This is, so far, one of the best first first bagpipe video lessons I’ve found for somebody starting out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnrwTMI7ZRk
I’ve learned the scales from other videos, but this one has a critical step others are missing. To do your left hand only, fingers all on, fingers all off. And practice that. And then do left hand all on, right hand all on, right hand all off (keep left hand on). Repeat that.
Especially the right hand, on a ‘long’ practice chanter it can be hard to hit all those holes. And I don’t have small hands either. So this whole thing of cutting away from the scale and just focusing on closing all the holes accurately and consistently seems like a significant reference point towards developing coherence.
It seems more fundamental even than going note by note before you’ve had a chance to fully solve the problem of closing all the holes…
This video also uses bagpipe tabs which is really cool. Sadly, the website this video links out to in descriptions, tryscotland.com, fails to load. I was hoping for dozens more videos like these…