THE PIOBAIREACHD TUTOR

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.