So, you pipers that have played for 15, 20, or 25 years or more…
… have you ever thought about just quitting it, and doing something else to keep the creative juices flowing?
Whatever the reason - be it ‘hitting a plateau’, or just a spell of the doldrums, what did you do about it?
Wha???
Oh mighty He who showed me the ways of piping greatness? He who helped inspire to start our own local club? He who pours such a mighty pint in his basement?!?!
Say it aint so!
Stopped playing pipes and started writing songs.
came back to the pipes after a break of a few months.
worked for me.
I do not fit your catagory for pipers, but IMHO, sometimes setting the instrument aside for a short while can be a good thing for the heart, soul, mind and fingers.
I have been playing music all of my life, and have had to do this once in a while. Upon returning to the instrument(s), I found a renewed interest and enthusiasm for it/them.
If you are considering a break Brian, go for it. I wouldn’t worry about never returning, you’ve been bitten by the bug, and there is only one cure for that… and may it be a long way off yet. 
For about 7 of the 13 yrs I been playing I only pulled the pipes out once or twice a year. I also took up Bonsai with a passion during that time. Now I do both regularly.
DavidG
Now, BrianC didn’t say that he was the one quitting.
I have quit the pipes more times than most people have had hot meals.
Back in the late 70s and 80s anyone who started up piping in my area was forced to wander in the wilderness. That’s what I thought anyway. Having played whistle (and clarinet) for years, I thought picking up the pipes would be easy. But the instruments I played were “open aired/lung powered/mouth articulated instruments” (for lack of better terms) and the pipes are not to say the least. I was just making a hash of the whole thing when I tried playing tunes that were so easy and good sounding on the whistle. Very disheartening. My biggest problem was that I could not parse what I was hearing pipers play. I had not developed the forensic ear that you really need for piping. Funny, I was never reallyable to bridge what I was hearing pipers play to what the mechanical actions on the chanter were until I listened closely to, of all things, a really great whistle player: Kate Dowling. Kate’s whistling is very piperly. She lists Patsy Touhy as one of her influences. After this epifony I was able to revisit the pipes again. And it has been progress ever since.
The other super-duper help for me has been going to tionols. Not only has this improved my playing and enthusiasm (through humbling classes with The Greats), but I have met some of the finest individuals of the species Homo sapiens piperi thereat.
Here endeth the lesson.
T
For a recorded testament to the virtues of quitting, please see fiddler Clyde Davenport’s cassette “Puncheon Camps”. Clyde quit music for 20+ years while he plied his trade as an auto mechanic and general upstanding citizen. Sought out by a musicologist after all that time, Clyde picked up banjo and fiddle and ripped out a passel o’ mighty, mighty tunes. 7 years quitting, 7 years forgetting, 7 years returning? Kentucky Zen?
I can’t really find it, but wasn’t there some big piper who got so frustrated with trying to make reeds that he threw his set in the garbage can?
Paddy Keenan talks about when he quit the pipes. This is from his website (he’s referring to the tune Cahir’s Kitchen):
This tune is followed by a piece I composed back between 1967 & 71 in a �hotel� they called it - in fact it was nothing more then a squat run by a bunch of welfare money grabbing pirates. Hippying 'round London. This was a time in my life when I was looking for something else other then the pipes and trad music - it seemed all so square. So much so, in fact, that I refused a meeting with the Beatles. A friend wanted me to meet them when they were looking out for new instrumental sounds. It was sometime before this that I tried pawning the pipes. London was not the place to be trying to hawk Irish Pipes in the 60�s. �What’s that mate?� He said. �These are a set of Crowley pipes with a one off Rowsome chanter, the Crowley part previously owned by the Honorable Garragh DeBrun of the Guinness Family.� He looked at me curiously. I went as low as two bob. I couldn’t believe my ears, when he turned me down. I walked outside and went about throwing the whole lot in a bin. My friend caught me by the arm, �What are you doing Paddy? Give them to me I’ll look after them for you�. I did.
There’s a Late Session interview with PK in 2002 when he says that he also gave up the pipes in the 1990s and opened a shop in Clonakilty. I don’t know if he meant that he gave up the pipes entirely at that time, or just gave up professional piping.
i’ve been playing for 15 years (sounds mental saying it) and at times i was very disheartened with the instrument. i’m better known as a harper and probably a relatively better harper than piper, so it was all too easy to play the harp at sessions, etc.
However, i don’t think i ever really considered quitting. There would have been times when i may not have played the pipes for up to 8 months possibly. Much of my frustration was down to my specific instrument and the fact that the regulators were hard to play, leaked air and sounded dodgy (and i damaged a drone about 5 years ago and never got it fixed).
Being at a higher standard on the harp didn’t help matters, but when it came down to it, i wanted to be a good piper.
So, i finally got off my a$$ and got myself a fantastic set of pipes, leaving me with no excuses, and i’ve been playing loads and according to my family, improved a lot.
from teaching people harp and pipes and from my own experience, i’ve often found that a new instrument can completely re-focus a person.
a break from the instrument can be good for a while but never say quit.
Fair play. I suppose it is overstating it to say that I have thought about quitting altogether, and a break is probably what’s needed.
I have thought about picking up the fiddle and learning what I can with it, and who knows, perhaps that will provide some inspiration for the pipes down the road in the who-knows-when?
Bonsai ? 
Horticulturalists everywhere are now terrified at the idea of an actual plant being grown by myself. I’ve been known to kill cacti by the dozen. 
7 years quitting, 7 years forgetting, 7 years returning? Kentucky Zen?
Love it! 
Thanks to all for the replies, very helpful.
Perhaps that’s why some of us have multiple instruments that we can be abysmal at; to allow us to get almost better at something 
Maybe a good idea not to listen to the new Patsy Touhey CD, too. 
TommyKleen said
The other super-duper help for me has been going to tionols. Not only has this improved my playing and enthusiasm (through humbling classes with The Greats…
Ha! All this time I thought it was rooming with ME at several tionols that kept him going. Boy…was I mistaken!!! 
No, Lewis, that was me you were thinking of 
So, you going to Seattle?
-Larry
… am I sensing a love triangle here? Hmmmmmm? 
No E wrote
So, you going to Seattle?
You betcha! Wanna get a room together?
Joseph wrote
… am I sensing a love triangle here? Hmmmmmm?
I love all my friends! The only triangles I can envision, though, would include 5 X chromosomes and one Y chromosome…do the genetic math.
Lewis–Seattle sounds like a plan.
JES–don’t bring me down with your bourgeois morality, man!
No E (as in NOt Enough X chromosomes for Lewis)
Larry- don’t see a certain c chanter for sale any more ;-(
Who are you calling moral?