audiot

…well i did. actually i even own such a thing since i was about 16. saw an ad in the paper and a day later i had bagpipes, yay. the thing is, they are so ridiculously hard to play, it’s unbelievable. you need to have lungs as huge as a whale’s. the bag has to be filled up with air all the time. if there’s not enough pressure in there, the pipes just fall all over you. and imagine, there’s a bag with four holes in it and you need to keep it packed with air at any moment. i never figured that one out, probably never will. the blowing-air-into-the-bag is kind of independent from the sounds because you press the air out of the bag (through the pipes and the flute) with your arm. now when i tried this – no matter how much pressure i had in the bag – as soon as i pressed with my arm, the bag was empty within a few seconds, even with me hyperventilating. and the biggest challenge is to not laugh while this instrument of hell makes it’s startup-moaning-sounds…

i remembered this episode of my teenhood because of a youtube-video i found by accident. nothing special, it’s a scene from ‘Friends’ where Ross plays the bagpipes – and if I may say so: he’s doing really well. and i’m dead serious…

so here goes:

and if you ever, ever get the chance, you have to try it. you haven’t lived until you did, guaranteed!