After students leave at the end of the day, the halls of Juliet Long School in Gales Ferry are pretty quiet. But on Wednesday nights, the haunting tones of bagpipes drift from the music room where Ledyard resident Bob Scent is teaching his craft.

Scent, a piper with more than 40 years of playing the bagpipes, has taught many students over his career, but the Wednesday night course at Juliet Long is his first with the Ledyard Parks and Recreation Department.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a number of years,” he said, “and this year I said, “Ok, I’ll give it a try and see how many people are interested.’”

Kim Lavigueur, assistant director of the department, said they are always interested in working with people to lead courses based on their skills and interests. Scent came into the office one day to pitch his class, and she said it was interesting and worth a try.

“It is great that we had people interested in the class, and Bob is very passionate about teaching the bagpipe,” she said in an email.

Learning to play the bagpipes is one of the many classes offered by the Ledyard Parks and Recreation Department. Residents of Ledyard and nearby towns can pick from a variety of fitness and hobby programs, sports leagues and day trips.

For the second session of the class, Scent’s six students worked on scales, playing a high G grace note between each note in the scale to practice transitioning between high and low notes on their practice chanters. All students begin on chanters, which are hand-held instruments with the same fingerings as bagpipes so they can learn before playing a full set.

As students took turns playing each interval, he interspersed praise, advice and fun facts.

“If I’m blowing on a set of pipes where the sound is always coming out of them, I can’t stop the sound, I can’t staccato it like any other instrument,” he said. “So how do I trick the audience into thinking I’m playing three As?”

Using “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as an example, he added grace notes to the repeated notes to produce separated sounds.

Scent also demonstrated an embellishment called a birl, where the piper’s pinky runs back and forth across the low G hole to create a trill effect on the A note. He said it’s used to separate the note and add some extra flair to an otherwise simple jig.

Some of the students had previous musical instruments such as the flute or clarinet. Liz Kading of Pawcatuck said she joined the class to add to her repertoire of Celtic instruments, like the penny whistle and the bones. Her mother had also tried learning the bagpipes.

Scent said the bagpipes don’t require as much air as many think, but they require a lot of stamina and coordination, and there isn’t much rhyme or reason to who does well. He has had younger students can pick up an adult set and play without a problem, while others who had previous musical or athletic training have struggled.

“It surprises me as well. I’ve tried to figure it out in the past,” he said. “But I always felt that anybody who wants to learn play the bagpipes can learn how to play the bagpipes if they throw enough time and energy at it.”

Dwight Snowberger of Gales Ferry said his inspiration came from watching “Duck Tales” as a kid because main character Scrooge McDuck played the bagpipes. Before this class, he didn’t have an opportunity to learn to play them himself, and he hopes to continue it.

Since starting his piping career while stationed in Hawaii with the Navy in the 1970s, Scent has played with and led a variety of bands across the country, including serving as the director for the Mystic Highland Pipe Band before his retirement from the position in 2008. He has also become the “family piper” for families who have him perform at an event and then invite him back for other family functions.

“I’ve played for governors, dignitaries, officers of foreign militaries and things like that,” he said. “I would never have done any of that stuff had I not been involved with the bagpipes.”

For more information about programs offered by Ledyard Parks and Recreation, contact the department at (860) 464-9112.

a.hutchinson@theday.com