No More Frozen Pipes: Good Bagpiping Warms It Up 2013 by Vince Janoski

No more do pipers hibernate like bears in the winter months of the eastern USA. As winter wanes and spring waxes anew, there are a slew of opportunities to warm the ears with great live bagpiping, warm the fingers and start off your 2013 competition season, or warm your brain with workshops and lessons. Here [...]

Bagpiping New Year’s Resolution Week 2013 by Vince Janoski

Happy New Year! This week is Bagpiping New Year’s Resolution week at Pipehacker. A good way to kick off the first week of the new year is to take stock of your bagpiping achievements and goals and plan for a bigger and better year. There a plenty of helpful posts here at Pipehacker to help [...]

Pipehacker Tip: Create Your Bagpipe Practice Infographic by Vince Janoski

Do you know what it is you spend your time on? Previously, I’ve talked about treating your bagpiping like finance and money and taking stock of your intangible assets. Well, also like finance, you also must take stock of your spending if you are to see where your money goes. Like money, time is an [...]

The 5 Best Recording Devices for Musicians by Vince Janoski

The Bullettproof Musician blog is a great place for performance advice and the psychological side of playing music. The latest post lists the five best music recording devices favored by readers. A great snap review of the best tools available to playing musicians. Pipehacker’s favorite, the Zoom H2, features third after the iPhone! You will [...]

The 3-Step Path to Better Bagpipe Goals: “Goal Chunking” by Vince Janoski

The fall and winter months are the perfect time for setting musical goals and developing and building skills to improve your bagpiping. Sometimes though, setting goals can be daunting and the day-to-day trappings of life distract us. We lose track and the work toward our goals, even if you eventually get there, seems never ending. [...]

Get Ready to Hack Your Piping with Dojo University’s Fall Lineup by Vince Janoski

Get ready for your fall bagpipe-gasm. Dojo University, the world’s first online piping school, has announced an autumn “semester” lineup with all drones a-blazin’. The instructor list views like the best of piping summer schools smashed together. And all in the “off-season” from the comfort of your ain hame. The fall and winter months are [...]

Bagpiping and the Search for Meaning by Vince Janoski

The poet John Keats once described the ideal state of the psyche as negative capability—the ability “of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Which brings to mind another quote by Gilbert Chesterton: “If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly.” Chesterton was a staunch advocate [...]

Hack Your Learning: 5 Places to Expand Your Music Education for Free by Vince Janoski

Those of us who try hard at this Highland bagpipe thing for a decent length of time will realize that it is not enough to simply consider oneself a “piper.” If you are to keep making significant progress, you must consider yourself a “musician.” Learning how to play the Highland bagpipes can make you a [...]