So you are you recovering from the hangover you have from  when you had a few too many drams and watched Braveheart for the 3rd time last night thinking "dangit, I am part Scottish and I am going to play a bagpipe, wear a kilt, drink beer and scotch with a gang of pipers, join a band and be......Scottish!  That of course as opposed to just drinking beer and scotch sitting at home on your couch in your underwear watching Braveheart alone with your wife yelling at you to take out the garbage thus interupting your efforts to somehow help Wallace save Scotland from the English.  So you want to be a piper, and thus play the pipes and hangout with other pipers and drunkenly declare "she can make me take out the garbage, but she can never take...my FREEDOM!!!!".  Sorry we do digress, back to serious business of how to become a piper.

So you start your journey, you hit the webpages and you find a pipe tutor starting packing for only $25 and the actual pipes themselves for only $50 to $400.  What a bargain, you will be up and running in no time, playing pipes in the hills and glens of your own area of the North American continent.  People will marvel at your playing that brings forth the ghost of William Wallace, even if the movie Braveheart is factually incorrect.  If you have found such bargains, then you have fallen into the Pakistani knock off trap and desist further from purchasing anything more online until you read this article.  You will find  you have purchased junk that either will not work at all to make a sound, or if it does work will sound like a hideous sound unlike a bagpipe or anything beyond a one eyed snake charmer playing a kazoo in the streets of Algiers!

Starting the Highland bagpipes is a long and rewarding journey.  There are no short cuts.  Please go to my Piping Journey Journal page to see my experience in making all the wrong moves and mistakes in learning the pipes, and my corrections to those mistakes.

Contact Mr. Lynne Miller, the West Coast's largest and oldest Bagpipe Sales and Tutor shop.  www.HouseOfBagpipes.com