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How to Blow into Bagpipes

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Part of the video series: How to Play Bagpipes

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Summary: Practice properly blowing into a bagpipe in this free video series that will teach you everything you need to know to play the bagpipe.

Views: 813 | Tags: play, bag, instruments, pipes, scottish, Irish, celtic, sounds, bagpipes

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About the Expert

Neil Hubbard Neil Hubbard has taught the Scottish Highland bagpipes to individuals and groups since the early 1990's. In addition to coaching the Seattle Firefighters Pipe... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Blow into Bagpipes

NEIL HUBBARD: The blowing pressure is something that's important to get right and it's something that you will just develop a feel for. There are a variety of different makers of reeds, and they all sort of have their own pressure that they need to make a sound. And this one is slightly different yet. If you blow too hard, the chanter will stop. It simply doesn't take that much air. If you're not blowing hard enough, you get sort of a croaky sound with it. There's a sweet spot of pressure that the chanter wants. One thing you can do is put a small dental-type rubber band that you would have on your teeth for braces around the top of the reed. Be very careful, you don't want to bend the reed or damage the reed, but you can wrap this rubber band around there about three times. And if you move it up, it will make the reed quieter and easier to blow. At the same time it'll also raise the pitch slightly, but you can adjust this around to make it easier to blow. You don't want to spend a lot of energy blowing this thing. You want to make it as easy as possible. And you'll notice how the pitch went up and it got quieter as I moved this rubber band up from its previous position.

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