It was YOU!!! Grrr!!! 
I’m still bitter after all this time! You can mail the medal though to make amends!!
It is a skill in itself…remembering where you made the mistake, what the mistake was and then putting it in without breaking down.
Do you still play pipes a lot, do you play with a pipe band?
Just a note. I’ve got some Freeman Tweaked Gens for sale in another thread that you might be interested in. They’re a real bargain and like new, barely played. I think any of the tweaked metal whistles are good. The Freeman MellowDog is great as well as the O’Briain Improved Feadog. I’ve had good luck with all these whistles mentioned, they’re all solid and easy to play through both octaves for a beginner. Jerry doesn’t let a Freeman Tweaked leave his shop until it plays to his satisfaction.
Not really. I started finding it difficult when I went to University. I continued to compete and teach for a few years, but by the time I came to the end of my undergrad, I gave up looking for practice places. I also couldn’t put the time in anymore, and, to be honest, was getting bored with the music. The great thing about the whistle is that it is simple, and really dynamic - you can play a lot of music on it that is just closed to you on the GHB, and you can just pick it up and play. So it’s my new love.
The last band I played with was the Peel Regional Police Grade 1 during the brief stint where Micheal Grey was PM several years ago. I played with the 78th Fraser Highlanders for a time before that.
I still play shuttle pipes and small pipes, though.
Ye saw those, but I live in Scotland, sorry. Look like great whistles though!
I suppose this depends on your definition of “professional” and “practice”. Certainly I’ve seen a lot of concerts where the players clearly had not done much besides figure out what tunes they were playing ahead of time. And pretty much every workshop at a festival includes musicians playing together on tunes they’ve never practiced together before.
Then there are those albums Paul Brady accompanied in the 1970s – three albums in one week, all with players he’d never met before. I don’t think they exactly had a lot of time to spend honing the details of their performances.
So how do you start? You can, of course, learn by making noise at a session (which I’m sure everyone else would love), but in that case, you’ll never learn to read on that instrument - you’ll never develop that “good skill”. Alternatively, you could make the very modest effort of matching the notes on the page to the notes on the instrument, then learn to play modestly, then get better at a session.
Or you could record what they are playing at the local session, take it home, and learn to play by practicing with the recording…
Very obviously true. Indeed, the more accomplished the player, and the more familiar the tune, the less practice time is needed. A shared familiarity with specific settings of tunes (from particular collections, or old recordings) also reduces the need for practice. Moreover, the context and purpose of the performance is also going to dictate both the degree, and nature of the practice required. My claim was general, not categorical. There is a reason why people practice together, and that is that there is a general virtue of uniforimty in collective musical performance - full stop. Part of what is impressive with a group of accomplished musicians sitting down in a session together is that they are actually able to make music without practice - they are able to play together. It is the idea of ‘playing together’ that motivates the point, not the idea of ‘practicing together’. Practicing is of instrumental value only, but can be a necessary condition for achieiving a certain degree of uniformity for most people in most contexts - and for all people for specific enough purposes.
So how do you start? You can, of course, learn by making noise at a session (which I’m sure everyone else would love), but in that case, you’ll never learn to read on that instrument - you’ll never develop that “good skill”. Alternatively, you could make the very modest effort of matching the notes on the page to the notes on the instrument, then learn to play modestly, then get better at a session.
Or you could record what they are playing at the local session, take it home, and learn to play by practicing with the recording…
True as well. You could also buy a bunch of recordings and learn by ear that way before going out to play with others (if playing with others is something you want to do, or something that is actually an option). There are many logical possibilities. I did not intend to present a disjunctive syllogism. My point was that sight reading for the whistle is very easy - partcularly for someone who already reads music; that it is a good skill to develop; and that learning tunes by reading them will not only help you too develop this skill, but will also furnish you with a modest repertoire. As such, it is an efficient solution to the problem of how one should start learning to play - a more efficient solution than learning tunes by ear at sessions (or from recorded sessions) since it also facilitates musical literacy.
I am getting the feeling that I’m hitting a nerve with some people on this last point, though. I think this may warrant a seperate thread, so I think I’ll start one.