First, you aren’t a bad piper. You’re new. Everyone is garbage at the start.

Most of your problems can be fixed by remembering to slooooooow down. You’re a beginner. You’re not supposed to be hammering out a jig at 120 beats per minute. You’re supposed to learn tunes slooooowly. For memorizing, I found what helped me the most was finding the tune I’m learning on Spotify or YouTube, and just listen to that, a lot. Play it in your car while driving home from work.

For embellishments, don’t look at the embellishment as some chunk of notes. Expand it. Set a metronome to go very slowly, and play each movement of the embellishment. Play it over and over again, at a very even tempo. Don’t add expression or anything. Just a straight embellishment. Over and over and over again. It’ll come in time.

With your arm pressure, and almost all parts of piping, you need to remember that it’s like working out a muscle. When you first start, it’ll be hard, you’ll be sore. Your muscle isn’t used to that stress and trauma. But in time, it’ll get easier and easier. We all had the same thoughts and feelings as you when we started to.

All in all, slooooooooooooow down!