The Importance of an Instructor

I read a lot of forums on piping; it's my way of staying in contact with like-minded people and I get a lot of great advice and suggestions to make this journey easier.  One thing I've noticed is that on a fairly regular basis, someone posts a thread stating that they just bought a set of pipes, and their intention is to pick them up and teach themselves how to play.  There's usually a comment somewhere in the thread about how they play all sorts of instruments without any instruction, how they have a "really good ear", and how they don't need to waste time on a practice chanter or waste money on lessons with an instructor.  This is usually followed with a line or two where they brag about their progress-they have the chanter and drones fully and perfectly tuned and they can play STB start to finish after a week of self taught practice.

If there are indeed people out there with this amazing innate musical talent, I say God Bless and good luck.  However, I seriously doubt that they are as good as they think they are.  I listened to a piper at a rennaisance fair last year who, even to my untrained ear, was horribly out of tune and he thought he sounded pretty good-I know this because I asked him a few pointed questions about his performance and he told me it went really well when it in fact was really poor.  My point is that one of the most important benefits of an instructor is that you have someone with a trained ear who can judge your playing completely without bias and keep you on the right path to proper playing.  My instructor doesn't just teach me new grace notes and tunes, she listens to my playing and hears problems that I don't even know I have.  This keeps me from developing bad habits that I'll have to correct later.

Going to lessons with a good instructor is the best money I can spend.  I've made huge progress even in the short time I've been taking lessons and I intend to continue with lessons as long as I can afford them and my instructor wants to keep me as a student.  Pipers who think they can play well without instruction are fooling themselves and they're selling themselves short.  My question to them would be this-if you have so much natural talent that you can play the pipes straight out of the box, why would you not want to take lessons and become a really stellar piper?

A New Song

This week's lesson went well.  I managed AG and STB with all the bits from last week corrected and AG even sounded rather good to me.  STB still doesn't sound right because I'm so slow but I played it, even the hard part.  I managed to get through We No Awa to Bide Awa without too much difficuly, and yet, once again-I'm trying to play it way to fast.  When am I going to learn to slow down?  So now I have yet another song to add to my repetoire and I like it very much.Will ye no Come Back Again.  There's no surprises there, it's a pretty simple song and I'm pretty sure I'll know it well enough to play a decent version next week.  I managed to struggle through it for my lesson this week, even though I still hate playing a new piece of music for my instructor.  I just decided I had to get over that fear-I'm going to make lots of mistakes, that's just part of the process.

As for the pipes-I'm overthinking everything involved in piping.  My arm is waving about wildly in an effort to keep the bag going and my breathing is erratic.  My instructor says to relax and just try playing a tune for fun.  She wants me to ignore the squeeks and squawks and the cutting out issues and stop thinking while I'm trying to play and just play for fun.  I'm definitely overblowing the chanter reed, but that's ok-I wondered if I should switch to a stiffer reed, but no-what will happen is when I'm finally blowing with all 3 drones the reed I have now will be just about right.  I'm just wondering if I'll actually be able to turn my brain off and just play?  Somehow my brain thinks it's in charge and refuses to be shut off. 

Progress!

This weeks lesson-as I thought, I was doing one little bit wrong on AG, and there were a few bits with a little crossing sound.  As usual, I played perfectly at home, with no crossing noises.  And I did a half way sorta kinda decent job on STB, even the hard part.  Just one correction to work on there.  So I get a new song to practice-No Awa' ta Bide Awa'.  Funny thing is, since I've always heard this played with STB, I thought it was just another stanza, didn't realize it was its own little song.  It's tough.  Almost every note has a grace note of one kind or another.  And-my instructor was impressed with my ability to play my one lonely little note on the pipes.  So while I was showing her my progress, she UNCORKED A DRONE!  This is huge-I get to play 2 notes (A and B) with one drone.  I thought I sounded kind of uneven on the chanter, but she didn't think it was too bad. 

I wish I could play as well for my instructor as I think I play at home.  I have issues about performing in front of people and that always comes into play during my lessons.  She wanted me to try No Awa' to Bide Awa'; I suggested that since it was completely new, maybe I could just take it home, practice on my own, then play it for her next week.  Teacher said "You want to go home and learn to play it perfectly before you play it for me, don't you?"  To which I responded-well, yeah.  She told me that kind of took away the whole point of taking lessons, which was to try new stuff.  So I played it for her, very poorly.  I'm going to have to get used to playing new stuff for her, even though it's really outside of my comfort zone. 

So the questions is, will I be able to overcome my anxiety about performing in front of people enough to actually play in front of an audience?  Seriously-how do people do it-how do people give speeches and sing and play musical instruments with others staring at them?  I hope that the day will come when I will just think about the music and just play.  I think the bagpipes may be the best instrument for me-they're so complicated, I'll be forced to concentrate on playing rather than on the audience.

One Note. Three Months.

Todays lesson-review STB and AG.  Turns out, somehow I started playing STB wrong-instead of playing E gracenotes I switched to G gracenotes throughout the entire song.  I now have to retrain my errant fingers to play the proper gracenotes and I'm not playing the leumlauths correctly-I kinda sorta started dropping the last little part.  And I need to slow down on AG-as in slow WAY down.  This is a HYMN-not a fast paced JIG.  Ah well-and I was so proud of my ability to play the 2 tricky parts of STB.

I was also quite proud of my new found ability to play the scale on the pipes.  Granted-that was with no drones and a lot of squawking and squeeking, and it took me forever to find low G just to start, but damn if I didn't play a few notes.  It was sort of frantic and crazy and not very pretty.  It's sort of like this-OK, fingers, play low G then A.  DON'T STOP SQUEEZING THE BAG!  AND BREATHE, DAMMIT, BREATHE!  Now, play another couple of notes.  DAMN-YOU FORGOT TO BREATH AGAIN AND YOUR BAG IS RUNNING OUT OF AIR!  AND WHY ARE YOU SUDDENLY LOCKING UP YOUR KNEES?  You get the picture.  I thought my instructor would be so proud of me, but instead she told me to stop trying to play the scale.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.  I'm now only allowed to play one note-either low A or E, my choice.  No scales, no 2 notes together.  Just one lonely, sad little note for as long as I can hold it.  And I will probably be playing that one sad little note for 3 months-that's 3 STINKING MONTHS OF ONE NOTE.  And once I get proficient at that one note, guess what-I get to play one note with one drone.  Yay.

The D slur

Yesterday's lesson-a new song and the D slur.  I finally managed to play Scots Wha Hae decently for my instructor.  I forced myself to slow down, even for the end where I usually speed up just to try to get through the song and it's finally good enough that I can move on to a new song.  I asked if this meant I can set Scots Wha Hae aside and work on other things-the answer was no.  Apparantly, I won't ever set any song aside, I just keep adding to my currently modest repetoire and practicing every song I learn.  So I still have a lot of practice to do on Scotland the Brave, and I now have Amazing Grace to practice.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to practice immediately after my lesson.  So when I finally got home I couldn't remember how to do the D slur for Amazing Grace.  I went online and there's a tutuorial there but the guy plays it way to fast for me to see what he's doing.  I woke up last night at 2:00 am and couldn't sleep so there I was, practice chanter in hand, trying to listen to the online guy and see if I could figure out what he's doing by sound rather than by watching.  We'll find out this morning after my run when I'm on the pc whether I figured it out or not.

My instructor made another reference to me joining the band yesterday.  When we were going over Amazing Grace, she crossed out a lot of the doublings.  I told her I know them and I can play it with the doublings and she said "I know you can play them, but the band plays it without those doublings, so you should learn it that way."

Umm, OK-she thinks I'm going to join the band.  The pm thinks I'm joining the band and Hubby thinks I'm joining the band. 

I guess I'm joining the band.

An Introduction

Well, here I am with a new passion and a new blog.  If you know the difference between a leumlauth and a tachum then you're probably a piper.  I'm a beginning piper (and by beginning I mean I've had 2 months worth of lessons at this writing) and this blog is my humble little way of tracking my progress and recording my observations along the way to really, truly becoming a piper.

So, perhaps you would like to know a little about me.  I'm a middle aged retired lady who lives in central California-do you know where Santa Barbara is?  OK, just drive up the coast for a little over an hour and you'll find my tiny little town.  I like to run.  I like to shoot civil war era guns.  I play with sports cars, mostly the little british 4 banger kind.  And now I like to practice the bagpipes. 

I've wanted to play a musical instrument pretty much my whole life.  As a child, my parents couldn't afford an instrument or music lessons and as an adult I was too busy with work and home and life in general to take up an instrument.  When I retired I decided it was time to accomplish that goal.  I chose the bagpipes because I love the music and I have Scottish heritage.  It didn't hurt that I also had a friend who is the pm for the local pipe band who encouraged me to play.

I bought a practice chanter and a book at the Scottish games 2 years ago.  I learned the scale and a really simple version of Going Home.  I practiced for a while in earnest, then set the chanter aside, then practiced again, then set it aside again, then decided that if I was really going to do this I had to step up to the plate and start lessons.  My pm friend reccommended an instructor and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

So here I am, practice chanter in hand, taking lessons and gazing longingly at my newly purchased pipes and hoping that soon I'll be able to do more than just blow one lonely little drone.