The "Praying Piper of Crestline"

A Lot has happened since I bought my set of Gibson Bagpipes. Many struggles
and many pains. Learning to play these things has been really hard for me. Only
because I have a deep love of their sound have I stayed at it, but my success is
owed entirely to time spent with God. Why would God care about some goofy old
geek who wants to make a scene playing a bagpipe? I don't know, but when I ask
Him to help me, He does, the issues I went through at first, were over come in time,
but effectively by His assistance without loosing hope, that is really IMPORTANT!
HOPE! This instrument can break you down physically, mentally, and emotionally.

The practice has a HIGH demand on all your faculties at ALL times, you have to
ballance your practice time from one aspect to another so as to NOT fatigue
yourself beyond repair.

What is a Triple Pipe? As far as I am able to tell it appears to be an
ancient fore runner of the bagpipe as we know it today. Look at this
pages background and notice the shepherd boy and what he is playing,
it is a triple pipe inserted into a water bag, and he is playing it like a
bagpipe. The man you see in the top left two photos is Barnaby Brown, a
pipe scholar who has done a lot of interesting research into the bagpipe
and it's history. Check out his web sight at http://www.triplepipe.net.

In the mean time, listen to a tune played by him on the triple pipe itself:
"JOHN PURSER"

I've spent most of my life sitting at a desk, fiddling with electronic gadgets,
building mini computer based objects, for you who are familiar with the early
8-bit processors, the units of choice were 6502, 6809, and 80C85. I could
spend an entire page talking about these projects but I don't think anyone here
is interested in that. Anyway, being reclusive and uncomfortable in the presence
of people in general I always wondered, as a Christian, how could I be of any
use to the Lord being so reclusive, funny how as I speak of this I think of many
Bible greats, Moses, David, John the Baptist, and even Jesus Himself, spent
periods of lonliness in the wilderness, some for 40 years, some for 40 days, so
maybe I was in the wilderness.

Along comes a quiet reclusive person, who aspires to play the bagpipe, okay,
seems simple enough, but as I start to learn, and, I can still remember picking
the thing up and inflating it while sitting in a chair, now that's a funny picture! If
any of you know about the instrument, you know that this is next to impossible,
and very uncomfortable, to try to sit and pIay it. I am talking about the Great
Highland Bagpipe! Now some pipes can be held in the lap, and some are
designed to do so, like the Irish Ullean Pipes, and the Kaylee Pipes, Small
Pipes too, but really, because of the drone to chanter posture, the player is
forced to stand up. So, I made NOISE with them, I felt really self concious, I felt
like a fool, what am I doing? I thought, "It couldn't be that hard, could it?" Well, I
could only get 1 drone going, couldn't even get the chanter to make any noise
accept a screech occasionally, I was amazed at how UTTERLY HARD I had to
squeez the bag in order to get that chanter to squal, now as I've made progress
and look back, for some reason the sales person of pipes neglected to give me
a reed that was worth a darn, reeds are an entire write up themselves, chanter
reeds, that is, (see the "Bagpipe Basics" shortcut below for further information
on them.) And I often wonder why he did that. There is an entire story about this
"Piob Au Mistique", in the "Bagpipe Basics", to explain my opinion on this. I
soon realized that I chose an instrument that is LOUD, VERY LOUD! I had no
idea infact! Soon I found myself standing amoung people who came from miles
away trying to find where the pipe music was coming from, like a "voice of one
crying in the wilderness", "Make your paths straight! For One is coming after me
that is greater than I, on Who's feet, the sandles themselves I am not worthy to
remove!"