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The Highland Bagpipes love them or hate them, but you can't say that the people who play them are not talented.

The Bagpipes are one of the hardest instruments in the world to play, and even harder to master. when first learning to play the bagpipes you start on what they call a chanter which is a little like the recorder, but with the same amount of holes that the chanter in the bagpipes have.

Then you will have to learn the scale, once you have learned this then you will start to play a tune, and there are a lot of tunes out there only then will you be ready to tackle the bagpipes.

When first starting on the bagpipes you will first have to learn how to hold them,
and to blow them, for this you will need a good set of lungs, and there is more once you have mastered this then you can move on to playing a tune on them, usually you will start to play without the drones going, once you can play like this then you can try with the drones going, this alone is hard to keep the drones at the same
tempo, a lot of the time the sound of the drones will keep going up and down until the blowing is mastered.

There are a lot of different styles of playing the bagpipes, but this is down to who
teaches you and the individual playing them. A lot of pipers usually join a pipe band, while others prefer to play solo or play both, even then all bands are different, from the uniforms they wear to the tunes they play, some bands will play at functions and carnivals etc, while others will play competitions.

There are 4 grades in playing the bagpipes grade 1 being the best then 2,3,and 4.
and there are many competitions to enter, they even have a worlds pipe band contest
where bands from all over the world play there from USA, to Canada, to Australia, to Ireland and even France and many many more.

So as i said at the beginning the bagpipes are not easy to play, they take a lot of practice and hard work, and when played right they sound great, and the people who play them are talented. even when they learn new tunes beside the old ones they have already learned, they have to remember all the tunes they play, unlike some instruments where they play from sheets of music, once the piper has learned there tunes, they usually play from memory.

So there you have it The Highland Bagpipes......

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