What’s the big deal with rhythm?

I find as I teach and tutor people on the “Great Highland Bagpipe” that the students who start with someone else don’t read rhythm?  What is it about rhythm that makes it such a hard process to teach?  Books are published with CD’s with each tune recorded so that it can be imitated.

Truthfully, there is a system to that could solve this problem for good.  It involves 7 sylables dividing each beat.    Tunes are either in duple time or triple time.  Each melody note can be labled with a sylable creating a sentence that can be recited by the player imitating the rhythm of the piece.

We should talk more about this in the future, don’t you think?

4/4 Marches? Is that all there is?

I have found in the last 20 years of teaching the Great Highland Bagpipe, that the majority of people that I run in to that play in pipe bands only play 1 kind of march, the 4/4.

The Pipe Band Associations on both Coasts have decided that new players and new bands aren’t worthy of playing the Strathspey and Reel. Why is that? Years ago when I started in a High School Pipe Band, we learned an MSR and a 5 minute medley. The tunes were: Glen Caladh Castle, Dorotor Bridge and Sound of Sleet. I had only been playing for a few months when the teacher Charlie Rosenberger of the San Diego Camerons introduced the music. I think the reason that I still play is because he was bold enough not to hold us back. Ok, so the Grade 5 pipe band doesn’t sound like Simon Fraser University, but isn’t our job as bagpipe educators and Pipe Majors is to introduce our players to all of the genres of this music?

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