Just a wee brief Intro before i get into the nitty gritty of it as im new to the forums! Im Darran, Im from County Derry, and im a 21 year old mechanical engineering student, currently enjoying a year out before final year to help pay off the oul student loan. I love trad music and have wanted to get a set of pipes for as long as I can remember, and finally realised that dream last week (to the detrement of my student loans fund )… as its the first time ive ever been able to afford the buggers I bought a seth gallagher practice set and with it the HJ clarke piping tutorial as well as the 1st NPU DVD.
Now the introduction is done, its down to my problem… Everythign with the pipes are fine… everything but their owner lol. Try and try as I might, i cant get used to pumping the bellows and playing at the same time. I can hold a note, and control pressure from the bag and pump the bellows when the bag is empty grand, but when I try to play a basic tune I constantly find my mind wandering from the notes and onto the bag/bellow arm movements to keep the note steady… which usually results in the last note i was playing being sounded for quite a bit longer than originally intended
I started to get worried about this because… ill quote from the book “this co-ordinated movement must be mastered at a very early stage so that it does not interefere with your concentraction on the the music later on” hence me thinking “oh crap thats exactly my problem and ive gone and started playing simple tunes before i should have”
Will the automatic “not having to think about bellows” come with time and furthing practicing of tunes? or should I do excersises solely to hone this down fast BEFORE I learn any more tunes?, and if so is there any excersises you would recommend? or is the “mastered at a very early stage” somewhere in the region of the first year of the 21 years of learning and therefore nothing to worry about?
Thanks for any help, its much appreciated!
Darran.
Yes, stop learning tunes. Here’s a simple exercise to practise over and over until your brain falls out and you stop breathing: pump up the bag, slowly play the octave from bottom D up to back d and down again to bottom D without pumping, then pump once, do the octave up and down again, pump once, etc. Keep doing this so that your body, not your brain, learns the feel of the empty bag, and dissociates the act of filling the bag from playing the notes.
Firstly, it’s a long, long, long road you’ve embarked upon. Take your time. It’ll all come to you with a little practice.
djm’s suggestion is good. Here’s another suggestion:
A good exercise to get the bellows right is to remove the chanter and partially block the stock (the connection on the bag which the chanter fits into) with your finger. Then fill the bag with air using the bellows. Let the air gradually escape. Keep the pressure on the bag constant. Try not to let the pumping of the bellows chance the rate of flow of the air. In fact, this is the trick - keep the air flow steady while you’re pumping.
Bellows strokes should be steady. The bellows fills the bag. The pressure of your left arm on the bag should regulate the flow of air through to the chanter.
When you have mastered that part, attach the chanter and play a single note (the first octave A), and hold it steady (this’ll drive your flatmates mad!!). Spend all the time you need to get this right.
Then alternate from one note to another (say, go from 1st octave A to 1st octave G), again the goal is to keep the sound from the chanter steady.
This might take a few days to get used to. Practice regularly - 30 minutes each evening is better than a 3 hour blitz and nothing else for the week.
Once you’re able to play a few notes steady while you pump the bellows then try a simple tune.
Make sure you’re covering the chanter holes correctly (i.e. NOT with the tips of the fingers). Try keep your fingers loose - avoid Death Grip.
The good news is that when you add drones to your set, you’ll spend a few days learning how to keep the drones steady while you pump and play the chanter. Then when you start playing regulators (like I recently did) you have to start all over again … that’s why it takes 21 years.
woohoo! ive done it! going up and down the scales really helped. I literally sat for ages vegetating, looking at the wall not even concentrating on the pipes and doing the first octive over and over until i didnt realise i was even pumping the bellows! hurdle one over with,now for some more tunes!
This method - picking a particular technique and just working on it until you have it down - has worked for me many times. Sometimes it takes hours, but eventually I learn to do it by reflex.
Im Darran, Im from County Derry, and im a 21 year old mechanical engineering student, currently enjoying a year out before final year to help pay off the oul student loan. I love trad music and have wanted to get a set of pipes for as long as I can remember, and finally realised that dream last week (to the detrement of my student loans fund 
)… as its the first time ive ever been able to afford the buggers 
I bought a seth gallagher practice set and with it the HJ clarke piping tutorial as well as the 1st NPU DVD.
and therefore nothing to worry about?