Pipers, a totally bizarre question

[haukehaien]

The biggest difficulty with the pipes isn't the coordination of blowing, squeezing, fingering, and marching - it's the grace notes. My first tendancy was to strangle the chanter, which is never good when your fingers MUST be light to the touch. After many years, I'm still having to practice with regularity my crunluaths, D throws, grips, tuarluaths, etc..

I STILL have to tell myself to hold the chanter lightly - I usually don't notice that I'm not until my fingers start to ache from trying to move quickly whilst keeping a death-grip on the chanter.

And yes, the practice of the embellishments is a field without end.