Bagpipe Underground

Great question. After several false starts, and putting it off for many years, you begin to realize you are running out of time. Family duties and time spent at work are on the decline, much like one's health. A few health scares help get you motivated. So a year ago, at 64, I started learning the bagpipes. I had never played an instrument longer than one week's worth of lessons. Those lessons included guitar, ukulele, violin and piano. I was musically inept. This was not the case for bagpipes. So when someone asks whether they are too old to learn, I have strong feelings about the reply. Here is my one-year report.

The first question is, why the bagpipes? Well, why not? Bagpipes show up on just about every list of the hardest instruments to learn. Why pick something easy? If it were easy, everybody would be playing it.

The fact is that for old guys (and gals, I suspect) it just takes longer. Learning takes longer, and memorizing a tune takes longer still. First you want me to learn the instrument, then you want me to memorize the tune, then you want me to march and play that tune with hundreds or thousands of people watching. Are you crazy? Why? There is something in the music. I can feel it in my bones and it won't go away. That feeling has reared up in me many times over 64 years. I guess I finally just took solid action.

I started by joining a band. They were not easy to find. It was a great way into the bagpipe world and I am having a blast there, but the band did not give me everything I wanted or needed. I felt like my time horizon was shorter than everyone else's. I want to learn now. Today. Not next month. After an extensive search into the piping world, online and off, I finally found an instructor. We currently meet every one to two weeks. Finally, a path forward.

After one year I can proudly play four tunes with confidence: "Amazing Grace," "Ode to Joy," "The Minstrel Boy," and "Happy Birthday." Sure, I know you did more in one year. But this is me, and I'm working at my speed.

So, are you too old to learn? It is a fair question. A very experienced piper I know once told me that if you are over 50, why bother, it is too late and too hard. He is right that it is not easy. He is wrong about "why bother." My four tunes disprove his theory. If I learn nothing else over the next four years, I will still be ahead of the 99 percent of people who never play a note, and I am satisfied with that.

If you are still reading this, I think you have to find your "why." Are you just trying to learn a few tunes for a party, a funeral, or St. Patrick's Day? Do you want to join a pipe band, perform in a parade, or simply belong to a group that practices together every week? If your goal is to eventually win a solo world championship, sorry to be the one to tell you, but that ship has probably sailed.

So am I too old? Too old for what I want? No. I still have many tunes I plan on learning: "Country Roads," "Mull of Kintyre," "America the Beautiful," "Highland Cathedral," "Danny Boy," etc.

How about you? If you started late, tell us your story and what advice you would give to a "too late to learn piper." Send it through the Ask a Question form and we will read every one. Perhaps we start our own band: the OPB (Old People Bagpiping).

If you are thinking about next steps, find a teacher sooner than I did. Do You Actually Need a Teacher?

The World Pipe Band Championships take place on a Saturday afternoon at Glasgow Green, and the stream goes out free to anyone with a connection. A Scottish afternoon is not an afternoon everywhere else. Across most of North America it arrives before sunrise.

So people set an alarm and make an occasion out of it.

In Dunedin, Florida, the Scottish American Society opened the Scottish Cultural Center at five in the morning on August 15 and put Glasgow Green on the screen. Their own listing says it without apology: "Beginning at 5 am (yep, it's UK time!)." Breakfast came out at 7:30. So did a Bloody Mary and mimosa bar.

Dunedin is the one with a public ticket page, and it is far from the only one. Most of what we saw this year happened in band halls, clubs and living rooms with no listing at all. Pyramid Shriners Pipes and Drums in Stratford, Connecticut. Brian Boru Pipes and Drums in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The Minnesota Piobaireachd Society in St. Paul. Start times clustered between five and eight in the morning, and the shape of the thing was remarkably consistent: coffee, food, arguments about the judging before a single sheet had been posted, and quiet side bets on who would win, place and show.

One notable event was that of Jack Lee, the retired pipe sergeant, and his family in British Columbia, watching his winning Simon Fraser University Pipe Band bring another world title home to Canada. Lee stepped back last year after five decades with SFU, and when the band took Grade 1 for the first time since 2009 he watched it happen from home in Surrey, eight time zones from the field.

A contest that used to reach the rest of the world weeks later, through results lists and secondhand accounts, now reaches it live, at whatever hour live happens to be. The response has not been to watch alone. It has been to find other people and put breakfast on.

If you missed it this year, the stream is free and it comes back next August. Set the alarm.