What the Playing the Bagpipes Taught Me About Craftsmanship

I wanted to play the Great Highland bagpipes for as long as I can remember.

There is something about the instrument that resists easy explanation to people who didn't grow up hearing it. The sound is simultaneously mournful and triumphant. It demands space — physically, acoustically, emotionally. You cannot play the bagpipes quietly or halfheartedly. The instrument doesn't allow it.

When I was in my early 30s, with young children at home and the kind of financial and professional obligations that crowd out most discretionary pursuits, I found a tutor. I was serious about it. I was going to learn.

A few months in, my tutor was in a car accident. The lessons stopped. So did my pursuit of the pipes — not by choice, but by circumstance. Life had other plans, as it usually does.

It would be three more decades before I picked up the practice chanter again.

The Second Attempt at the Pipes

In my 60s, with more time available and the dream still intact, I found a local pipe band and began again. I learned what every beginning piper learns: that the bagpipes are among the most technically demanding instruments in existence, that they are finicky and temperamental and require constant maintenance and adjustment, and that genuine mastery requires something most adults are not accustomed to giving a new pursuit — daily practice, sustained over years, with consistent application that doesn't allow for long gaps or casual commitment.

I also learned something about myself that I had suspected but never fully tested.

I did not have enough time — or, if I am honest, enough desire — to become a great bagpiper.

I could become adequate. I could learn the fingering, develop a reasonable tone, play recognizable tunes, and stand in a pipe band without embarrassing myself or my fellow pipers too much. I could enjoy the instrument, the community, and the experience of making music with other people who love Celtic tradition as much as I do.

But greatness? Mastery? The kind of playing that makes someone stop and listen and feel something they didn't expect to feel?

That would require a different choice than the one I was willing to make.

What Playing the Bagpipes Taught Me

I have built a 25-year professional practice around a concept I call Marketing Craftsmanship® — the belief that genuine expertise, applied with discipline and precision, produces outcomes that casual effort never can. It is a standard I hold myself and my clients to in every engagement.

The bagpipes taught me something that deepened my understanding of what that standard actually requires.

Excellence in any endeavor — professional or personal — depends on two things that are not as commonly paired as they should be. The first is love for the pursuit itself: the genuine enthusiasm that keeps you returning to something difficult when the easier path would be to stop. The second is the willingness to devote the time required to constantly improve — not just to practice, but to practice with the specific intention of getting better, of identifying the gap between where you are and where you want to be and closing it systematically.

Without both, you will not master the craft. Love without time produces passion that plateaus. Time without love produces competence without soul. The true craftsman — in any discipline — brings both, consistently, over a sustained period that most people are not willing to commit to.

The other thing the pipes taught me is that true craftsmen are never satisfied with whatever level of excellence they have achieved. The great pipers I have played alongside and watched perform are not resting on their abilities. They are always listening for the note that was slightly off, always working on the grace note that didn't land cleanly, always finding the next thing to improve. Mastery, in their understanding, is not a destination. It is a direction.

The Honest Conclusion

I am a barely competent bagpiper. On a good day, perhaps slightly better than that. I am not a craftsman of the instrument — not by my own or any other individual's definition of that word.

And I have made peace with that.

One of the things that clarity about craftsmanship gives you is the ability to make honest choices about where to direct the limited time and energy that genuine excellence requires. We cannot be craftsmen at everything. The life that is full enough to be interesting is also full enough to require priorities. Some pursuits deserve the full commitment. Others deserve our enjoyment, our participation, and our honest acknowledgment that adequate is enough.

For me, the bagpipes are in the second category. My professional work is firmly in the first.

What the pipes gave me — beyond the genuine pleasure of playing Celtic music with a community of people who love it as much as I do — is a lived understanding of what mastery actually costs. That understanding makes me a better advisor to the boutique firm principals I work with, many of whom are confronting the same question in their own professional lives: what am I willing to commit to completely, and what am I willing to enjoy without demanding excellence of myself?

The answer to that question shapes everything that follows.

If You've Ever Thought About Learning the Pipes

A few practical things worth knowing, from someone who has been through the process twice:

You can start at any age. Many pipers begin later in life, when time and intention are more available. The instrument doesn't care how old you are.

You don't need prior musical training. The bagpipes use only nine notes. Reading pipe music is more accessible than most instruments.

Find a local pipe band. Most bands offer free lessons to beginners and welcome people who are genuinely interested in learning. The community you'll find there is part of what makes the pursuit worth it.

You'll start on the practice chanter — a smaller, quieter instrument similar to a recorder. Expect six months to a year before you're ready to move to the full pipes. There is no shortcut.

You need to practice every day. Not occasionally. Not when you feel like it. Every day. The pipes are a lifestyle choice, not a hobby you can pick up and put down.

And know — before you commit — that adequate is a legitimate destination if that's the choice you make. The craftsmen among us will always be worth listening to. The rest of us can enjoy the music we make and be honest about what we chose.

That honesty and self-awareness, it turns out, is its own form of craftsmanship.

Gordon G. Andrew is the Managing Partner of Highlander Consulting Inc., a Princeton, NJ-based advisory firm that helps boutique professional services and B2B advisory firms convert expertise into the credibility and market engagement that drives business development. When not advising clients, he can occasionally be found in a kilt.