GaitaMaker | Bagpipes
We are a non profit platform researching, promoting, teaching and making bagpipes Looking to buy a Bagpipe?Looking to learn to Playat GaitaMaker
WE MAKE
… BECAUSE
Creating seemless, innovative, and affordable design solution
GaitaMaker is aimed at
Researching, Promoting, Teaching & Making Bagpipes.
- Answer the playing needs of the professional touring musician and the student piper, which ever the bagpipe or piping tradition may be.
- Develop seamless design solutions for traditional bagpipes, that may translate in affordable high quality musical instruments.
- Support scientific research and promote innovative teaching methods and materials.
The Beginnings
Gonçalo Cruz was born in Oporto, in the northern Portuguese coast in 1979.
Developing as a self-taught musician, he spent the last 20 years, studying the “Gaita de fole” - the Portuguese and Spanish bagpipe models. The meeting of Mr. Jürgen Ross (historical bagpipe maker) at a local festival in Germany 2003, led to a close friendship. Over the years, Gonçalo had found a mentor, that pushed him to creating his own workshop, in 2010, devoted to the making and selling of european bagpipes.
Given his background as a designer, Gonçalo soon became obsessed in solving the shortcomings he detected in the instruments, both as a professional piper and teacher.
Soon the workshop was visited by fellow researchers, students and musicians keen on discussing tradition, science and custom musical instruments that suited their needs. This engaging cultural environment also attracted non pipers, music lovers, scholars, designers and engineers, artists and craftsman, institutions and private business, media outlets…
It was clear by now that GaitaMaker extended must further than the limits of the bagpipe making atelier, and touched people beyond the small piper community... It was a cause.
GaitaMaker non profit had been born.
What do we do
We are interesting in the solving of common issues that the piper usually faces when interpreting bagpipes.
Over the years, Gonçalo Cruz has already developed design solutions and improvements, and incorporated them, at the musician’s request, into his custom bagpipes.
At GaitaMaker we are devoted to the research of more of these seamless design innovations that could be made universal, and used by most bagpipes in the world.
Our project fosters the involvment of other professionals, institutions and business to produce affordable high quality musical instruments and accessories.
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