Is there any recognized method of practise to help progress,For instance when learning a new tune is it best to learn it a few bars at a time and perfect these few bars before moving on ?
how do you perfect your crans(a well played cran is a beautiful thing ) to get them right everytime ?
RORY
I don’t know that I’d wait until it’s “perfect” in each bar, but certainly I think each bar should be played until you’ve got it down without staggering through it, and so that it sounds the way it should (jig tempo, reel, etc.) prior to moving to the next.
Then, once the first part is learned, put the bars together until you can get through them without error, then it’s on to part 2, etc.
As for “perfect” crans… the old saying “practice makes perfect” is wrong, IMO.
Perfect practice makes for perfect playing. Play them slowly… and the key to good crans is not just hitting each note where it should be, but in putting that space between the notes that makes them sound so crisp.
To my ear, the best crans come from Sean og Potts. When he’s really nailing them, they have almost a machine-gun like sound quality, but it’s what’s in between the notes that gives them that sound.
A few bars at a time is a good idea, especially if there is call for a particularly tricky technique then isolated and repeated practice is a good thing. But don’t neglect putting it back in its context, so while you’re still practicing a particular section try also playing the entire tune. I often found when practicing staccatto triplest and quadruplets on A or B that I could do them fine in islation, but as soon as I tried putting them into the tune, I stuffed up. My fingers were used to the technique, but they weren’t yet used to being surprised as we rounded that last bend into the staccatto A triplet straight. So a bit of both is good.
How do I perfect a crann - well they’re not perfect yet, but start off nice and slow. Play them like the Ds (or Es) are of equal time value with the gracings - A-D-G-D-F#-D-A-D; OR G-D-F#-G-D-A-D
or any other combination. Then bit by bit speed them up. The tricky bit is putting them in a tune, you kind of have to work out which combination of gracings to use depending on the note that leads into the crann - hard to describe, but it comes with practice.
Cheers,
DavidG
Ben Walker’s words to me was…“Slow it right down”
It works too, although I would break a piece down to a bar at a time if I was struggling with a particular group of notes.
Enjoy 