…we went looking for this place. It was not there.
Bagpipe Underground is a community driven navigator for curious beginners and other bagpipe addicts.
When you decide you want to learn the pipes, the questions arrive in waves. Where do you find lessons. What gear do you actually need, and when. How long does it really take to get on the full pipes. What books are worth reading. Which podcasts. Should you join a band, and if so, how do you find one. Are competition bands a good fit for a beginner, or a mistake. Who in the modern piping world is worth listening to. And what is the history of the bagpipe.
You can find answers to most of those questions on the internet. They are scattered across forum threads, vendor blogs, instructor sites offering a few free sample lessons, regional association pages, and the occasional Reddit comment. None of those sources is wrong. They just are not in the same place, written for the same reader, or held to the same standard.
Bagpipe Underground is our attempt to build that place. A single, honest starting point that respects the bagpipe, the player, and the bagpiping community.
I wanted to play this thing yesterday. Full immersion on a topic is my go-to standard. So it was with bagpiping. The history. The gear. The books. The tunes. The bands. The voices in the industry worth following. I was all in. The site became the collection. With the help of friends and experts I made along the way, I found my band. I found my instructor. Life is good. Together we built this site so the next person who hears the pipes calling may find a smoother path.
Jay
Principles we apply when deciding what to publish, what to recommend, and what to point you elsewhere for.
We stop where a real teacher should pick up. We can offer suggestions on where to go next, but the rest is up to you.
Our recommendations of videos, books, podcasts, and stories are curated by our readers. Any paid placements will never be without a clear disclosure.
Your questions deserve thoughtful answers. The articles are longer than they have to be because the questions are bigger than they look.
The pipe world keeps moving, and so will this. New articles, new resources, new stories, all pulled forward by what readers tell us is missing.
A pathway of seven beginner articles plus a roadmap of what is still being written. Starts at "Should I even do this?" and ends at the doorway of a real teacher.
Take the Pathway →Recommended podcasts, summer schools and academies, books worth keeping, and a guide to finding a pipe band near you. Two more sub-pages (gear, videos) are in the works.
Browse Resources →Six entries across essays, profiles, and threads. The history of the instrument, the people who carried it, and a few myths corrected along the way.
Read the Stories →A 90-day "Coming Up" board, a calendar of major US Highland Games and Festivals, and pointers to the regional pipe band associations that own the source-of-truth schedules.
See What's Happening →We will not ship those pages until they are honest. If you arrive at a Coming Soon card and wish it were live, that is the most useful feedback you can give us. See resources.html and the beginner pathway for the current map.
If you know about a podcast, school, book, band, event, or piece of writing that ought to be on this site, tell us. If you spot something we got wrong, tell us that too. If you are an experienced piper and our beginner-facing copy makes you wince, especially tell us that.
Each Resources sub-page carries a Suggest-a-X form. Podcasts, schools, books, and pipe bands all have their own slot for "you missed one."
Open Resources →The Events page has a dedicated Suggest-an-Event form for Highland Games, festivals, and pipe band gatherings we should be tracking.
Open Events →We send a note when there is something worth a note. New articles, community highlights, beginner resources. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Subscribe on the Homepage →Got a real piper question that deserves a real answer? Tell us. We may turn it into a post. No question is too basic, and the best ones are usually the ones nobody is asking out loud.
Ask on the Homepage →