Names of Notes
The Practice Chanter has 9 notes the same as a Bagpipe Chanter. They are from the lowest note upwards Low G Low A then B,C,D,E F High G and High A. Your tutor would firstly guide you through these notes called the melody notes one by one, commencing with the Bottom hand notes low G, Low A, B, C & D progressing to the top hand notes E, F High G, and High A. They Would advise once the basic up and down this scale has been achieved, to continue practicing in your own time until they were happy with your progress to take you onto the next stage. In addition to your tutor’s guidance there are some very good examples on the internet of how to position your fingers to play each of these 9 notes, but personally I would recommend The College of Piping Tutor 1 Beginners book which your tutor may also recommend you purchase. This also comes with a tutorial CD giving you examples of what should be played and how it should sound, again is a very helpful tool indeed.
Gracenotes Once the melody notes have been mastered, they would progress you onto the grace notes. If you were to listen to a tune being played on let’s, say a violin or piano, you would notice considerable effect can be attained by varying the loudness of different notes and so emphasising them. This is impossible on both the practice chanter and bagpipes. We can however emphasise a note in piping by playing a very short note in front of the melody note called a gracenote. Gracenotes are used to separate either the same note or move from one note to another using this gracenote. Gracenotes are produced in many ways however the 3 main Gracenote’s used would be the G, D&E gracenotes
Further embellishments in addition to Gracenotes can be used to change from one note to another or again separate an individual note.
These include Doublings, Throws, Strikes, Leumluath, and Taorluth’s I will not go into the details of how to make each of these embellishments between your melody notes, that is something that you will go through with your tutor within your personal progression. They will incorporate each one of these embellishments into your tunes gradually, starting with tunes only using a single grace note to enhance the tune, until you progress to tunes using some or all of the embellishments I have mentioned. Then and only then will you be ready for your pipes and as mentioned this will be another massive learning curve, and again totally different to what you have been learning thus far, thus taking your journey a little further in your goal to master this instrument.
