Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1997–1998
Scottish Bagpiping:
John Massie and Wes Hallam
Scottish pipe major John Massie and his apprentice
Wes Hallam, both of Las Vegas, worked together
for a second year in the apprenticeship program to help
Wes progress to more technically difficult tunes and
techniques. Wes entered several competitions in the
novice category after his first year of intensive study, and
says they were good experiences, if only for the things
he learned from his mistakes. John says he practiced too
much just before one contest, and his reeds got wet and
“died on him.” “You can’t expect to walk in and win
your first time,” John says philosophically.
“Eventually when you’re reasonably seasoned the
pipe becomes an extension of your own body,” he continues.
“You never feel that you’re playing pipes. And
that takes a long while to develop, it really does. A lot
of practice, somebody telling you what to watch for, it
doesn’t come natural. You hear some of these people s
say, ‘Oh, I’m, self taught,’ and as soon as they say that,
oh, I wince, don’t tell me that. Because it’s not an instrument
that you can learn yourself properly. It’s got a
history, it’s got a lot of pride. It’s a difficult instrument
to play and master, no arguments about that.”
This year John has moved Wes to what he calls
“heavier-weighted” tunes, with more complex structures
and fingering. He lets the student select the tunes
he wants to learn. “I play them and then what he does,
he selects one, and if I think he’s capable of handling
that particular piece then that’s the one he’ll get. If
I feel it’s a wee bit too heavy for him, then we’ll give
him something in between to build up to that particular
level, then we’ll do it. You find, it’s the same with
anything, that if you like that particular piece of music,
you’ll learn it a lot quicker. If you find yourself a piece of
music you don’t like, then you start to fight it, and you
never learn it properly, ‘cause you don’t want to play it.
The same as anything else.” It’s a simple but effective
and long-proven theory of teaching.
Just learning to breathe properly in playing the pipes
is an art in itself. And breathing techniques for the
practice chanter, an oboe-like instrument, and the full
pipes are completely different because the pipes require
control of both the lungs and the arm. According to
John, “When you go to the pipe, it’s got to be a controlled
breathing, it’s not just you take a great big breath
and you blow up the bag. That arm comes down while
you’re taking your breath, and to maintain the pressure
on the four reeds that are sounding [the chanter and
three drones], you’ve got to blow them back up again.
That’s what we call erratic blowing, if you’ve taken a big
deep breath and you’re blowing it and your arm’s moving
up and down, first thing that happens, your drones
go out. Instead of getting a steady hum, you get wavering.
If you blow too easy, then it stops and goes flat. So
the blowing the bag is
quite a high percentage
of the sound.
Wes surely has years
more of learning on the
pipes, a fact he rationalizes
with an old saying,
“seven years to a piper
and seven generations to
a master.” John laughs,
“that’s an apprenticeship
and a half!”
John Massie
John Massie and Wes Hallam
play on their practice chanters.
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