Everything you always wanted to know about playing in solo bagpipe contests

Or "Observations of a solo adjudicator after the combined R U Brown solo piping contest and Australian Solo Championships 2019" This article offers some thoughts about HOW to go about competing in solo contests for those inexperienced in doing so.  Perhaps it will also generate some ongoing online discussion and hopefully encourage more pipers to …

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Is Skype too great a compromise for bagpipe lessons?

I have been teaching bagpipes face to face and using Skype for several years, with a number of successes.  The Skype approach is a compromise compared with face to face tuition, but has proven to be a very good one for many situations.  This article discusses using Skype, or other similar internet based tools, for …

3 drone tuning processes

 Time and time again I marvel at the novel and illogical processes pipers adopt for solo drone tuning, including in the highest solo grades.  In many cases, they get their drones in tune more by luck than by design – or they fail to get their drones properly in tune.  Here I present three different …

Tuning Devices That Deceive

I have seen electronic tuners used painstakingly to set bands' drones accurately OUT OF TUNE.  So, are electronic tuners of any use? Let’s start with a clear answer: an electronic tuning device is a high value tool when setting up a pipe corps.  BUT, you need to use it intelligently to achieve the result, a …

An example of a good solo drone tuning process

How Brett Tidswell tuned his drones on-stage for a hornpipe and jig contest.

8 Common Drone Tuning Mistakes

Drone tuning is actually a reasonably simple process, not a mystic art. Yet I see so many pipers, including many A grade soloists, who approach it in a way that makes no sense and often produces poor results. This post is about common mistakes in the drone tuning process, not a tutorial on how to …

Tuning your own drones

When I started playing pipes as a youngster, it was more or less assumed that bagpipe tuning was the mystic art of the Pipe Major, so it wasn't taught as a fundamental skill for pipers.  For many pipers today, this is still the case.  And I find this very unfortunate - for two reasons: Tuning, …