Bagpipe Stuff
Patrick's Stuff
About me and this site
This site is geared toward being a resource for pipers, both beginning and experienced. West Texas is a piping void, so here's to you all learning the pipes in similar piping voids. I play the Highland bagpipes and the Scottish smallpipes, and I guess I can still play what started it all, the tenor drum. I try to play the guitar, timber flute, penny whistle, and harmonica. I am a Grade 3/Grade 2 piper. I guess my claim to fame was playing with the Lyon College (where I got a B.S. in chemistry 2005) Pipe Band in 2001 when we went to Scotland and competed in the World Pipe Band Championships and won 2nd in grade 3B.
What I 'know' about my pipes: There are no markings that I have found to explicitly assign a maker. When I bought them, I was told they were made by Henderson in the 1950's, they are african blackwood, they have real ivory mounts, nickel ferrules. The blowpipe mount has a big ol' crack in it (I don't use it), the blowpipe stock has an exterior crack that doesn't go all the way through (I don't think), one bass mount is cracked, and some of the mounts have hairline cracks but no missing pieces. That, and I have no motivation to polish the nickel mounts (one or two are dinged up pretty bad) and one has some green stuff on it. I do not have the original chanter.
Bass, Middle Tenor, Outside Tenor, Stocks (Ross bag), Blowpipe
I play a Ray Hughes practice chanter.
If you type in some random letters at the end of the url and try to go to that page, you get a really funny error message!
This website was created with the help of:
- Yahoo! With awesome web hosting services.
- Apple, the maker of my awesome laptop and webcam.
- Adobe, the software geniuses who created Illustrator, Photoshop, and PDF.
- Ed Miller, the music I listen to to pass the time while I fix, fix, fix, and fix this website.
- Barfly, the software for mac I use to score the sheet music (so thank Phil Taylor as my handwritten scores are usually illegible!). Awesome software!
What I have been told about my site!
Great help after my lesson to remind me of what I have learned and also to help me understand my lesson better. Thank you!
I am a student (an old one at that!), and your site has help me greatly. I appreciate the time and effort you have put into this. thanks
Patrick, may I just say that your web site is excellent . Having just started with the practise chanter I find the audio and video downloads invaluable and refer to them many times. As a novice I had gained so much from this one website and it continues to fuel my enthusiasm. Please keep up the good work.
I appreciate the free help. I like your playing. Thanks
Thank you so much for making these videos for us people that have no instructor nearby. It helps a lot seeing and hearing what you are doing.
That was Awesome! That was exactly what I needed.... Thanks again.
I am having a hard time finding somebody to show me how to play, and your web sight has been invaluable....and the repetition you offer for learning the tunes is just brilliant. Thanks again!
me a sido de mucho provecho tu pagina, yo soy un gaitero principiante y me ha ayudado a avanzar