This week on Dojo U’s Friday Strike-In Q&A, Andrew and Carl tackle a wide range of piping questions – from chanter choices and reed behaviour to rhythm fundamentals, travel tips, and getting the most out of your Dojo membership. Here’s what we cover this week:

Should you be messing with your chanter reeds?   

This week, Andrew and Jim discuss the pros and cons of reed manipulation — pinching, licking, shaving, bridling, and everything in between. Are these habits actually helping your playing, or just creating more problems?  

Reed tweaks can feel like quick fixes. But as Andrew and Jim explore, most of them are temporary, inconsistent, and quietly destructive. Drawing on personal experience (and a few cautionary tales), they unpack why so many pipers reach for manipulation in the first place — and what to do instead.  

Here’s what we cover in this episode: 

This week on Dojo U’s Friday Strike-In, Andrew flies solo to answer a wide range of student questions, from solo playing tips to tenor reed management, pitch standards, finding a practice space after moving, and more.

Here’s what we cover this week:

Getting better at piping isn’t about chasing every new piece of gear — it’s about understanding how your instruments, your ears, and your environment all work together.

This week on Dojo U’s Friday Strike-In, Andrew and Carl tackle student questions on cane drone reeds, ear training, synthetic chanter reeds, competition judging, and more practical piping topics. 

Here's what we cover this week:

Rhythm isn’t just about keeping time. It’s about understanding how music moves – and learning to control that movement note by note, beat by beat.

Welcome back to part 2 of our episodes about piping's most fundamental skill: rhythm. Andrew and Jim continue exploring the foundations of rhythmic understanding for bagpipers. They dig into how rhythm actually works in practice: how beats organize music, how tempo shapes space between notes, and why so many piping technique problems are really timing problems in disguise.

If you’re serious about improving your timing, we'll give you a better understanding of how rhythm underpins everything from basic marches to the most complex piping repertoire.

Want to learn how to master rhythm yourself? Check out our Rhythm for Bagpipers course: https://www.pipersdojo.university/rhythm-for-bagpipers

And you can check out the Victor Wooten video we mention in this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X1fhVLVF_4

Here’s what we cover in this episode:

Getting your setup right isn’t about endlessly changing gear – it’s about understanding what actually affects your sound and comfort.

This week on Dojo U's Friday Strike-In, Andrew and Carl answer students' burning piping questions, covering everything from bag choice and posture to competition judging and drone reed lifespan.

Here’s what we cover this week:

What is grade 5 actually for?

This week, Andrew and Jim answer a seemingly innocuous listener question about whether grade 5 bands should use hard reeds or easy reeds. As they discuss the pros and cons of blowing stability and reed strength, they launch into a deeper discussion of growth, retention, culture, and why so many struggling bands are trying to force competitive intensity at exactly the wrong stage. 

If you’re running a Grade 5 band, building a beginner program, or wondering why progression feels like wading through molasses, the future of your organisation won't be built by squeezing more out of a small group. It’s built by creating a space where a lot of beginners want to show up and keep coming back.

Here’s what we cover this week:
00:00 – “Primordial Soup”
02:23 – The Listener Question: Hard Reeds vs. Easy Reeds
03:50 – The Core Question: How Does a Grade 5 Band Become Grade 4?
06:00 – Losing Star Players
08:00 – Why Individual Development Is the Only Path Forward
10:30 – Fun as the Primary Objective
12:30 – Relaxing Standards at the Beginner Level
14:30 – The T-Ball Analogy: Exploration Before Competition
19:30 – When Intensity Actually Becomes Appropriate
23:50 – Quantity Over Quality at the Entry Level
24:30 – Geographic Patterns: Why Some Regions Produce Top Bands
29:30 – The Cop-Out of Forcing Hard Reeds
31:00 – Scarcity Mindset vs. Building Abundance
33:30 – How School Programs Change the Numbers
35:30 – The BHAG Question: What If You Had 100 Beginners?
39:00 – Targeted Coaching for the Motivated Few
40:30 – The Bake Sale Metaphor and Creating the Right Environment
43:00 – Avoiding the Grade 5 Intensity Trap

Rhythm isn’t just something you add to music. It’s the thing that makes music possible in the first place. In this episode, Andrew and Jim step back from fingerwork and technique to tackle something far more fundamental: rhythm as the organising force of all music, and even of time itself. What starts as a discussion about rhythm for pipers quickly becomes a deeper exploration of pulse, perception, subdivision, and why so many piping problems are actually time problems in disguise. This is part one of a foundational series that reframes rhythm not as a mechanical skill, but as a way of understanding how music moves, breathes, and exists. Here’s what we cover this week: 00:00 – Introduction & a Timely Segue 02:26 – What Is Rhythm for Bagpipers, Really? 03:14 – Music as the Art of Time (Not Just Sound) 04:28 – Why Sound Cannot Exist Without Time 08:52 – Piobaireachd and the Subtleties of Time 12:20 – Introducing the Rhythm Course 13:34 – Defining the Big Three: Beat, Tempo, Rhythm 15:03 – Audio Example: Active Child – “Hanging On” 16:49 – What Is a Beat? Definitions and Real-World Examples 21:52 – Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (and Why It Matters) 23:35 – Subdivisions and the Infinite Scale of Rhythm 25:00 – Frequency, Pitch, and the Fifth Interval 28:19 – Bagpipe Example: Angus MacColl 31:52 – Why Playing with Audience Clapping Is So Hard 36:00 – Spotting “Time Problems” Disguised as Musical Problems 37:15 – Victor Wooten, the Metronome, and Feel vs. Precision Check out the Victor Wooten video we mention in this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X1fhVLVF_4

Improving your piping isn't about chasing quick fixes; it's about rebuilding your playing from the ground up.

This week in our Q&A session, Andrew and Carl tackle some common (and misunderstood) questions in piping, from drone reed warm-up and finger speed to pibroch traditions and playing with other instruments.

Here’s what we cover this week: