As I have said elsewhere, I am totally bewildered by the fact that you can hand a piece of music to someone who's been playing pipes for years, and the first thing they say is "Play it for me so I can see how it goes." I suppose that's because most people are taught by bands, and the band is mostly interested in having you learn their repertoire. And, of course, the quickest way to teach a tune is by rote. They don't much care if you want to, or can, expand your personal repertoire beyond the tunes the band plays. In fact, your insructor may be just as baffled as you are by an unfamiliar sheet of music, because he learned the same way.
The fact is, it's all right there on the paper. You just have to know what it means. This applies to pretty much any tune, but for the moment we're going to look at 6/8's. I'm about to let you in on one of the best-kept secrets of the great master pipers. There are exactly four basic rhythm patterns that you need to know in order to play almost any tune in 6/8 (or 9/8, or 12/8) time. Three of them are common as dirt, and the fourth almost is. There are actually a couple of others, but they're fairly rare and, if you understand the basics, you should be able to figure them out when and if you encounter them. So here are the four you need to know, in ascending order of difficulty;
Bar One is just two dotted quarter notes. Each of them gets a full beat. The only difficulty here is that you have to convince yourself to hold it that long. Hang in there until your foot comes down.
Bar Two is where it starts to get complicated. Here we have a quarter note, followed by an eighth note. What we need to remember here is that this is not magic, it's arithmetic. A quarter note is twice as long as an eighth note. A whole beat consists of three eighths. The quarter note gets two of those eighths, and the eighth note gets one. This always happens. Without exception. The trick here is to make sure that the first note gets its full share of the beat. Hold it for what you think is too long. and use the eight note to finish up. Don't worry, as you get up to speed you'll compress the long note down to its fair share of the time. The important thing is to maintain the difference.
Bar Three. Here we have three notes in the beat; a dotted eight, a sixteenth (indicated by the extra tail) and an eighth note. To get a feel for the rhythm of this, hold the bejeezus out of the first note, play the second one quickly, just so we know it's there, and finish up the beat with the eighth note. Exaggerate the differences for now; as you gain confidence and speed up, the timing will sort itself out. There a total of 729 different permutations of three notes available on the pipe chanter. When you take into account embellissments, or the lack thereof, on each note, the number jumps into the stratosphere. That does not matter. When you see this timing pattern, this is how you play it. That is not negotiable. Bar Four is just another arrangement of the same elements. It's not as common as the other four, although some tunes make a lot of use of it to produce quite interesting effects, such as Monte Catarelto and The Wandering Piper. In this case when we play the first note, we get it over with as quickly as possible, then hang on second (dotted) note, and finish up with the third. To illustrate how this works, let's look at the first part of a couple of different tunes. We'll start with Pipe Major Sam Scott. For those who may wonder who Sam Scott was, he was the Pipe Major of The Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (MG) dring World War II. In defiance of orders, he piped his regiment onto the beach on D-Day, which makes him possibly the last piper anywhere to play his regiment into battle.
I realize that there's a temptation to run off and look for an audio file of the tune to sort of steer you
in the right direction. Don't do it. The object of the exercise is to show you that you really can
learn a tune from the hard copy, with nobody showing you how to play it. Of course, after you've worked through
it, it will be perfectly acceptable to use an audio file to ensure that you got it right.
Bar One
This looks as though it should be easy enough. The first beat is just a half doubling on F, and the F makes
up the whole beat. It's important here to make it last for the whole beat. There's a tendency to think
"Well, that's long enough, and I'll just get on with the rest of the tune." Then you shorten the next beat
to kep it even, and before you know it you've speeded up your tempo. So make sure you hold onto the note
until your foot comes down as you beat time.
The second beat in this bar is played the same way as the first beat in bar one; only the notes are different.
Again, play the bar a few times, concentrating on making both beats the same length while retaining the proper
timing for each beat.
Bars Three and Four
At last, we get some consistency. Every beat in these two bars follow the same rhythm pattern;
only the notes change. Stretch out the first note, cut the second (but make sure it's distinctly there)
and finish off with the third. Try each beat individually, and then all four together. Keep it slow, with a
steady tempo. At this point we're more interested in getting it right than getting it fast.
Speed will come in due course as you get comfortable with the rhythms.
Now let's try the whole first line of the tune.
At this point you should begin to notice a sort of rocking-chair rhythm to the tune. This is typical of 6/8's;
it's what makes them such easy tunes to march to.
Bars 5 and 6 you already know how to play; they're the same as bars 1 and 2.
Bar 7 
Again, there's nothing really new
here. The rhythm is the same as in Bar 3 or Bar 4 - only the sequence of notes is different.
Bar 8
Again, there's nothing really new here. Just be sure to hold the first D for the full beat, and avoid rushing it.
The second D, as you see, is only a quarter note - not a full beat. That's because it is combined with the pickup note
for the next part to be played to make up the full beat. In this case, the first time through it would be
played as quarter D - eighth F, because you're going to repeat the part, and the second time as quarter D - eighth
Low A, using the pickup note for Part Two.
Now try the whole Part 1;
You should now try working your way through the rest of the tune. You will find that in each part, only
the first two bars are different, except for the third bar in Part Four, where one note is changed.
A copy of the whole tune is available on my website.
You may have notice that we didn't use the fourth pattern at all in Sam Scott. As I said, it's not as common as the others.
We will use it in the second exercise, which is the first part of Hortense's Welcome to Edinburgh Castle
Bar 1 
The first beat, as you see, is exactly the same as the first beat in Sam Scott. Therefore, you play
it in precisely the same way, just as you will always play that sequence when you see it.
The second beat is what we've been waiting for; the fourth pattern. Nothing to it. just play the C very short, the drop down to the A
and hold it while you puzzle out what to do next (which will be another C).
Now you just have to put the two beats together, keeping them the same length.
Bar 2
Nothing new here at all. Just call on what you have already learned, and play it.
It's worth noting that these two bars contain every variation of timing that you'll need to play 98%
of all 6/8 marches. So, if you can play them, you can play almost any march.
Bar 3 
Again, there's nothing really new here; in fact, this is just the first beat from Bar 2,
followed by the second beat from Bar 1. Just remember to hold the dotted note and dock the tail in each beat.
In fact, there's nothing more to teach you just now. From here on in, it's just a question of training you fingers to
react with the proper timing when you see one of these patterns, just a you play a B or throw on D when you see it.
Of course, nobody can do that for you; you have to learn by practicing. To that end, you should work your way through the whole Part 1
and then through the rest of the tune, which you can get from my website.
You'll probably find that you could get through this tune a lot quicker than you could with Sam Scott.
That's because it's only two parts. Still, if you try working your way through a different tune every day for
a couple of weeks, you'll soon find yourself hesitating less and less - and at the same time learning something about the wonderful
variety of tunes that are out there waiting to be played.
Copyright Gerald Griffith.