self-taught pipes?

[JerseyLawyer]

"This S of a B is hard as hell! Staff notation for bagpipes is nothing but a %&#@ing suggestion! I thought this was a folk instrument!"

I'm way late on this thread, but this was just too good to pass up.

This guy is lucky he never got so far as the big music. The Kilberry Book and the PS Books (all 15 of 'em) are really just a general idea of what a tune might sound like.

Which is why the books at home are covered in red felt pen marks. Cut this, hold this, cut this a lot...

Not that the same doesn't go for light music. Sometimes, you hold the heck out of that dotted note and sometimes that dot is just a misplaced fleck of fly doodies. I, for example, probably don't have a musical bone in my body, because if I try playing a tune from the sheet music without having heard it before, my father will start making organ grinder motions to criticise my general lack of expression. :P

To bring this back to somewhere near the topic - all of this does go to show why teaching yourself is hard.

[Lambda]

I never wanted to compete so playing to a grade was never a concern for me.
I still feel I represent piping in a good light.
if you want to see BAD piping goto this page of Bobdunsire.com
worst piping vids on youtube

Oh goodness.... I'll never get that hour of my life back. Those videos were so bad I couldn't stop watching them until I got to the end just because I thought there had to be a good one in there somewhere!

My advice is that if, God forbid, you ever do self-teach, please NEVER get recorded until you are good and certain you don't look like those people. I have had people tell me they hate the bagpipe when I've told them I play, and it is because of people like those represented in the above videos that they felt this way. It's tragic when most people get their opinion of the pipes from the worst of the worst. The instrument is too beautiful for that bum rap.

Getting an instructor of some kind (or at least sitting down with someone who has piped before) is by far the way to go. Way too much can be learned improperly that takes longer to unlearn if you ever get serious.