I was called to play the bagpipes in October 2001. It was something that came upon me both suddenly and gradually. My desire to pipe was unexpected and it took nearly a year for it to take its full effect.
When I was a kid, there was not time or money for me to do stuff like take piano lessons or the like, and by the time I was old enough to be in the school band, I was so into drawing and movies that I didn't give it a lot of thought.
I took choir in high school, but music appreciation and music theory was what had me hooked. Theory and composition intrigued me. They fulfilled my interest in musical things that I knew and understood but could never put words to - counterpoint, voice leading, variations.
Around that same time I developed an affinity for Bach and I dreamed of playing the piano, fiddling and teaching myself tunes on a small electronic keyboard that I had won in a contest. Late in life (age 23) I took piano lessons and got pretty far. A few years later I threw caution to the wind and decided to get a music degree. I had not been in music nearly long enough to seek a performance major, so I went for a music history degree and soon found out that they were going to try to turn me into a hypercritical musicologist incapable of original thought. So I went for general music instead. After all, it was just for me as an incentive to study. Somewhere in there I took up the recorder to go along with piano. I've always thougt it an underrated instrument with a pretty sound, not to mention that it is much harder to play well than people realize, and I'm always up for a challenge.
Little did I know that the real challenge would come in my second year of school. Jessie, a friend I had known for some years invited me over for dinner one evening in exchange for me tuning her old piano. I had known for awhile that Jessie played the bagpipes, but the urge to play them myself had only hit me once and VERY briefly several years before. While I was at Jessie's house her young son was playing with a strange long, dark, flutelike object and I asked what it was. Jessie told me that it was her practice chanter, what bagpipers use to learn tunes and also to start learning the pipes. I had to try it. I curled up my fingers (pipers play with them straight) and played it with some recorder fingerings. It sounded like a sick kazoo.
Just this instrument fascinated me and appealed to my interest in music history and older instruments. I mentioned possibly learning how to play it for real maybe the next summer when school was out, but a couple weeks later, Jessie gave me the practce chanter and told me she would teach me for free. I was instantly hooked and the unexpected gift had me inspired. Right then I knew I was going to be a piper.
I immediately went home and began working with the chanter, based on a few photocopied pages from a bagpiping tutor book.. Throughout that fall I began to understnad what a lot of work and practice it would be. By much good fortune I unexpectedly aquired the funds to buy a bagpipe and by the next summer I was spending a lot of time by myself figuring out the synthetic drone reeds and trying to learn how to hold a steady tone. I had received a few lessons from Jessie and was playing my practice chanter attached to my pipe bag with all the drone holes stopped up. This got me used to the feeling of playing the pipes - all the blowing and squeezing and how it all has to coordinate together. I would walk in circles in my room playing the same three tunes over and over. It wore me out and I wondered if I would ever have the stamina for a real bagpipe.
A little less than a year after I began learning, I went to a couple of celtic events and met some more pipers, including Kris Carmichael, the founder of the Father of Waters Pipes and Drums in Jasckon, MS. Kris and Tim Gordon, the band's pipe major, were very encouraging and told me I needed to start playing my pipes. So I took the plunge. Not only did I start the pipes I went down to a Highland games in Gulfport. In attendence was the Red River Pipes and Drums of Shreveport, LA, and with them was James Parker, a great piper that I still know. He invited me to march with the bands in the opening ceremony. I didn't know any of the tunes, so I played nothing but drones. Just the thrill of marching in a band had floored me. Now I vowed that I had to be in a pipe band.
I had kept in touch with Kris and figured out a way to get up to Jackson for a meeting with beginning pipers. Since I don't see well enough to drive I was constantly concerned about how I would make piping work for me. There was so much travel involved. But there, at my first band meeting, I met Matthew Beall. He was also from Hattiesburg and was just getting started learning to play the pipes. From that day on, he and I spent a lot of time going to band events and working on our piping, as well as becoming great friends. I was far enogh along to help him learn a little, but I still had serious troubles myself. I was able to play the pipes (barely), but my technique needed help. So I spent the whole next year rehabilitationg it by going to whatever piping workshop or summer school I could. I also got some help from Mery Rose, a very sweet gal who was also the best piper in the band. I started to listen more and get it in my ear what real piping was supposed to sound like. And the band in Jackson afforded me many opportunities to get my feet wet. They let me play in events with nothing but my drones going, and by the next spring I was playing most of their music.
I also played my first competition that spring, a novice contest for very green pipers. I won first place and was very encouraged.
In my mind competition is good for me. The fact that I will compete again soon keeps me honest with myself about my playing and it forces me to listen and seek and work and practice for hours, starting new tunes very slowly and carefully. It's also a good way to break a fear of preforming solo.
I have performed solo on quite a few occasions. One of my first solo gigs was a pretty big one. I opened a huge version of Amazing Grace played by the University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra along with blues artist Vasti Jackson, some vocal soloists and an 800 voice choir (I actually changed clothes during intermission and sang with the chior for the last half of the show as part of the requirement for my music degree). The show was a pretty big affair that spring and was later televised. Reliving it all on TV was pretty weird.
By the time Matthew and I had been with the Father of Water Pipes and Drums for a year, we had come a long way, and the group seemed generally OK with staying at a more comfortable level of playing. So in the fall of 2003 we took it upon ourselves to strike out on our own. We figured that between the two of us we had the ability to start a little pipe band right in our own community, and with our musical knowledge (Matthew has an asssociates degree in music ed. and many years of marching band experience) we could teach brand new beginners and hopefully send them in the right direction while generating new pipers for the group. The only problem is that there really aren't bagpipe teachers in Mississippi, let alone Hattiesburg. So we found ourselves absorbing whatever knowledge we could wherever we went and brought it back with us. In January of 2004 we had the first official meeting of the Hub City Pipes and Drums.
Early in 2005 I traveled to Scotland with the University of Southern Mississippi marching band and got to perform with them in the Edinburgh Easter Festival. The weather was cold and rainy and my fingers were like led weights, but I think the performance went OK despite a couple of squeaks. I also got to do some piping up on Arthur's Seat above Edinburgh and at Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. It was pretty cool.
Also that spring I began lessons via phone with John Cairns of Ontario Canada. I was inspired by a few other pipers here in the South who have also done the same. Immediately I began to note a difference in my pipng and tuning. And it felt good to finally have someone to be accountable to for what I am playing.
Late in 2005 I moved back to Fort Worth, Texas - my other home - to be near family and to work on my solo piping. In 2004 I had completed my music degree and later that year my emlpoyment at the University of Southern Mississippi had ended, so I felt it was a good time for a change of scenery and a chance for new opportunities. I began that winter to work on my new competition material for my first season in grade 3 contests. I also started to branch out in my bagpipe performance and teaching exploits. Though the decision to leave Mississippi and the Hub City Pipes and Drums was a difficult one, I believed that the Lord had led me to this place for study and preparation for the future.
In the summer of 2006 I had the opportunity to travel to Ontario, Canada to have a week of face-to-face lessons with John Cairns. It was a great chance for us both to get better in sync on what my issues and needs as a student are.
I met up with Matthew, who was also up for lessons and he had the chance to compete in a coupld of PPBSO (Pipers and Pipe Band Association of Ontario) contests. It was very enlightening. Therer are so many more pipers up there adn the stadnard of play is very high. It pushed me to my limits and though I didn't win any prizes, I learned a lot, mostly about how far I have to go.
We also got to go to a 78th Frasers rehearsal with John one evening. Just to be that close to such fine piping and drumming was a treat. Listening to one of the top pipe bands in the world practicing is better than most performances we'll ever hear. They rehearse outside the back door of a Toronto-area pub where we all hung out for a pint after, kinda like after a Hub City practice! After that week of nothing but piping I was glad for the next three days I spent in Toronto with a friend recoviring from the all the hard work.
When I look back on how it has all happened, I know I am truly blessed and that considering the odds, the first years of my piping career have been a success. The calling and the passion I feel are hard to explain, the way it came out of nowhere and had me hooked the first time I made a noise on the practice chanter. I am thankful to family and friends who have stuck by me and listened to me talk about piping, driven me to events, listened to me practice scales on the chanter and exercises on the pipes. I feel like I am standing at the beginning of an incredible journey that will go far beyond the pride of weairing a kilt or the thrill of playing with a band or the satisfaction of winning a medal. I hope to have something I can pass on and share, something which the people I love will ask me to do simply because they know I love to do it. And I hope one day I will aquire the skill to communicate what I feel in what I play and that it can cause joy wherever I go and wherever I pipe.
Virginia R. Smith
Updated February 2006
