Piper's Dojo Audio Experience

Ever wondered why your drones seem to make a bunch of different sounds when you strike in (or if you don't cut them off quickly – an auditory experience affectionately know as "the dying cow")? This week, Andrew and Jim explain the four distinct layers identifiable within drone sounds generated by the bagpipe: a squeaky unpredictable sound triggered by low pressure (layer one), a gurgly or raucous...

Most of us show up for band practice like clockwork each week – maybe even a few times a week. But are you showing up in all the right ways to improve your own playing, and contribute to the improvement of your whole band?  This week, Andrew and Jim – who both have plenty of experience playing in and leading bands at all grade levels – chat through the importance of individual players coming...

"Just blow tone!" Sound familiar? Most of us know we should be blowing a certain way to sound better, but many pipers don't know how to really get into the "tone zone".  This week, Andrew and Jim delve into the importance of identifying and playing within the instrument's sweet spot for optimal sound quality, eliminating the risk of choking or squeaking. The duo talks about the impact of...

Do you want to sound just like your favourite pipers? Maybe we all do, to start with. But after a while, most pipers realise that true satisfaction comes from being able to create any musical ideas or interpretations that you want to – not just copying others. Having this kind of freedom is the ultimate goal of any musician – and any bagpiper. But when we skip early skills and rush through to...

As pipers we have to juggle a lot of skills, usually all at once. Remembering tunes, playing with good rhythm and clean fingerwork, tuning, blowing good tone, marching... the list goes on. But how do you put them all together without maxing out your 'piping bandwidth' – your mental capacity to do many things simultaneously?  This week, Andrew and Jim chat through the chapter of Andrew's book,...

Relive all the amazing performances from the 2024 Winter Storm Concert! On January 14th 2024, it might have been freezing outside, but at Winter Storm – the pipes and drums event in Kansas City – we turned up the heat for the annual concert, featuring world champion pipers and drummers from Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, and the U.S. – pipe bands and ensembles, piping soloists, sizzl...

How much money should you be budgeting for your bagpiping? At a minimum there are reeds, pipe bags, and other parts all need to be replaced regularly – and then there's new chanters, travel, lessons, and much more. It can add up pretty quickly to a lot more than you thought when you started as a fledgling piper...   This week, Andrew and Jim talk through a bagpiping budget – the outlay for eq...

Ever heard “you’re not a REAL piper unless you play with all the embellishments as written”?   Embellishments are lovely – but they’re the crown moulding, while foundational skills like rhythm, scale navigation, and so many others are vital to master first…   This week, Andrew and Jim look at how to go back to basics with your tunes, by learning to effectively simplify them. They use Bon...

Do you ever feel burned out at the end of competition season? This week, Andrew and Jim look at the merits of rest. It's a necessity in the fitness world to recover and restore yourself to be stronger – so could the same be true for your piping? High-pressure performances and competition can certainly be draining if you're pouring time into them, and the downtime can have negative effects on your...

Should 'auld' episodes be forgot and never brought to mind? Not a chance! As 2024 dawns, we're taking a moment to pause and reflect – it's been just over a year since the podcast went live, so this week Andrew and Jim revisit some of the highs, the lows, and the bits we can't remember as we look back on the Dojo Conversations journey so far... and where we're headed in 2024 and beyond! If you have...

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Dojo, we've enlisted AI for some festive mojo! This week, Andrew and Jim detour for a special Christmas episode, enlisting the writing and artistic talents of very special guest to pull together the most bagpipey version of A Christmas Carol and The Grinch ever conceived (by AI)... Wishing all our followers and listeners a very Merry Christmas...

This week, Andrew and Jim welcome special guest and piping legend Jack Lee to talk all things piping, drumming and… cruising?! The upcoming Piper’s Dojo and Piping Hot Summer Drummer collaboration 'Cruise Journey North' departs from Seattle to Alaska on May 4th, 2024, with regular classes, private sessions, tune workshops, tune composition sessions, and opportunities to interact with local pipe ba...

Do your pipes ever feel hard to play? If you’re not asking these 4 questions every time you pick them up out of the box, you’re setting yourself up to fail before you play a single note… This week, Andrew and Jim discuss the 4 questions of bagpipe maintenance that are a ‘pre-flight’ checklist to make sure you’re set up for success every time you play. By making a system of these and building it in...

This week, we're welcoming special guest Ed Best – Dojo U's drumming instruction lead, rhythm guru and dad joke connoisseur – to chat about his approach to helping drummers find their own musical freedom. We dive into the ways piping and drumming can be similar (and how similar approaches between the two corps can benefit a band); how rhythm is the crucial foundation to all music; how drummers app...

Do your bagpipes fit your body – or do you make your body fit to your bagpipes?   Continuing last week's conversation about posture, this time Andrew and Jim challenge the idea that bagpipes are hard to play – according to Andrew they should be easy to play, always, but we all know that's often easier said than done... especially for newer players. So they follow up with some great tips on ho...

"Multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we’re being exceptionally efficient." Did you learn to play exclusively on a practice chanter, have to get a few tunes (with all embellishments included) memorized, and only then transition to the bagpipes – where you then had to juggle posture, blowing steadily, and many other skills at once? Like in every other walk of life – for bagpipers, multit...

Pipers everywhere struggle with seemingly perpetual problems like crossing noises, often doing 'reps' to fix them. But they're not even close to working out the actual cause of their issues... This week, we dived into the ups and downs of scale navigation (see what we did there?) – and along the way, took some wild turns into the history of gracenotes, the frustrations of teaching, how to progress...

Ever noticed there are certain bagpipe tunes that seem to become – and stay – wildly popular? This week, we're chatting about "viral" bagpipe tunes and trends. Where do they come from, what causes them, and why do certain tunes become so popular when there are other arguably "better" tunes out there? Got a question or topic you'd like answered in a future episode? Leave a comment or email it to su...

Playing the bagpipes is a complex thing – so when figuring out where to focus on for improvement, maybe we can learn some lessons from the emergency room... This week, we're discussing how to triage your "performance killers", by diagnosing the most fundamental issues in your playing and prioritising what to work on in iterative rounds of improvement. Pssst – we’ve recently launched our new, compr...

Frustrated at the neverending struggle to keep your bagpipes in tune? You’re not alone! But many pipers think that once you ‘solve’ tuning, you can move on… when really, even the best pipers in the world are still refining their approach to tuning. So how do you switch despair at the endless road to something you can not just live with, but enjoy doing? Changing how you think about tuning is the b...

Lincoln Hilton, founder of Modern Piping and online sensation, walks us through his trial and error tuning journey as a young piper coming up through the grades. This clip is an excerpt from Lincoln's hour-long interview, included as part of our new course on bagpipe tuning: "The Great Bagpipe Tuning Algorithm". Visit https://pipersdojo.com/tuning today to learn more!

The great Jim McGillivray tells us a bit about his tuning process and how he uses a "pressure variance test" to check he's nailed his bagpipe tuning. This clip is an excerpt from Jim's hour-long interview, included as part of our new course on bagpipe tuning: "The Great Bagpipe Tuning Algorithm". Visit https://pipersdojo.com/tuning today to learn more!

How do we optimize the pitch of our pipes, and time it perfectly with the actual performance? P/M Robert Mathieson and I discuss in this interview clip. This clip is an excerpt from Robert's hour-long interview, included as part of the new course. Visit pipersdojo.com/tuning today to learn more!

Your surroundings – particularly temperature changes and humidity – are vital considerations for any tuning process. World champion piper Callum Beaumont explains how important these are for him to think about when preparing to play at high-level competitions. This clip is an excerpt from Callum's hour-long interview, included as part of our new course on bagpipe tuning, "The Great Bagpipe Tuning...

Do you find it harder to hear your bass drone than your tenors when you tune? As it turns out, so does Jack Lee! So how does he manage this and the rest of his tuning process, to get that trademark beautiful tone every time he plays? Jack is one of many world-leading pipers we’ve interviewed for our brand new Bagpipe Tuning Suite of online courses, designed to help you finally crack the code of ba...