Teach Yourself Bagpipes by Lindsay Davidsonbringing quality 'piping instruction to you for free
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How to Practise
Franz Liszt was said to be the greatest pianist ever. He had a method of practising, which we can use for 'piping. By adding a few extra steps we can develop individual high performance methods. The more effective one's practise, the faster one learns and the greater the motivation. This page is where you will find some secrets of how to be a better 'piper. Truthfully, we can see learning bagpipes as a philosophy and schema for successful learning in al domains of life, if you want to. Please note Many issues arise during individual practice for which there are often quick and simple answers. Please get in touch to ask about your particular problem.
Not every single issue can be
predicted, nor can this list of
suggestions ever be complete. Finding the magic explanation
which helps the student grasp
what they are seeking is the art of teaching. What to say often depends
on when
it is to be said and to whom. For this, unfortunately, a teach yourself method will
never
suffice. Preamble... By breaking playing down into its smallest elements, we can perfect every small element and then (re)assemble these elements to make strong 'pipers. In some other instruments we would call this learning rudiments and then putting them into practise. Finger control There is a simple exercise for this.
Please note, thumbs are not used
in this exercise, and this is
something which will need to be repeated frequently. To begin with it
will be
terrible, but the hands will learn amazingly quickly.
Doing this at the beginning will give as much progress as all other practise. 'Good' Technique Good technique is the ability to
control one's fingers, to
make them do what one wants them to do when one wants it done. It is
not playing fancy things very quickly.
Good technique must be combined
with musical understanding to
decide when things will be done, to know exactly the rhythm of each and
every
gracenote, why it should be thus, and how to make it happen.
Advanced There is no such thing as more or less difficult in 'piping – only more or less intense…. Stepping
up to an intermediate/advanced level of 'piping should be a challenge. A
new tune at a new new level should take some work and you should feel
mentally tired, but not de-motivated. How does one eat an elephant? Not in one bite, and not all in one session. Just the same is true for pushing your 'piping to a higher level. It
is also important that when you start to learn new material, and push
to a new level, the first few tunes you do will be ‘disposable’, that
is, there will be mistakes caused by stretching your technique. Do not
waste effort going back over the same things for years – simply learn a
new tune and concentrate on fixing that which has gone wrong. That is,
do not try and drag your technique to a higher level using your
favourite tunes, as you will end up either being put off them, or
spending an immense amount of time needlessly unprogramming the process
of getting better (rather than the result of having got better) from your hands later.
The 'Piping Muscle Exact method Playing any instrument is pretty
well based on the same
principles; moving the fngers up and down in a certain order
in a certain
time - the order is technique and the time (rhythm) is music. By
corrupting the
time we make personal musical interpretations.
Thus, technique can be programmed and guaranteed like programming a computer. Like with a computer actions are very close together in time but not simultaneous. By doing this programming effectively, we can guarantee our technique and use the spare energy on controlling our music. Liszt played one note, seven times in a row corectly, and when he had achieved this, he added the next note and started again at the beginning, and so on until the entire piece was done. There are five stages in learning to play something:
Each and every step should be practised seven times in a row correctly. This is very hard at the beginning but gets easier with time. The early stages of learning with this method seem to take forever, but the result is vastly accelerated learning later on. Band/Group Learning Any individual in a group can have a problem at any one of the steps outlined above. Often, just pulling a band all back to basic programming in a small problem area will solve the problem, and can often be highly motivational - everyone can discover an area they were weak on. Choice of repertoire should have two goals - to highlight a group's strengths, but also to develop (improve) areas of weakness. The magic maxim goes thus: "If you can play slowly, you can play quickly, but the converse isn't necessarily true" In 'piping at the highest level,
you will need to be able to
decide minutiae of when to open and close every single gracenote, and
exactly
how much time to give to it. To program this exactly, you will need to
be able
to play very slowly indeed, and bluffing will not be possible. Using playback files/videos at different speeds The magic maxim means exactly what it says - the better you become the more exactly you should be able to control what you are doing, and so to test ourselves, we shouldn't practice more quickly, but more slowly. Once you have gone to the slowest file and played along correctly, start to go through the faster ones again to see how much more precisely you are playing, and hearing what you are playing. Playing exactly with the playback files at a quarter speed is a fairly good test for a group, and this extra secret can dramatically affect the strength of playing within a band, and the confidence. It is true that using this approach, you can bring about a positive revolution in your band's playing and attitude. If you know the New French Method, great. If not, you will need to' feel' the rhythm (until we can figure out how to explain the method via internet...). It's a simple set of tasks, the trick is in disciplining yourself to do it. | ||||||||||||||||||
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