The Best Seasoning for a Sheepskin Bag
You’ve just purchased a sheepskin bag, and you’re excited to tie it in and get playing. You’ve gotten suggestions for different types of seasonings including glycerine based solutions. Should you try it?
Category: Solo Piping
The Best Tune to Play for Your First Competition
Are you planning to compete as a soloist for the first time this year? What tune should you play? What are the good standard tunes that work best for beginning soloists?
How to Use a Metronome to Learn a Strathspey
When you play a strathspey, does anyone ever tell you that it “sounds like a march”? Is it difficult to get the correct strathspey rhythm, no matter how many times you play through the same tune? One method of learning a strathspey correctly is to use a metronome from the outset, and hear your playing improve.
How to Use a Metronome to Learn a Reel
In Scottish country dancing, the reel is one of the four traditional dances, the others being the jig, the strathspey and the waltz. A reel is in 4/4 time, but when written out, reels are most often written in a 2/2 time signature, also known as "cut time".
How to Use a Metronome to Learn a 2/4 March
When you are learning a new competition march, do you often have trouble staying “on the beat” because you are using all of your concentration just to play all of the melody notes, gracenotes and embellishments correctly? Then, after you get those pesky things out of the way, are you still having trouble getting that “march feel”? Using a metronome during your practice may well be a useful tool for you.
How to Use a Metronome to Improve Your Piping
Do you know pipers who say they never use a metronome because they “already play on the beat”, or they never saw the benefit of using one? Have you ever tried to play the practice chanter or the pipes while using a metronome, but got frustrated because it was nearly impossible to play “on the beat”?