meemtp wrote:I suppose I should look at it this way: If I'd taken up the UPs at the time I started the fiddle, I'd have been more isolated than I am now. There wasn't as much WWW activity, and I didn't know any pipers here, or as much about the technical aspects of the instrument. Now I have two friends who are both excellent pipers who have agreed to help me get started and will be a valuable resource for help and support along the way. I've also, though not able to put it to practice, picked up a wealth of info. I still kick myself though. I'm not getting any younger! Not that I haven't enjoyed playing ITM and the fiddle so far.
C'mon, we are still young. I remember when I was a teenager and starting out playing, though, there were definitely not many people my age playing Irish music (at least in California).
I tried to play fiddle for about 8 years, and after playing pipes again for about 2 years I am already better than I am on fiddle. So I hope I have found my calling here!
I always research a lot before I purchase, but with the pipes it is still quite difficult to make a good choice starting out with out help. I am always on a very tight budget so I was trying to find the best I could at the cheapest price. Luckily I had the resources of my U.P. club. There was one instrument I had discovered on the internet but Gabriel had told me that "instruments like that would break my heart". It is difficult to wait but you need to start off with a good instrument.
It sure is different from most instruments. I have two guitars, one good quality and one fairly poor quality. But the poor quality guitar is still fun to play and sounds fairly good, and I bought it for $25 at a garage sale.
Well Justine, perhaps there's hope for me then! If I'm as suited to the UPs as you are, it should go ok. It's funny, for all the talk of the UPs being super difficult, I have had a number of people tell me that they thought the fiddle was harder. I did go a few years on the fiddle before I reached a level where I could play in public.
Though I play GHB and not UP, I come from the other side of the fence.
I'm from North Dakota and to make a long story short I began self-taught and my first bagpipe was a Lark In The Morning Special. They were wretched pipes, they even came without the middle bass drone section. But had I not started there, I would have lost interest.
So yes, I was pretty awful my first few years and there are traces of that legacy left in my playing... I still struggle with bottom hand technique and keeping my arm firm on the bag.
Since then I went to college on a piping scholarship, play in grade 1 solo competitions and currently play in one of the world's best pipe bands (having played some other excellent bands before now).
Had I taken the same route via Uilleann Piping, I'm confident I would have made as much progress.
As for my first pipes, they are lying in a box waiting to be refinished and become a wall ornament.
Joseph E. Smith wrote:....now you're starting to frighten me.
Hey, it was Halloween when I said that.
Heh heh heh...
Seriously, a top-notch pipemaker lives just 45 miles away from the buyer of a set of toy pipes (those things should have 'Fischer Price' stamped on them, IMO) and just think of the resource that was a short distance away.
DMQuinn wrote:I was recently reminded of a program I heard a few months back on NPR having to do with attempts made to rehabilitate folks with various antisocial behaviors using aversion therapy. The details of the story were pretty icky. Perhaps some of you also heard it: noxious fumes associated with... well, perhaps it’s better not to revisit the particulars.
After hearing that program, it dawned upon me that there was indeed a use for those abominable injection moulded “Uilleann Bagpipes Practice Set Bagpipes” such as the one currently on offer at ebay. One very much like it, if not the same item itself, sold a few months ago for $162.50 on ebay. Hard to believe, but such are the wonders of a free market economy.
If your spouse, s.o., neighbor or friend mentions that he or she is interested in taking up the uilleann pipes, and you would prefer that he/she didn’t, such an item would be the perfect gift. A couple weeks struggling with the thing and he/she will lose all interest in the pipes, and forever after associate them with dreadful noise and soul-crushing frustration. I have to admit that this idea has changed my view of these devices. I had thought that they were absolutely useless, and that they even did more harm than good. Now I see that there is indeed a use for them, after all. They are just the thing for putting someone off the pipes for the rest of his/her life. There’s a time and place for that sort of thing, and now there’s also a low-cost means of doing it.
well my droogies. i never thought my glazzies would viddy the ludovico technique here.
Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love.
Love is not music. Music is the best.
- Frank Zappa
I remember when I was a teenager and starting out playing, though, there were definitely not many people my age playing Irish music (at least in California). 
