Piping lessons resume this Saturday upstairs at the General Stewart Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion #4.
According to piper David Kaminski, the Legion Pipe Band was resurrected over 20 years ago. “Pipe bands come into favour and people get bored, move away or die. Bands live and die over time.”
Over the years, the band has grown in size and has shrunk and has grown in size again, he adds.
Typically, the band would rehearse during the week on the upper level of the Legion and on Saturdays Kaminski would teach beginners how to start piping.
A set of bag pipes essentially has four pipes. It includes three drones with a fixed pitch. And there’s one pipe, the chanter, that has holes in it and a player can pick out different notes on it.
“When a beginner starts, they start on a practice chanter. It’s a small version of the melody pipe found on a bagpipe. It’s a lot quieter and a lot more humane to play at home. Pipes are very loud,” Kaminski explains.
When you’re an absolute beginner, Kaminski says, it takes a fair bit of time to learn the basic fingering of the notes. Historically, beginners came at the beginning of the lesson and more advanced learners would join later in the session. “By the end of their tuition, they were already getting started on the pipes. The goal was to shuttle them off to the band.”
“They would learn tunes the band was learning and working on,” he notes.
Kaminski says he has had practice chanters donated over the years, so with an absolute beginner he would lend them practice chanters with reeds, if they were available. A practice that continues to this day. “They could try it for a few weeks and if they liked it and wanted to carry on, they could buy their own and return the practice chanter to be used again with someone else.”
“I would tell them not to spend any money. The last thing you would want to do is spend $1,500 on a spanking brand-new set of bagpipes only to discover you didn’t like playing them. That’s true of any musical instrument. You don’t spend $7,000 on a piano after learning your basic scales and deciding it’s not for you,” says Kaminski.
The music being taught is Celtic, similar to the type of music you’d hear at a parade or during a Remembrance Day ceremony. But, broader exposure to different types of pipe music is also encouraged, including jigs, music played on fiddles or at barn dances.
“It’s not the most popular instrument,” says Kaminski. “Everybody wants to be a rock or country star and play lead guitar.”
“It’s a person with a different taste that shows up wanting to play bagpipes,” he adds.
When Kaminski was a kid, he was in cadets and remembers marching in Remembrance Day parades behind a pipe band. “It was always interesting.”
“I went onto university and never thought much about it and I got married and had kids. We spent a year in Scotland, the whole family. My kids took an interest in Highland dancing, so I started hearing bagpipe recordings around the house all the time,” says Kaminski. “That’s how I got roped into doing it.”
Kaminski also plays acoustic guitar, bass, mandolin, a bit of fiddle and he is learning how to play bluegrass banjo.
Dates for the free drop-in lessons are also set for Sept. 21 and 28 and Oct. 5, 12, 19 and 26. Beginners start at 1 p.m., with more advanced students starting after 1:30 p.m.
“If you’re an adult beginner, you don’t have to feel obliged to join the Legion, although we would encourage it,” adds Kaminski.
Visit online at facebook.com/lethbridgepipeband for more information.
