Bagpipes are what are called "drone" instruments - they produce a fundamental pitch that is constant and can move notes above that. OP, I find it very hard to believe you can read music but not understand an interval or rhythm/time division.

When you're talking about "music theory" (blech...) what people generally mean is "harmony": the placing of two or more notes together. There are a bunch of names and functions for the type of harmony known as "common practice" (stemming from the period from Bach to Wagner, and appropriated into Jazz), but what you NEED to know if you know nothing is that there are two or more notes sounding at the same time to produce harmony. Usually three (hence the term triad) or four (a tetrad) notes in a chord. What the notes are doesn't matter for all intents and purposes, but if you want to deal with functional common-practice harmony, then it does - this is where intervals come in. An interval is the distance between two notes, and Brackleforth outlines the basis of all that more than adequately so I won't bother.

You mentioned rhythm/time before. Rhythm is simple the division of musical time into segments. For example, a segment that is ONE bar long in 4/4 time at a crotchet tempo of 60 equates to four seconds of time. Two bars equals eight seconds, and so on. So you can think of that period of TIME as being divided in a tree.

8 Seconds (4/4 time, crotchet = 60)

Divide by two = 2 x 4 second chunks of time

Then you divide each of those chunks of time into a parent rhythmic value (the numerator of the time signature: the top 4 of 4/4), in this case you're dividing each 4 second chunk into four even rhythms - crotchets (or quarter notes - you can look up rhythmic division for terminology somewhere else), giving you four even rhythmic impulses over four seconds, or four "beats" per bar, each worth approximately one second of produced sound.

You can then divide each of those parent "beats" into other, smaller chunks, and so on.

It is important to note two things: 1) that dividing that 8 seconds into 2 lots of 4 was arbitrary, you can divide anything in almost any way you can imagine, all that will change is the duration of the produced rhythm; and 2) the values of things changes depending on the speed (tempo) through which it all moves. If you had a crotchet tempo of 120bpm, then that eight seconds of time would produce twice as many bars of 4/4 once divided.

I hope that helps.

I'm glad so many people like my advice. One of the most damaging things to come out of the romantic era is the idea of 'perfection'. Ugh.

My advice to everyone, ever: get over preciousness and just MAKE stuff.

2012: Was good. "Production" value improved.
2014: Was good.
2016: I'm still not 100% sure I'll participate, as I have a PhD to finish and am doing a fair bit of teaching. But if I do, I suspect it will probably be quite a bit of generative stuff with Max (maybe Pd). If I can muster up the motivation I'll teach myself SuperCollider through the process. Also work more with OpenMusic.

During 2013 and 2015 I spent more time doing notated music than I usually do during WB years. That won't necessarily be true this time 'round, as I have a few pieces in the works already and some plans for some others. Depending on how the year pans out, there may also be some live stuff, electronics + other instruments/electronics. Who knows. 2013-15 I have spent a lot of time making tools to do nifty things, so chances are I'll use them a lot due to being really quite strapped for time.

I'm not admin, but if you click on "music", then "year", then filter by "my music", you should get it.

That all depends on the aesthetic of the compilation! Curate!

Mort: here is fine, or email (vin at vgiles dot net) or a Facebook group or google+ (same email address) or whatever.