Practice Chanter and Book Advice

[OC Richard]

I'm in the 'first find an instructor' camp. Find your instructor and ask what book and practice chanter they recommend. Some don't really care which book their student chooses because the book simply provides exercises and the instructor skips around using their own sequence of instruction.

My piping instructor suggested the Sandy Jones tutorial Beginning the Bagpipe.

Which practice chanter they recommend may depend on their personal experience with different brands.

Yes I agree with everything there.

Different instructors favour different books and PCs as you say, so it involves less cost to find these things out from your instructor first.

I couldn't agree more about the Sandy Jones book.

I started with the College Of Piping "green book" because that was the only proper tutor available back then.

For people who are familiar with typical American tutors for, say, band instruments like sax or trumpet the CoP book is exceedingly odd.

Crazy Dave mentioned scales and the CoP book does have a few. However there's little in the way of intervals and there are no arpeggios whatsoever.

Thing is, Highland pipe tunes (and trad Irish tunes too) are often chock-full of arpeggios, and as a direct result of the standard tutors not teaching them I hear, all the time, fairly decent pipers who can't play a clean arpeggio to save their lives.

Here's a common tune, The Atholl Highlanders. There are loads of pipers who sound pretty good, but ask them to play this and you're going to get crossing noises and sloppy arpeggios overall. You can't play Highland pipe music well unless you master arpeggios!



What the CoP tutor struck me as was a book written by somebody who knew how to play the pipes, but didn't know how to teach music.

That's why the Sandy Jones book was such a breath of fresh air! It felt like an actual musical instrument tutor, with helpful logical exercises.

However as with many teachers I developed my own materials, in my case due to teaching at a summer camp for many years. I wanted exercises that hit all the skills needed in the most compact way possible. So people coming to me can use any book they want, but they have to master my exercises first, because once they can play through all my exercises cleanly they won't be caught off guard by any note sequence they encounter in a tune.

I think Job One, before tunes or ornaments, is to be able to negotiate your way around the chanter, and be able to play any interval, any arpeggio, cleanly and fluently. There's plenty of time for ornaments later, once you know how to play the chanter.