Bagpipe One Minute Exercises

These are the One Minute Exercises that I've used and taught for many years. The power of these exercises is that there's no place to rest and therefore no way to go too fast. The exercise will fall apart if you try to play them too fast-especially for a minute.

There are three things to keep in mind.

1. Keep all the notes written as melody notes (the big ones with the stems facing down) the same length. Don't rest on any one of them. That's fine for other exercises but not for these. It's fine if you speed up the exercises over time but don't go any faster than you can be completely accurate.

2. Keep your fingers relaxed. If you practice with tension you'll play with tension so practicing in a relaxed way is crucial.

3. DON'T OVERDO IT! Pick a few of these at a sitting. Don't sit down and play through the entire sheet. That would be 22 minutes of very repetitive movement and can cause injury.

A word about the beat. There are a variety of approaches pipers take when it comes to the placement of the beat, especially in bottom hand movements like Taorluaths. My personal belief is that it's best to be flexible about this. If you go from a band with one approach to a band with a different approach you may find it very difficult to adapt to a new way of playing. I suggest experimenting with when the beat falls in the exercise. In this video I played all the movements starting on the beat. If you want to play the Taorluath finishing on the beat, then play the Low A, B, or C as you tap your foot, rather than the the first Low G.

Doing one of these exercises for a minute straight can be tedious but I promise they'll be minutes well-spent.

You can download the One Minute Exercise sheet here-

https://www.imagevenue.com/ME1611S1