Eric, its easy to say “listen”, but that assumes I’m not already listening. Its one of those nebulous catch-all phrases that says to me “Gee, I really can’t be bothered to explain what I mean, but I’ll give you this bottomless instruction just to get rid of you”.
I am thinking more about classes I have heard of going on at NPU and WCSS where students actually sit and listen with an instructor, and the instructor points out what he means as salient to learn from the listening.
By simply being told to listen, I will never know if I have already caught on to what the instructor meant, or if I’m still chasing my tail in the dark.
I agree, which I why I put “(uselessly?)” in there. Again, I do link to one honest attempt at putting substance into words. But, posts like that tend to be thread-killers… difficult to follow, probably unclear writing.
I don’t know about saying “listen” to beginners being nebulous poor advice. There is of course the thing about beginners only being able to listen at a certain level at first, but I think it is good enough for the point of time. Their listening skills will develop over time and if they really listen often, and the level of listening will deepen. More and more nuances will be discovered upon frequent exposure to good music.
Of course you can have a shortcut if someone points out to you certain elements in the music, but the understanding of these elements will only be superficial (if any understanding at all) should one not go through a decent amount of listening to begin with. So either way the beginner has to listen.
I agree that listening and listening is very good advice and the only way to learn Irish music. I can only ever begin to capture the cadence and nuance of a tune by listening, and you get used to the way it sounds, etc. I also wish I had a dollar every time someone gave me that advice and left it at that. I think I’d then be able to afford a set of K&Q drones. Like someone above said, I get a little bit twitchy when people say “just listen” to me, because it implies that I’m not listening, or am too inexperienced to know I should be listening. I listen. A lot. Listening alone won’t teach you how to play the pipes. It would be nice to be able to lie around listening to pipe music all day and then be able to miraculously play like Seamus Ennis, but for some reason I don’t think it works that way. Listening is only part of it. There’s quite a lot of technique and skill to it. How do you make the instrument sound like you know it’s supposed to sound? That’s the tricky part, I think.
I agree. It’s important for people who are learning their first instrument to listen to a lot of recordings in order to get a feel for the music, but with the pipes, there is so much that in terms of technique that you have to learn from a teacher.
I tried to learn on my own for years, and one of the most important factors in my actually sticking with the pipes this time was the fact that I got a teacher. And finally I had someone to show me how to do those triplets and things that I had been hearing for 15 years and thinking “Wow, that sounds cool,” but having no clue how to do it!