Bagpipe Essentials Masterclass: Master your Birl for Speed and Consistency

[@channingdodson6133]

Great video, Jori! For the first decade or so of playing, I played the tap-drag-style birl because that's what my first teacher taught me. I also had some lessons with Allan MacDonald during that time, and I noticed he played the birl very differently, but I could never figure it out either. (Initially, I thought he did a double-tap, because that's what it looked like viewed from head-on, but I suspect it was more of a double-sweep. In any case, I've only seen one or two other great pipers who played it that way. I actually had Jim McGillivray's "Rhythmic Fingerwork" book as well, and I briefly tried to learn the "7" from it, but I wasn't doing it correctly. It got to the point where birls became a major psychological block for me as a player, and I basically resigned myself to thinking that I would never play birls well--playing them cleanly from bottom-hand notes was almost impossible--and, consequently, I would never play at the high standard I aspired to, period. Despite having the great fortune of studying with a few world-class players over the years, none of them brought it up when listening to me play, and I foolishly never thought to ask for help. Perhaps I could have saved myself years of frustration... It wasn't until the advent of KZbin that I happened totally by chance to stumble on a video similar to this one (can't remember the piper's name now... Someone up in Nova Scotia, I think). I immediately picked up my chanter, played the seven correctly, and I couldn't believe it! I started playing through tunes that had frustrated me for years, and the birls practically played themselves. It was as if an enormous physical and psychological block had just suddenly lifted. For any beginners watching this, what Jori's talking about here is the real deal. Watch this video a bunch of times, start slow, get it 100% clean on the chanter first before trying on the pipes, and I guarantee you will be amazed.

[@WilliamMcIvor-s4p]

Girl from low hand notes help would be great thanks

[@CameronStewart-c4o]

What about learning the birl wrong? I can no longer play a birl because I learned it wrong and subsequently played it that way for the duration. It was such a wrongly performed strike that I can no longer play one because my form was wrong. Now my only choice is to learn the right way of playing it and my little finger can barely move.