Bagpipes for beginners – Jonneke Jorissen & Menno Wester
An introduction
Always wanted to play the bagpipes? This is your chance! This group is intended for beginners. The instrument will be discovered with the pleasure of playing being paramount. The course content consists of technique and maintenance of the instrument, fingerings and blowing technique. All this is done using some simple melodies.
No instrument? No problem! We have a number of instruments available for this course, which can be borrowed by the beginners.
The Hurdy Gurdy and Bagpipe Foundation focuses on bagpipes that are traditionally from France, Belgium and the Netherlands. These bagpipes can often be seen in paintings by old masters such as Pieter Breughel, Jeroen Bosch or Jan Steen. Nowadays, these bagpipes can often be heard played by bands such as Naragonia or Faun.
Level of playing
None, this workshop is for beginners
Special offer for beginners: preparation morning on Saturday 19th September
To get more out of the beginner groups, we offer participants an extra preparation morning for free: During this morning, participants will receive their rental instrument. Furthermore, participants will receive an explanation of the instrument, initial instructions and homework with which they can work at home prior to the weekend course. This morning is from 10:30 to 12:30 and takes place at the same location as the workshop day.
About Jonneke Jorissen
Jonneke Jorissen has been playing cornemuse since the age of 13 and has since then played in multiple projects and bands. Her home base is the band Chardon, in which she plays contemporary traditional French dance music.
In the beginner bagpipe course we will look at fundamentals, and also play a polyphonic melody right away. You will return home with enough knowledge and experience to continue practicing on our own.
About Menno Wester
“Why do I play the bagpipe? No clue. It’s something I already wanted to do as a child, I went looking during my studies and thus one day (around 2005?) ended up in a bagpipe builder’s workshop to try out an instrument. This got a bit out of hand over the years.”
And thus it all began.
He liked the folk world and these days he teaches, organizes a lot for the Hurdy-Gurdy and Bagpipe Foundation, helps out as a stage manager at Boombal Festival, and is responsible for the balfolk concerts in Nijmegen. He has held bagpipe lessons at various festivals for many years. At these so-called “instrument try-out sessions”, visitors can take part in a short introductory workshop.
How does that sound?
Below is a video of a beginner workshop presentation: with only a day of playing, they showed us what that sounds like.