Atlanta Pipers of Excellence aims to be your source for superior bagpipe music performance. We are a group of musicians who have banded together to ensure that you receive  the high quality you deserve. Each performer is experienced and professional, and has the support and assistance of other, like-minded musicians to ensure that your event will be problem free.

At first glance, the Great Highland Bagpipe seems to be a simple instrument. Although very physical to play, many think ‘There are only nine notes in its scale, how hard can it be?’ The answer is very difficult. There is nothing on the melody chanter or the reed  that facilitates playing and or the pitch of the notes. Other instruments have keys with springs and padding or hammers to create music. The Great Highland Bagpipe only has the fingers of the piper combined with the knowledge of what the music is supposed to sound like. Playing a bagpipe with good technique that results in a pleasant sound requires guidance from a good teacher combined with lots of the right kind of practice. This skill cannot be learned on one’s own.

Pipers of Excellence was formed to provide to the public a source of musicians who are striving to play well and present the bagpipe well played and well tuned. A bagpipe should sound pleasant when tuned correctly, even though it is loud. There are many harmonics of the drones in relationship to the melody chanter and they will all work together when properly tuned. The members of Pipers of Excellence all continue to have lessons from top instructors and compete as a solo player to continually improve technique.

There are many pipers in the Atlanta area who are either self taught, haven’t had a lesson or competed as a solo player in decades and have let their technique slip. If not tuned properly, the bagpipe is not pleasant to hear.

Pipers of Excellence provides pipers who have a known level of expertise. Some sources provide a player who wears the kilt and blows the instrument, but not necessarily providing the best music - and sometimes playing very poor music.

The music is part of why you hire a piper. The rest is the performance portion and the professionalism. Some of our pipers are young and gaining experience. They are never put out without the involvement of a more experienced player. There is a training period where a piper new to the group will go out with an experienced piper to play when appropriate. Music is reviewed and hymns, laments, patriotic tunes, for example, are added to their repertoire. Many performance scenarios are discussed and acted out. Unfortunately, many pipers just ‘hang out their shingle’ and show up without any knowledge of how to conduct themselves.