Bl**dy, bas***d reed.....

[Pat Cannady]

Mr. D'Arcy as usual is correct. Find a teacher to help you with reed adjustments - you cannot do this alone because you and your reed and your chanter all must come to some kind of agreement in order to make music together. A piper who has been through the negotiation process is invaluable to a beginner.

Even the most isolated pipers who made any sort of a reputation for themselves as performers of the music and the instrument still sought expert advice early and often.

Do not mess with the reed unnecessarily. Since you live in England, I doubt that the weather is much of a problem for you but you need to take care that the RELATIVE humidity (the actual moisture in the air versus its saturation capacity determined by temperature and barometric pressure) in your dwelling does not dip below 50%.

It shouldn't be difficult to overcome if it gets below 45-50%, just put a pot of water on the stove and play in your kitchen if necessary. Use a hygrometer to judge the RH - they aren't hard to come by, any decent hardware store should have a few laying around.

About 80% of the difficulties you will encounter will be due to your inexperience with the chanter and with the reed. Don't feel bad about that, it's NORMAL, everyone struggles with that initially. Just take the time to try to figure out how your chanter and reed want to be played [this can take a year or two or more of daily practice] and you'll figure it out if you just keep listening to yourself and to lots of recordings. It's not difficult but it is time consuming.

Practice in the dark helps A LOT, too. Shut down your eyes and listen.

Remember that many of the most notable pre-famine or contemporary pipers were blind. I think that fact is very very important to remember as an illustration of the essential nature of LISTENING to the music happening around you. Patsy Touhy didn't have tapes or records or CDs. Nor did Garrett Barry, Edmund Keating Hyland, William Kennedy, Turlough McSweeney, James Early, Bernard Delaney, Paddy Conneely, Maurice O'Farrell or even Leo Rowsome until his teens...You could say Leo learned to play pipes entirely independent of any sort of recording technology as a boy in a musical household. Just like the other gents I mentioned. And they all became titans not because of their fingers but because of their ability to listen in a focused, disciplined manner. You will only become as good as your ears permit you. All the dexterity in the world is useless if you cannot listen to yourself in a critical manner.

Best wishes,

Patrick.

P.S. Practice. Don't waste a lot of time on fora like this one. Face to face tuition, disciplined, focused, daily practice, and an abiding love of Irish Traditional Music will get you farther than 99.9% of the "advice" you get on this forum or others like it.