Piper's Dojo Audio Experience
Piper's Dojo Audio Experience
Andrew Douglas and the Piper's Dojo Team
490 - How To Level Up Your Piping In Just 6 Months (Dojo Conversations Episode 152)
50 minutes Posted Jan 12, 2026 at 1:00 pm.
– The coffee analogy
– Failure to plan is planning to fail
– Why now is the perfect time for a 6-month plan
– What “next level” really means
– The importance of unplugging
– Setting up your calendar (26–28 weeks out)
– Preparing your materials and practice space
– The sacred practice space concept
– Closet-door practice setup hack
– Why you need a recording device
– Creating your feedback plan
– Wildcards: micro and macro interruptions
– The maintenance routine explained
– Building in buffer weeks
– Important omissions from the plan
– Why tuning isn’t explicitly included
– Expression and phrasing: not what’s holding you back
– The tempo strategy explained
– Starting at 50% tempo
– The clever tempo ramping system
– Metronome magnification techniques
– Customizing the plan for your life
– Block 1: Tune prospects and building
– Block 2: Narrowing down to two tunes
– Block 3: Memorisation focus
– Testing tunes at low-stakes gigs
– Block 4: Painfully slow embellishments
– Block 5: Rhythmic accuracy (ASAP)
– Block 6: Go time – all bagpipes, no practice chanter
– The feeling of being truly prepared
– Wrap up & where to get the plan
0:00
50:08
Download MP3
Show notes
What if you could level up your piping – within 6 months?
This week, Andrew and Jim lay out a complete week by week training blueprint designed to take you into next season feeling calm, confident, and genuinely prepared.
Whether you’re aiming to move up a grade, make the band, or simply play better than you did last year, this episode gives you a clear path forward.
They break down exactly how top pipers structure their year, build tempo in a sustainable way, stay accountable, and avoid the last-minute panic that so many of us know too well. From setting up your “sacred practice space” to surviving life’s inevitable interruptions, this is a practical, no-nonsense guide to real progress.
6 months from now, you could be wishing you’d started… or you could be walking into the season feeling unstoppable.
Check out the 6-month plan here: https://www.pipersdojo.university/6monthplan
Here's what we cover this week: