Blog entries from the date of the new site forward

The Average Piper - Teach Your Fingers!

We hear people talking about setting REALISTIC goals. When you’re practicing, do you have a specific goal in mind or are you just running over the tunes? Unless you have a specific realistic goal you’re wasting your time and may be doing…

The Average Piper - Is it Math or Music?

Music - The arrangement of sounds that convey imagination and emotion. Math - The numeric logic of everything in the universe. We had a very good conversation last night at practice about note values, where a particular note falls within…

The Average Piper - D Strike

My “Do wah diddy diddy” post got nothing, but the follow-up “flippy thing” got action? I would have thought it the other way around. Go figure! Today I want to talk about something that REALLY bugs me. The D-Strike. So often I…

The Average Piper - That flippy thing!

Sometimes it’s the little things that matter. Let’s take example #1 in the image above. We’re going from E to F with a G grace note on the F. It doesn’t seem complicated however you may be surprised at how many pipers don’t execute…

The Average Piper - How to memorize new tunes!

Many Average Pipers struggle to learn new music. They can pick up a new song on the radio in minutes. They can also sing along with the oldies from 50 years ago without forgetting a single word! If I sang out "There she was just a-walkin' down…

The Average Piper - Bagpipes are not taught...

Many apologies for the interruption in The Average Piper posts. I could provide hollow excuses, but I won't. I will take advantage of the pause in tactical information to regroup on a more philosophical level. Ready? Here goes! I have often…

GDE's The Breakfast of Champions - Part 2

The “flip” to even GDE’s (as in the previous blog post) is the dot/cut rhythm you’ll find in some tunes. This is shown in the image above where the G is a dotted eighth note, or three sixteenths. The D is a sixteenth note and the E is…

GDE's - The Breakfast of Champions!

The Average Piper - Vitamins GD&E Simply stated, there’s nothing else like it. Nothing even comes close. A regimen of properly executed GDE exercises is like steel-cut oatmeal with nuts and berries for breakfast. If you master GDE’s,…

The Average Piper - Tic Toc - You can't catch up!

I sometimes hear pipers attempting to “catch up” after having fallen behind the established tempo of the tune. Hint…YOU CAN”T CATCH UP (without making a mess of things)! What is the appropriate tempo? A march played at 70 beats-per-minute…

Donald MacKenzie's Bagpipe

I received words and pictures of Donald MacKenzie's bagpipe last night. Donald was John Ban MacKenzie's son and served in the first Crimean War. He died in 1863 at the age of 30 from smallpox and is commemorated in John Ban's composition "His…