Dunshire Bagpipe Forum 5/5/06

My wife must love me. Don't know why! (my comments about practicing around the family)

Doing scales and exercises on the chanter would drive my whole family crazy. When I started learning tunes, things settled down a bit. Then I went to the pipes and I could evacuate everyone from our home in about 30 seconds. Once I started to squeeze some tunes out, again things settled down - oh, I bought musician's ear plugs for the gang as well.I was still heavily restricted on practice times, but I was tolerated. My youngest son (11) started on the snare drum about 2 years ago, and so this added to the din in our home (for some reason he was tolerated better than me). Now my wife has started drumming (I think she was finally reached the conclusion that if you can't beat them, join them) and suddenly, I'm able to practice whenever I want. In fact, my wife comes to my defense now when the kids complain about it.