As thanks for the
Canadians having brought us the wonderful gift of Great Highland
Bagpipe Music, which inspired me also, to take up the pipes, I
want to share here a translated extract from the tutor which I
originally wrote in Dutch for my pupils in Holland. This has
been written from the standpoint that since all original
Scottish Highland and Island pipe music stems from the
Piobaireachd and Canntaireachd, beginning pipers should ideally
start of from those two "Roots".
It is relatively
important to first be able to sing the tune, before you
instrumentally play it. The canntaireachd is the most ideal
vehicle for this. Therefore it is important to know the
Canntaireachd quite well first, besides having a very good
awareness of relative note length with relation to the so
essential "feeling", if the rendering of the music is indeed to
be an actually personal interpretation and not a mechanical
mimicking of something learnt by head and merely faithfully
cloned.