How to Play Grace Notes on Bagpipes

Video Transcript

NEIL HUBBARD: Unlike most other musical instruments, when you're playing a bagpipe, the sound of the music is continual. In other words, if you stop in the middle of a song, that's a mistake. So, in order to create some space between the notes and to give a little bit of definition to the music, we play something called, "grace notes." And they are small, either single notes or clusters of two, three, four short notes in between the main melody notes. So, for example, here's a G grace note on A. Or a D grace note on A. Or an E grace note on A. There are double grace notes called "doublings," where two notes are played. Or three notes are played, this is called a "grip." Or a "taorluath," which is four notes played--which is what I just played is the very beginning of "Scotland the Brave." There is another movement called a, "A throw on D." Or another movement called a "birl," which we'll explain more in detail on future segments, but those are some of the basic grace notes that separate the notes in the melody.

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