I have been wanting to pick up new tunes on the pipes for quite a while. I heard music reading is frowned upon though; Maybe not, but I dunno. 
I do love to pick up tunes by ear, but have trouble. (Due to a condition I have, I have got overlapping ADD/ADHD symptoms, and get carried away easily.) I can read music OK, not that well yet…
I am wondering, can reading music be a good way to pick up music?
I really want to do this, what do you think? Any advice?
IMHO reading notes is fine as long as you also listen to recordings to get the feel of the tune. So a combo of notes and by ear.
My first instrument was clarinet, so I’ve been hopelessly tethered to notes for years, and I’ve slowly been trying to move away.
I agree.
If we were all blessed to be able to live in Ireland and have access to top-notch piping tuition, it might be unnecessary. But for those of us not so blessed, reading from music is a way to be exposed to and learn many more tunes than would otherwise be the case. I know it’s popular to disparage learning ITM from scored music, but I for one am grateful for the many resources of printed music available. O’Neill’s 1001, Tunes of the Munster Pipers, Ceol Rince na hÉireann, etc. have given me countless hours of pleasure and great tunes.
Tommy Reck was apparently a good sight-reader, I heard that’s how he preformed some tunes on his album “The Stone in the field”.
Seamus Ennis could read music too, but he used his skill for transcribing.
I am eyeballing Thesession.org as of now. I just signed up on there.
I heard an interview with (I think) Pat Mitchell in which he said Seamus’s father , Jimmy, gave him a copy of O’Neil’s 1001, and said off you go.
Neat!
I personally think transcribing would be a great skill to have in the ITM field.
Is Thesession.org a good place to find new music?
I actually started out sight reading. In the Highland Pipe tradition all learning is done by paper. Their system is so regimented one can generally be sure they’re getting the ‘feel’ of the time because every ornamentation is included on the paper. The only exception might be Strathspeys.
The first couple months without a teacher on the Uilleann Pipes I gravitated toward sheet music. It was difficult to creatively expand though because it was as if my mind was restricted by the notes on the paper. Eventually I learned a few tunes by ear and find it so much easier and quicker. I honestly still have a hard time believing how quick it is to pick up a tune AND KEEP IT. I think that’s the main advantage. In order to play by ear you must get a feel for the tune first. It helps cement it in your memory and opens up your fingers to more creative options because you understand the “main idea” of what the melody is trying to convey.
I like looking at the popular tunes list for tunes that might be good to learn for session playing if I don’t have a tune in mind.
I would get the Holy Trinity of Piping Books,
The Piping of Patsy Touhey,
The Dance Music of Willy Clancy
And
The Dance Music of Seamus Ennis
Learn to read them and digest them.
Through these books I went from being a flute player messing with pipes
To being someone who at least knows how a pipers approach will differ.
When I first started with pipes, I came from classical training so was comfortable with reading/sightreading music, but not so much with listening and then playing what I heard. I slowly weaned myself from reading music over the years… finding that the setting I want to learn is something I hear rather than see on paper. I’ve found I remember the tune better if I learn it by ear these days, if I learn it off paper, I tend to need the paper to remember it! That being said, any way you get to the music - the way that fits best for you right now I think is the way to go.
When first starting out, I used John Walsh’s “Collection of Pipe Friendly Tunes” which is still availble through the Seattle Piper’s Club. Best contact Tom Creegan for it! It’s a lovely book and really keeps things simple and straightforward.
Best of luck.
K
Reading scores can be very useful as long as you know how the music should be played, no problem with that. Useful to learn particular versions too, especially where you have difficulty understanding what’s going on in the tune. In that sense, “the dance music of Willie Clancy” is great. Apart from that, I prefer to learn “standard” versions of tunes by ear, just because it’s faster for me, and with a good habit of that, you can even pick a few tunes by ear in a session right there on the spot… There are different ways of learning by ear too… Once again, the most important is to know how the music should be played,and that can only be achieved by listening. Once you know, you learn tunes the way you want. But if you learn by reading, it’s better to hear the tune as well, by different musicians if possible.
I am sort of picking up a tune from thesession. My biggest trouble is adding my own embellishments/improvising too soon.
Yes I agree, I think listening to “plain” recordings will help. Trying to learn tunes From someone like Ennis, will be quite difficult, due to their heavily embellished and detailed playing.
It can be. All the tunes there were submitted by someone, so the quality varies and depends on the person posting them. Some are rubbish, many are worthwhile, and some are great. Many of the good old traditional tunes have several different settings submitted; it pays to look at them all before printing off one to learn. There are some pipers that are regular contributors, which is good because many submitted settings are fiddle (or some other instrument) friendly but not necessarily pipe-friendly. Two of particular note, who’s settings I almost always enjoy are users JACKB and ceolachan. I wonder if they are members here on C&F too? Anyway, if either of them has submitted a setting of a tune you like, it will be almost guaranteed to be a good pipe setting of that tune.
The Session has a decent search function that allows you to look for tunes you know the name of, though the spelling of Irish names can trip it up.
I tend to browse the new submissions once a week, and play anything that looks interesting on a tin whistle that I keep near my computer for that purpose, then save or print the ones I deem worth learning.
If you are without a teacher, I’d recommend joining Na Piobairi Uilleann to gain access to their wealth of tutor videos. It’s a nice way to learn common tunes in plain settings with visual accompaniment of someone playing.
Great suggestion, Murk. Learning by ear is easier when you are listening someone who is playing with the intention of teaching the tune. You might also want to check out youtube, there’s several tunes played for learners up there. Look particularly for Patrick D’Arcy.
Interestingly enough, mr D’arcy plays a chanter in the same pitch made by the same maker!
A whistler here with a very slightly off-topic observation: in most music fields, “sight reading” means playing well a piece of music you’ve never heard, first time thru, at speed. In other words, a performance-level rendition on the first look at the music. This skill is a requirement for studio musicians who are expected to play anything placed in front of them without rehearsal and the skill is much sought after in other arenas such as orchestras. What most of us do in the ITM world, I expect, is “read music.” I can pick up a sheet of music, noodle my way thru it and pick up the tune over the course of a day or so of practice. It helps tremendously if I’ve heard the tune played by a competent musician so I know what it’s supposed to sound like. That is not “sight reading,” that is “reading music.”
FWIF, tunes I learn by ear, I remember better and can still play them some weeks or months later even if I haven’t practiced them in the interim. Tunes I learn from sheet music don’t stick so well and I generally need to peek at the sheet music if I haven’t played the tune in a while. I would guess different areas of the brain are used in the two learning methods but I’ll leave that to a more learned individual to sort out.
We now return you to the regularly scheduled piping thread.
Over the years, a number of people have worked very hard at transcribing various great pipers’ settings of tunes, and transcribing them well. With all the resources at hand – many of which are mentioned above – I think it’s a shame not to utilize them if you can read. I eagerly look forward to the informed transcriptions in An Piobaire every quarter.
Bottom line: if no one’s supposed to read the tunes, then no one would be going to such great lengths to write the tunes down.
By all means listen too, and listen LOTS … but if you want to learn how Willie Clancy might have played a tune and you can read a transcription by a piper who knew the man, then I think by not studying it you may be denying yourself some potentially valuable insight.
Same with the Ennis, Shields, and other collections. In the Shields case, Canon Goodman went to great trouble to write the tunes down way back when; it’s worth my time to look at what he heard.
[IMO, the Session is great for a quick “sketch” of a tune and several settings. But many of the tunes there are not transcribed by pipers, or pipers of the caliber you’ll find at NPU. If you want to play like a piper, read the pipers.]
A personal example: After several years of forgetting the book entirely, I just cracked open Heather Clarke’s tutor for a look at “Johnny Cope.” I’m listening to several recordings (Brian McNamara especially), but I’m also learning a TON from reading through Clarke’s transcription (she’s a helluva piper herself). Just yesterday I was making my daily crawl through the tune and my sweetheart said “Wow! That sounds great! I’ve never heard you play like that before!”
Once I got over feeling like a moron, I decided that was all the encouragement I need to continue along this path for a bit 
P.S. Maybe I missed seeing this mentioned above; in case it hasn’t, I think “Ceol an Phiobaire” is a dandy, too. http://pipers.ie/store/products/ceol-an-ph/
I agree. Often times I’ll look at a setting at the session for a tune I want to learn and not be overly stoked by it. In those cases, I go the listening route, using the session as a “sketch” like Cathy mentions and going from there.
Indeed, that does sound interesting.
If I have never heard a tune before or found any reference of it, Could I trust the MIDI on thesession?