Learning to play without an instructor

[jeremy j starche]

Thanks for the answers guys

I'm still looking for an instructor here in Iceland but I reckon that there arent alot of people that play the bagpipe here.
And as for the practice chanter, does this one look OK? http://www.hendersongroupltd.com/Car...idproduct=2725

And how awesome would it be to go to a week long bagpipe school in Scotland?

That is a great practice chanter. I play a long Dunbar myself. It has a nice tone and /sounds/ like a real instrument. My other practice chanter sounds like a kazoo, without the ability for volume control.

There is a /lot/ of difference between Scottisih (piping) music and traditional musical styles. Our hold-cuts are different, our embellishments are totally different. Set that on top of needing to have more fingers doing different things at different times[1] than any other instrument and you have a lot happening at once.

Then we can talk about the physical instrument itself. If there is a more delicately balanced instrument out there, I never want to meet it. Everything from 'How do I get this $&*% chanter reed to play' to 'Why the heck did my drone just go warbly' to 'What happened to my bag!??!'

It is possible to be self taught -- my instructor is -- but the same man also says that it took him eleven years to compete at Grade 1. With instruction, he thinks he could have made in in three.