The top five most difficult instruments to play

Tucked away close to London Bridge, the Mudlark Pub might normally take a while to find. Tonight, however, you could locate it blindfold. Upstairs, as out of place as a troupe of morris dancers round the back of Glasgow Central Station, five pipers are playing their hearts out. Even with the windows closed the decibel levels are substantial. They are Manawatu, a Scottish pipe band from New Zealand, whose unison playing is so precise that it sounds like a single instrument. Towards the end they march downstairs into the street where they do a moonlit lap of honour, watched by a slightly bemused-looking crowd.

The Great Highland Bagpipe is an instrument that inspires almost fanatical levels of passion, despite the fact that most players don’t even make a living from it. But it is a passion I want to share. And I’m not alone. Piping is on the up. In Scotland, new pipe bands are springing up, and even in London a growing demand has meant that organised classes for adults will start next month, apparently, for the first time since the 1930s. Run by the Scottish Piping Society of London, they will cost around £10 for two hours – probably the best-value music tuition in the capital.

Some students have Scottish roots. Others, like me, simply like the idea of a challenge. A competent violinist and pianist and basic recorder player, I’ve even dabbled in the ukulele. So why not tackle the bagpipes, I think, as I eye a YouTube performance by the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, the closest thing the piping world has to pin-ups? The 2007 winners of the BBC’s When Will I Be Famous?, they have teamed the bagpipe with electric guitars and keyboard, punching out dazzling arrangements of rock anthems, attracting new audiences and players in the process.

Adam Sanderson, the vice-president of the society, is swift to reduce my ambitions to more modest levels. “We get lots of calls from men who say, ‘I had a Scottish father and I want to learn the bagpipe in two weeks so I can play at my daughter’s wedding,’ ” he says. Other would-be pipers are emboldened by the rise of the SNP.

But nothing about the bagpipe is easy. The hand position is deceptively like the recorder yet, as Sanderson says, “halfway between and upside down”, and the tuning is based on a pre-Baroque myxolydian scale. Most woodwind instruments have a single or double reed. The bagpipe has four. Moisture can flatten the sound; warmth raise it. Simply achieving accurate tuning can be a minor miracle. Then there’s the chanter.

With just nine basic notes and no overblowing to extend the range, pipers use nifty fingerwork that gives the illusion of playing more notes than are actually possible. Modern technology makes life easier. Synthetic reeds keep their pitch for longer. Pipe bags now come with a Gore-Tex lining. And for the “wet” player there are moisture-control systems – boxes filled with absorbent cat litter.

To find out more about what’s involved, I go to the 2008 Pipe Band World Championships in Glasgow, where judges take just a day to work their way through more than 200 bands from as far away as Australia and Pakistan. It can seem like an inward-facing event. Literally so. As the bands play the marches, reels and strathspeys known as Ceòl Beag, or light music, they turn away from the audience, watching each other so they don’t drop a note.

“It gets under your skin,” says Alan McGeachie, who plays the pipes and is a drummer with the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band, 12 times winners in the world championships. “It’s in your blood. If you decide to leave, you think: ‘Thank God I’m away from it’, and suddenly it grabs you. It’ll be with you to your last day.”

Which is why, early one morning, I am in a rugby clubhouse in South London to get a preview lesson with Alasdair Smith, one of the instructors of the London piping classes. I’ve attempted to get to grips with the fingering, using a practice chanter to honking effect. Then I get to try out a full set of pipes – something that, in reality, no beginner would attempt for months. I blow into the bag like a breathalyser. Instead of using constant pressure to force the air into the drones and chanter, seamlessly topping up the reservoir of air as I go, the bagpipe “sirens” horribly. Only by blocking two of the three drones do I get near a continuous note.

Then Smith plays a piece from the bagpipe’s classical repertoire, developing into increasingly complex variations. Even to my ears, it’s light years away from my enamel-stripping efforts. Piping can become an all-consuming obsession, he says. “I wouldn’t want to sell it to anyone. It is enormously difficult and it’s a long journey, a striving for perfection. When you’re well tuned and well set up, it’s uniquely captivating. That’s what pipers are striving for.” Unfortunately for my neighbours, I’m beginning to have an inkling of what he means.

Lessons start on Sept 11 at Charlotte Sharman School, London SE11. www.scottishpipingsocietyoflondon.com

First buy the pipes

A beginner’s set (plastic chanter, reed, tutor book and CD-Rom) costs £36. A good quality but basic set of bagpipes costs £621 (including VAT)

Source: College of Piping shop www.college-of-piping.co.uk

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