So I’ve been playing the Uilleann Pipes for a bit over a year now, and have progressed quite quickly thanks to past experience playing the GHB and Whistle.
I’m at the stage now, though where progress is becoming very slow, which is okay, I know that learning an instrument (particularly the Uilleann Pipes) takes many years of dedication and great patience.
That being said, I’m largely self-taught owing to my living two hours from Melbourne in Australia, and there generally being no teachers in any practical distance for regular lessons.
One thing I know I’m lacking at the moment is any kind of structure to how I learn and improve. At the moment, I play for about an hour at least 5 nights a week and really just run through the tunes I know, trying to get slicker when I can, and occasionally picking up a new tune every month or so.
I don’t really know how to go about structuring my practice time to get a good balance of ‘tune’ practice, but also work on core piping exercises or drills to learn new techniques, as well as tightening-up my existing abilities. The last time I took lessons for anything was the GHB when I was very young and it’s all hard wired now - I don’t remember the lessons at all.
I’m happy for anyone to suggest a bit of a regime or schedule that they think could help - whether you’re a teacher yourself, or have one that works for you.
I know everyone learns differently, but I would love to have a starting point where I can work out what fits best for me.
Cheers in advance - looking forward to hearing from you guys!
There are two kinds of practice. It sounds like you are doing neither.
The first kind of practice is where you are trying to improve something. Maybe you have a tune with a roll that’s tricky. So you play the roll until you can play it well. Then you play the note leading into it, or the one that comes after it, and build outward, as little as necessary and as slowly as necessary to play it correctly every time. If you slop through it you will only ingrain bad habits.
The second kind of practice is rehearsal. You play through a tune. As you play it, you make a mental note of every spot that needs work. Then you go back and do the first kind of practice to each spot.
It sounds like you’re just playing through tunes. This is not practice at all.
The main value of a teacher is to point out your weakest link. To tell you what you need to practice. When I don’t have lessons I stall out. I can keep learning new tunes and I can hear egregious mistakes, but I’m not good enough at teaching myself to figure out what I really need to be working on. If I could only have myself for a teacher, I would use a recorder, so that I could separate out the playing from the evaluation. So I would rehearse a tune, but not do the mental notes part. Then I would listen closely to the recording to hear the parts that really need help.
Can you get UP instruction via skype? There are a number of people who teach GHB with skype and their students seem to think it works pretty well – way better than nothing.
The key is finding the thing you are worst at and fixing it.
Actually doing that succesfully requires quite a lot of honesty and ego-deflation. And taking the thing in totality, not just worrying about your tight triplets.
Practicing is about Learning ,as well as keeping fit, and I propose that you double your time by listening to fine piping (or good music in general) for as much time as you spend with your pipes straped on. This could also include listening to recordings of yourself, which can be painfull of course.
I learnt with no teacher, no Internet and no Piper even remotely close but I had the great advantage of working alone and being able to play tapes of the best piping I could find on commercially released recordings… so I could absorb the masters’ works for 8 to 10 hours per day…
I can think of at least 5 teachers in North America or Ireland who offer lessons over SKYPE, but Aljn needs someone in a compatible time zone. Anyone in Australia or NZ ?
The ‘trick’ to playing music well is listening - to others to hear what they are doing (that you like) and most importantly to yourself.
With modern recording devices learning this is much easier, if a humbling experience. But a recording of yourself while very helpful to hear what you’re doing right or wrong will only get you so far - you still have to hear what you are playing as you do it - this is very difficult to do and one of the reasons why a teacher is can be so helpful (assuming that the teacher listens well and cares).
So work on listening to others and yourself. DO NOT practice mistakes - slow down, take things apart, listen carefully and don’t let yourself get away with anything when practicing.
I’m going to be a little RUDE now and emphasize the word ‘Commercially’ because ,in the old days a record company would employ a music editor to listen very carefully to the material and critique it, perhaps suggest that it could have been better played… get the artist to try again…
I hear plenty of modern recordings where musical gaffs are overlooked and very little critical editing appears to have been applied. Many little ‘Cringe Worthy’ passages get past the censors, or lack of them.
So I suggest sticking to ‘The Masters’ for intense listening and Osmosis Learning… go back as far as you can too… Leo Rowsome,Johny and Felix Doran,Seamus Ennis,Willie Clancy and Tommy Reck… Start with these and let them develope your taste buds for a year or two.
When I have the choice, I prefer to listen to live recordings where (in the hands of a good piper) the little gaffs can add to the over-all experience.
… and listen to singers. Lots and lots of singers. Sean-nos singers (sorry, can’t find the fada). And lots of fiddlers and fluters and concertina players and whistlers, and lots and lots of singers.
At the most remedial level, start with a slow metronome setting (I suggest 60 bpm, playing a single note per 2 or even 4 clicks), and concentrate on relaxed execution of each note in a tune or exercise. The emphasis is to gain awareness of excess tension, “sympathetic” tensions (where moving one finger unduly affects others), and working towards independence of fingers. If you play a note each 4 clicks, you still work toward quick exchange of fingers on that click, but use the remaining time to ‘dump’ out any tension caused by the exchange. Keep working toward making the exchange without introducing tension.
“Exercises” are not that you could play the notes, but how you physically executed the sequence. Good exercises emphasize very subtle lessons your fingers should learn.
One exercise is to not allow muscle exertion from your bag/bellows arms bleed down to your forearms/hands. Completely relax your shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms and hands (probably shouldn’t stop there, but include legs, feet, torso…). Wiggle your fingers to prove they move without tension in your uppers arms/shoulders. You should feel the muscles/tendons moving way up in your forearms. Make sure you do not tense up your forearms. Buckle yerself in and don’t even hold the chanter. Repeat the first part of the exercise. Then ‘blow yerself up’ and play a forever-long c# with hands completely off the chanter. Completely isolate the muscles used to pump the bellows and bag from the forearms muscles which wiggle the fingers. Keep the forearms, all the way down to the fingers, completely free of tension. Wiggle fingers to remind yourself and “match” the relaxed feeling you achieved when not buckled in.
Use those concepts of physical awareness and relaxation when playing bits of tunes slowly. Work on bits at super-slow speed. If you have a couple go-to exercises, play them through a handful of times, and bump up the metronome setting over the days. When you hit a speed that you can’t execute perfectly, alternate with super-slow, and very slow execution (concentrating on the fingers which fail you), and see if over the days you can push beyond the fast speed where you failed.
Probably every ‘practice’ session should include throwing away the metronome and just playing. But don’t lose sight of ending a tune (hell, even a phrase) where your forearms/hands have more tension than when you started… Use Peter Browne as inspiration for economy of motion and relaxed execution… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8K5p-Sm6M8
