Overview of The 5 Challenges

At the Dojo, we believe that forging common sense daily habits is a necessary prerequisite to attempting any other bagpiping goal.

Underpinning these habits are what we call the 11 Commandments of Mastery - 11 core concepts of musical mastery, which apply to every bagpiping school of thought, and will skyrocket your progress if you embrace them.

Here are five challenges anyone can do to jump-start or re-boot their piping - but beware! The results may shock you...

Challenge #1: The Immersion Challenge (Making Commandment 1 a Habit)

Immersion is the single greatest correlate to the success of any musician. If you're a Dojo student, refresh your memory in regards to immersion here. (Not a member yet? Join us!)

The Challenge:

For seven straight days, immerse yourself in bagpipe music for at least two hours. 

Immersion activities are mostly passive, simple and easy to partake in, and require little to no strain. Examples of immersion include (but are not limited to):

1. Listening to (high quality) bagpipe music. 
2. Listening to BBC Pipeline, or other high quality radio/podcast content.
3. Going to performances and/or ceilidhs where high quality piping can be heard, or streaming them when they’re available online. 
4. Surfing high quality piping content on YouTube.

Immersion is the only time in our piping lives where multitasking is perhaps acceptable (a great example of immersion might be driving and listening to piping at the same time, for example), and focus is not required! The big idea here is that we are soaking up high quality music as part of our daily lives. 

For this reason, some piping activities should not be considered ‘immersion’. Examples of what does not count:

• Bagpipe lessons
• Pipe band practice
• Dojo U live classes (although, turning on recordings of classes in the background while you do the dishes would be fine).
• Playing practice chanter or practicing on your pipes.

Obviously, all of these activities are good things. But! They are not immersion. Don’t count them towards your two hours each day. We’re starting small, remember? 

All I want you to do for this first challenge is to passively immerse yourself in bagpipe music for at least 2 hours, every day for 7 straight days. 

Challenge #2: The Daily Action Challenge (Making Commandment 2 a Habit)

Just like brushing your teeth for just a few minutes each day is the gateway to dental health, playing your pipes a just a bit each day (as opposed to sporadically) will be the key to your musical freedom. If you're a Dojo member, refresh your memory in regards to the importance of daily action here. (Not a member yet? Join us!)

The Challenge:

For seven straight days, play at least one tune on full pipes every day. 

Also, in addition to that, continue to immerse yourself in bagpipe music for at least two hours each day. 

A few notes about this challenge:

• If you’re a beginner not on pipes yet, you may use a practice chanter to play a tune a day. If you are on pipes, you must play the full pipes (not the practice chanter). 
• Don’t worry whatsoever about the quality of the tune that you play. This challenge is about developing the habit of playing a bit each day. We’ll develop great technique later once more important aspects of piping (like daily playing, for example) are habitualized. 
• Once you’ve played your single tune for the day, do not feel obligated to play for any particular length of time. If you feel inspired to play for an hour, great. If you really don’t have time for more than one tune, or just aren’t feeling it today, feel no shame or remorse in stopping here. The point of this is building the basic habit of playing daily. We’ll build up to longer sessions later (if we even particularly need to).
• You must do this small daily action plus continue to immerse yourself for at least 2 hours daily in order for this to count.

For this 2nd challenge, simply play one tune per day on full pipes while continuing to passively immerse yourself in bagpipe music for at least two hours. Do this every day for 7 straight days. 

Challenge #3: The Simple Tools Challenge (Making Commandment 3 a Habit)

Fancy gadgets and gear slow down your musical development. If you're a Dojo member, refresh your memory in regards to the importance of simple tools here. (Not a member yet? Join us!)

The Challenge:

While repeating challenge 2 for 7 more days, you will this time ensure your instrument complies with the bagpipe setup guidelines outlined in Commandment 3. 

For these 7 consecutive days: 

• Spend 2 hours passively immersing yourself in bagpipe culture, as outlined in Challenge 1.
• Play at least one tune each day on your bagpipes, as outlined in Challenge 2.
• Ensure your bagpipe uses a simple setup, as outlined in Commandment 3. 

It may take you some time to fully simplify your instrument. Perhaps you have a piece of gear or two to purchase, or you have to remove various complicating gizmos from inside your pipes. That’s fine. Take all the time you need. Simply continue your daily habits as if you were still doing the Daily Action Challenge. Then, once you have a simple bagpipe set up and ready to go, begin counting towards the 7 straight days of immersion/daily-action/simple-bagpipe required for this Simple Tools Challenge.

Challenge #4: Multitasking Prevention Challenge (Making Commandment 4 a Habit)

Multitasking doesn’t work, especially if you’re trying to master a musical instrument. If you're a Dojo member, refresh your memory in regards to the fallacy of multitasking here. (Not a member yet? Join us!)

The Challenge:

Continue everything from the previous challenge. Then in addition to that, extend your playing session to 15 completely undistracted minutes of playing.

For 7 consecutive days: 

• Spend 2 hours passively immersing yourself in bagpipe culture, as outlined in Challenge 1.
• Play at least one tune each day on your bagpipes, as outlined in Challenge 2.
• Ensure your bagpipe uses a simple setup, as outlined in Commandment 3. 
• Do not have distractions of any kind during your 15 minute playing session.

The spirit of this challenge is to go for 7 straight days of bagpipe practice without allowing any distraction. As soon as you allow a single distraction into a practice session, reset your consecutive days ‘score’ to zero, and attempt to build 7 consecutive days of distraction-free practice from scratch. You don’t get to try again that day. One ‘distraction strike’ and you’re out and must begin again!

Examples of distraction/multitasking include (but are by no means limited to):

• Checking your phone during a session.
• Attempting to practice while the TV is on.
• Eating lunch while practicing (or something of the sort)
• A family member or pet interrupting your session.
• Needing to sign on to the computer for any reason during a session.
• Etc., etc., etc…

The big idea here is to habitualize the art of engineering a daily, distraction-free window of time each day to truly singularly focus on piping. It’s way harder than it looks. One strike and you’re out! You must start again.

15 minutes of full pipes per day. 7 straight days. If you allow a single distraction you must “re-set” to Day 1. 

Don’t cheat yourself on this one. You’ve got this.

Challenge #5: The Healthy Diet Challenge (Making Commandment 10 a Habit)

We need to spend at least some time mindfully practicing each day, before we throw caution to the wind and just ‘jam out’ on our favorite tunes. If you're a Dojo member, refresh your memory in regards to ‘having dessert, but not too much’ here. (Not a member yet? Join us!)

The Challenge:

Continue everything from the previous challenge. Then, in addition to that, ensure at least 10 minutes of your undistracted playing time is spent mindfully focusing on improving a specific thing.

For 7 consecutive days: 

• Spend 2 hours passively immersing yourself in bagpipe culture, as outlined in Challenge 1.
• Play at least one tune each day on your bagpipes, as outlined in Challenge 2.
• Ensure your bagpipe uses a simple setup, as outlined in Commandment 3. 
• Do not have distractions of any kind during your 15 minute playing session. If you allow a single distraction, reset your ‘consecutive days count’ to zero and begin again.
• At least 10 of your 15 minutes every day should be spent focused on improving something.

The spirit of this challenge is to go for 7 straight days of focused bagpipe practice while achieving a balance of work vs. fun. We’re going to build on our previous challenge, and add in at least 10 minutes of focused practice each and every day. 

At this stage – it’s very important to understand that it really doesn’t matter (yet) what you focus on. Tuning, expression, crossing noises, rhythm, steady blowing – anything you’d like to focus on is fair game! We are simply trying to build the habit of integrating a bit of mindful practice into our sessions on a daily basis. That’s it. We will get a lot more specific about exactly what to practice later on when we dive into the Bagpipe Freedom Phases. 

More on that later. 

For now, simply do this: 15 minutes of full pipes per day. At least 10 of those minutes should be focused mindful practice on something. 7 straight days. If you allow a single distraction into any session you must begin again.