

Just keep in mind that what impresses other pipers and what wins competitions is... good musicianship. Nothing more. Nothing less!

One thing I've heard over and over through the years is people who are bad players, lazy players, players who don't practice, players who can't trouble themselves with the dedication that regular lessons require etc talk dismissively about competition, as if they're waging some sort of battle against 'the machine' or upholding their freedom of expression or maintaining an imagined tradition.

Actually they're just poor players trotting out the same old excuses.

You're a music teacher yourself! So you would understand the value of good instruction. In piping, one of the great benefits (often not taken into account) of good instruction is the vast amount of time it saves the learner. A good teacher knows the very shortest most economical way to get the student playing properly. The unknowing newbie can waste all their practice time on things that don't advance their playing, and in fact can do worse: spend their practice time ingraining bad habits that will take twice as long to undo later.

Be aware of the danger of the formally trained musician who imagines that his skill and knowledge of 'legit' music will enable him to bypass the process of learning the pipes. It won't. I know of several good 'legit' musicians who are horrible pipers. One guy is the 'first call' guy in Hollywood on his given instrument (a standard orchestral instrument). You've heard his playing on a thousand movie scores. His reputation in the music industry is stellar. He has a set of bagpipes and he's horrible. None of his musicianship carries over. He plays out of tune, out of time, and with sloppy technique. He wouldn't tolerate such playing for a moment on his orchestral instrument! But to him the bagpipes are somehow a thing apart, not worthy of study and practice, like his orchestral instrument is. But to hear him talk you would think that he's a great piper. He hasn't a clue.

So back to your original question: about "a beginning piping for an experienced musician". It would be exactly the same book as for somebody who has never played anything, because piping is piping, the process of learning is what it is. Everyone has to learn the same things. There are no shortcuts.

I know from decades of personal experience. I've taught people from the age of 8 to the age of 80, from people who have no prior musical experience to professional musicians and everything in between. Experienced musicians can read music, have good ears, and usually have finger dexterity. This all helps. In fact, every 'adult learner' I know who has got good on the pipes has had three things in common:

1) prior musical experience
2) good instruction
3) the ability to spend vast amounts of time practicing

I only can think of, over the last three or four decades, three people who started the pipes as mature adults and got good. All were musicians, two with university degrees in music. All were fanatically dedicated, and spend two to six hours a day practicing.