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Lesson 9: How to Learn Bagpipe Tune

Pipers typically slowly play a tune from the start to the end and keep repeating this until they can play the tune at the appropriate tempo and it eventually becomes memorized. THIS IS NOT CORRECT. Pipe tunes must be learned phrase by phrase. There are reoccurring bars in pipe music called 'phrases'. A bagpipe phrase is 2 bars in length. When you begin learning a tune think about learning different phrases and then putting them together to create a tune. Always begin by playing these phrases super slow. If you can't play a tune perfectly slow then you will never be able to play it up to speed correctly. 

THE STEPS TO LEARN A BAGPIPE TUNE

STEP 1

Identify all the phrases in the tune with a letter like below. This shows you the phrases you need to learn. At first glance you would think there was 8 phrases in this tune. However, when you label them you can see that there are only 5. This makes it easier to learn and memorize.


STEP 2

Learn 'Phrase A' with a metronome. Keep playing the phrases over and over again until you can play it perfectly at a slow tempo. I usually start at a tempo that is half of my desired tempo. Ie. if a tune should be played at 90 beats per minute I start playing it at 45 beats per minute. 

STEP 3

 Once you can play 'Phrase A' slowly and perfectly move onto learning the other phrases the same way s step 2. 

STEP 4

Put all the phrases together now. Continue to play this entire tune at half speed with a metronome.

STEP 5

Now increase the speed of the metronome by 10%. When you can play the tune perfectly at this new tempo increase it again by 10%. It is imperative that you never increase the tempo until you can easily and cleanly play at the current tempo. Keep doing this a total of ten time and you will be at the desired tempo. 

STEP 6

Once you have the entire tune up to speed, look at the music again, I'm sure there is a phrase or a bar that is giving you difficulty. Take that bar or phrase and treat it like an exercise and keep practicing it until it's perfect. It only takes one bad bar to ruin a tune. 


Speed is not your friend. Beginner pipers always want to play everything faster than they should (I know I did). This is because you want instant results. However, it's much harder to play a tune slow and correctly then fast. If you are trying to impress people by playing fast your not. I didn't start playing jigs or reels until I had been playing for 3 year and even then I played them slowly.