Pipe Bands & Brass Bands

Both forms grew out of nineteenth century Britain but from different roots. Brass bands rose in the 1820s onward as cheap valved instruments met the new industrial towns, and mills, collieries and temperance societies sponsored bands to give workers something disciplined and sober to belong to; the Salvation Army, founded in 1865, then built one of the largest band networks in the world. Pipe bands came from the British Army's Scottish regiments around the mid 1800s, where pipers and drummers played together to keep marching troops in step and in spirits. Both traditions spread outward, brass through the industrial north and Wales, piping across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the wider Commonwealth.

You almost never start by holding the finished instrument. Pipers spend months on a practice chanter learning fingering and tunes before they ever fire up a full set of pipes, and most bands lend you an instrument and put a music stand next to an experienced player who becomes your unofficial coach. Nobody expects you to perform for a long while, and that is the point: you are folded into a section, not thrown on a stage, and the first real milestone is simply being cleared to play in the ranks rather than watch from the side.