SPBA holds online workshop on teaching beginners

The Saskatchewan Pipe Band Association launched its Online Learning series on Saturday, November 21st, with a session on teaching beginner pipers and drummers. The original idea was to offer some “in-service” to SPBA pipe bands, but it attracted pipe band teachers from across North America.

SPBA President Wayne Rempel said, “We were extremely pleased with the response to the session, and we hope the trend continues. As well as our own bands, we had participants from Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland, Montana, Alaska and England.”

Guest instructors for the session were Saskatchewan native son James MacHattie and Chris Coleman of the College of Piping & Celtic Performing Arts in PEI. They shared a formal presentation that opened up a free-wheeling and instructive conversation among teachers, sharing approaches, observations and questions.

The workshop went from in-person techniques but quickly moved to the challenges of teaching online, with all the bands experiencing the loss of face-to-face lessons and rehearsal.

The organization said that additional workshops are planned for upcoming months, and details will be available on the SPBA website.

Saskatchewan, like most of Canada, is seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases, and yesterday the province announced that non-medical masks are now required in all indoor public spaces.