I am taking my first lesson next week from a woman who plays the small and the Highland pipes. My goal is to learn Uilleann. Will this translate eventually? In other words, will I be able to translate what i’ve learned on the small pipes to uilleann when I find the right teacher, get the right set up? Does it matter what chanter I begin on?
cheers
Jenn
oh, and if there are possible pitfalls in this trategy, what might those be? Its all a matter of lack of funds AND time.
beep…beep…beep
(the sound of the truck backing up, full of responses from other listees about dump on you all the reasons you should not pursue this route if you ultimately want to learn uilleann pipes.)
t
They are two different beasts entirely.
Small and GHBs play 9 notes (one octave plus a flatted 7th below the tonic) and the UPs have two octaves. Fingerings and gracings are entirely different.
Get a whistle, learn some tunes and build up your chest and shoulder muscles while you wait for your practice set from your pipemaker to arrive.
See the FAQ FAQ FAQ for more and better advice.
Jenaceae wrote:
if there are possible pitfalls in this trategy, what might those be? Its all a matter of lack of funds AND time.
Now that misspelled word could be strategy, or could it be tragedy? TommyK is right, you’ve come to the right place for a truckload of advice, mostly discouraging at this point. But I only want to reply to one of your comments; if you really do have a “lack of time” to devote to piping, you should consider your course carefully! Learning the UPs takes a lot of time and effort, and I assume the same would be true for Highland, Lowland, great or small pipes . . .
Those many of us trying to start learning the UPs in “midlife” (I’m 46, and I know FancyPiper has me beat) feel the strong tide of time pulling against us; if it takes 21 years to become a piper, we had best cut right to the chase!
Its not 21 years anymore. It is actually 28 years , since you have to now add “7 years waiting for your pipes” to the saying. 
That quote from Séamus Ennis about the 21 years to learn the UPs gets taken out of context a lot. You have to take into account the year that the quote comes from, and realize that those are 21 years in imperial measurements. To convert this to metric, you have to mulitply it by the weight of Royce’s bag-sealing compound and then divide by the price of airfare to Willie Week, and only then do you add the seven years waiting for your set to be built.
djm
I am begining to feel REALLY old now…better have another shot of GERITOL and a good cry… that is, if my dear ducts still work at this age…sigh… if I could only lacrimate.
I thought it was actually 3 years, the 21 years being counted in “piper” years. Similar to “dog” years at a rate of 7 to 1.
I’ve only been playing for 5 months and my family already feels like its been years! 
the hand placement will be the same and the basic theory of using the bag, i.e. what happens when you need to fill the bag.
Just curious
Why don’t you begin directly with UP?
Philippe
Thanks to those that gave me constructive advice/opinions. My time issue has to do with getting off my butt and finding a teacher that I can afford, making an appointment, assessing whether I can afford to add yet another teacher, etc… I was hoping to take a few lessons while I was searching for a teacher-unless I found out through the above post that it didn’t really matter what type of chanter you practiced on for the first 6 months. I still don’t quite know the answer to that except that if I plant to play UP I should just start that way. For the moment, its just a little easier said than done.
So here is another question: I live in the Berkeley, California area. Any rcommendations for good UP teacher for the beginner?
thanks
Jenn
oh dang! I just read fancypiper’s note. so now I have concrete details about the differences.
cheers to everyone.
Jenn
You should contact the San Francisco Pipers Club. They’ll be able to hook you up with someone. Their website address is:
http://www.katzwerk.com/sfpipers/
Gluck!
Patrick.
If you’re that broke and short of time, the chanter you start with should say, “Generation” have a blue plastic cap on it, and be pitched in D.
Royce
Feadogin- where are you?? - someone needs to find an Uilleann piping teacher near Berkeley. I want to know as well. I could cop a lesson when I go see my daughter at CAL. Pat D’Arcy’s comment is well taken- check the San Francisco Pipers Club.
Go Bears!!!
Hi Jen,
We have a big group of learning pipers down here on the Peninsula, (ok, big is relative, I mean like 5 or 6 people) 
We take lessons from Conall O’Raghallaigh, who lives in San Francisco, and he’s a great teacher that I highly recommend. There are also two teachers I know of who are in the Bay Area only part time, one in S. F. and one in Palo Alto.
As an absolute beginner, you will probably want to take some private lessons, rather than jumping in wth our group lessons. Send me a pm if you want Conall’s email. He’s definitely the person to talk to. You should also come to our monthly Pipers’ Club meetings in SF (sorry I didn’t see this post; We had one yesterday). They are the first Sunday of every month. We also have some slow piping sessions down here once a month or so.
It’s great to see another woman taking up the pipes around here! I think you will be the third one I know of in the Bay Area.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Justine
Hi,
You may want to call Peter Heelan @ (510) 547-5562. Great piper and sometimes teacher. He lives in the Rockridge area.
Ted