This is my first venture outside of the whistle forum. I received a set of Fagerström Technopipes a couple of weeks ago and they’re great! I was a little concerned that they may be a bit of a gimick, but I’ve never practised an instrument so intensively. I guess the fact that they’re completely silent so nobody else is affected is the best feature. I have had a few funny looks at the airport and in the hotel bar - they should consider themselves lucky that I don’t have any real pipes…yet.
Does anyone have any views on how difficult it is to graduate to real smallpipes from Technopipes. I figure that with Technopipes I can learn some tunes and develop the fundamentals of fingering, then real pipes will add the mechanical complexity of blows, bag and airflow.
Oh wow, there is probably someone out there who’s done this, but I don’t know of anyone personally that’s gone from techno to smallpipes. I’m a huge fagerstrom fan. I hate practice chanters and think their a detriment to piping life (honestly, I do). I’d love to hear how your transition goes.
I didn’t exactly start cold on the technopipes, but I did do a lot of practice on them before starting to play the smallpipes. I’d already had some experience of mouth blown pipes before that, so…
There is absolutely no disadvantage to starting on the technopipes before moving on to the smallpipes as opposed to starting on a practice chanter - as far as I can tell. The only extra thing you learn on a practice chanter is blowing, which you do not need on bellows pipes. On the plus side, you start to get used to what in-tune pipes should sound like right from the start. (I also play diverse other wind instruments, so blowing may be something, the difficulty of which I underestimate?)
That said; learning to blow pipes either bellows or mouth blown steaddily is an exercise that needs to be undertaken systematically regardless of how you have been training your fingers. I got good mileage from the more power to your elbow book from the LBPS.