![]() He enrolled because his mother wanted him to. Francis DeSales High School junior, had been a student and piper since the sixth grade. “She started at a really young age (beginning at 8 ½),” Mackie says, largely because her brother, Robbie, a St. Gabbi Gualtieri, 10, a Westerville resident who is a student at Clintonville Academy, is already playing her bagpipe, though she briefly took the free chanter lessons. Often, students are anxious and get their instrument sooner. He believes that’s enough time for a student to memorize five tunes, also important for a piper who doesn’t use sheet music when playing. It can take up to a year until Mackie feels a student is ready for his or her parents to invest $1,200 in a bagpipe, an instrument that’s not available in this area to rent for lessons, Mackie says. “Five minutes will turn into 10, and 10 to 20, and pretty soon it will be an hour.” “I don’t want you to feel like you have to practice an hour a day,” says Mackie. He’s “old school,” he says, believing that bagpipes should be fun. Mackie tells new students they don’t need to practice the chanter more than five minutes a day. The idea is for students to spend several months learning, gradually increasing their skill on the chanter before playing a bagpipe. It has since become the band’s unofficial headquarters. Mackie backs those with private lessons at his home for $20 an hour, “a bargain for music lessons,” he notes.īecause the band played at Central College’s functions, the former pastor, Richard Ellsworth, invited it to practice at the church. Hence, the beginning of the free weekly lessons, the only ones for teenagers in central Ohio. The solution: find younger players by giving free lessons and, eventually, organize a pipe band not targeted at national and international competition, as was the original group. In 2002, as he was preparing to take over the band, Mackie surveyed the membership and thought, “Holy cow. Mackie, a bagpiper for at least 20 years, is pipe major of the band, which was formed in January 1997 as a competition group. The band music wafts in the hallways and backdrops the voices of kids playing basketball and meeting-goers coming and going. Their sounds are muted in contrast to the band’s bombastic bagpipes and drums, which will fill the church for the next two hours. ![]() Wednesdays mark the weekly rehearsal sessions of the Cyril Scott Pipe Band, and each rehearsal is preceded by a class for young and aspiring bagpipers.Īs they meet for a 45-minute session with teacher Glenn Mackie, the students use a chanter, a flute-like instrument, to learn the finger moves involved in making music on a bagpipe. ![]() Each Wednesday evening, the hectic hubbub in Central College Presbyterian Church includes a handful of teenagers huddled to quietly learn to play a loud instrument. ![]()
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