Best way to practice for beginners?

[bobkeenan]

Is there any general concensus on the best way to practice. I used to sit down and play about 6 different tunes by notes and add one every couple of months. I noticed in the last couple of months that i was not making much progress so now I play only 1 or 2 tunes and do not move on till I can play them without the music. I start with music and a slomo program on slow and then start speeding it up. Somewhere in there i try to stop looking at the music. I also drill the tune into my head with earphones and iphone whenever I can.

When the repitition becomes not fun I go back and play some of the other tunes, by notes, just for fun. And then back to the two tunes.

How does that compare.....any other suggestions?

[CHasR]

knowing what i know now, Bob; & were I in those shoes (this has been reinforced recently for me by a high profile piper) take some time just playing each note of the scale,, seeing where each feels right, up & down the scale, no hurry.
then if you get sick of that,, make up little melodic motives, g a b a...a b g b ..def#e, bcdcb, etc, no real beat, just getting the fingers to marry with the pocket each note feels right in,,.. then maybe add a little bit of rhythm,,, then maybe vary that,,then maybe add a steady tempo... just very basic, very slow, very comfy, very ZEN....letting your chanter breathe...oh, maybe 15, 20 min if you have the time... then have a happy tune from memory, maybe a second to cap off the session, do it again tomorrow, the next day, the next week, even longer, longer time still, make up more complex motives, add the ornaments, add the vibrato, add another tune, and another...not trying to talk down to you,, but at a starting level, i for one, wish that i had taken these baby steps that an already-working musician once thought superfluouous, ,, if so, then uilleann may not be the awfully hard work it is for me today,,,

[bobkeenan]

Great advice. I will try some of your suggestions.

[deisman]

Hi Bob,

I think you are doing a lot of things right - especially when you said get the music by ear. Ultimately you will have to figure out what works for you. Getting the music in your head by listening all the time is very important. I hear things now that I couldn't hear or interpret correctly when I was starting out. You may want to consider putting aside the notes and learning by ear and only get out the notes when you have problems hearing. A music sloe downer is a good tool. I also recommend making up your own tunes and play around on the chanter without worrying about how you sound and just get used to the fingering and bellows and bag. P. Keenan said something like playing the pipes was easy for him because he already had the music in his head. All he had to do was find the notes on the chanter. Try and find tunes you love and are accessible to you. What I mean is find tunes you think you can play ie. accessible. Most of all practice daily - even if its a bad day that's ok. I cannot tell you how many times I told myself maybe I don't have what it takes, but I hung in there and I still am a poor piper but I am way better than I was last year. : ) most of all listen to the great players and learn the tunes correctly. Better to play 1 tune right than 10 poorly. I hope you enjoy your journey.

Best

Deisman

[Tjones]

“Better to play 1 tune right than 10 poorly.”

I’m sure other will disagree with me but here goes.

Bob at your stage I wouldn’t worry about getting the tunes 100% right, and doing them at speed. You are still learning your instrument and the music. The best exercises you can do, will be the more variety of tunes you play. Exposure to a lot of tunes, even ones that you don’t like helps your learning.

Playing along only by ear is the key, even if slowly, it builds listening skills, dexterity, timing, and flexablity. Your fingers will react without you having to think about what comes next.

If you work on just a few tunes over and over until you have them “perfect”, at this stage in your journey, you’re limiting yourself. Spend a week or so on a couple tunes, get them where you can play along at comfortable speed for you, (building the speed over time) and then move on, don’t worry about having them prefect. Once you get more comfortable on your instrument and with the music, then go back to the tunes you really like and learn them.

I’v seen people who have learned the tunes from the dots, show up and become totally lost, because the notes, timing, etc. wasn’t the way they practiced it.

[highland-piper]

The best way to practice depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

The rough outline is: identify what you want to learn, break it up into pieces, repeat with accuracy and precision as much as necessary.

So it sounds like one thing you want to do is learn some tunes. I'm in that boat too, because I just joined a new pipe band (GHB) and I need to memorize all the tunes, mainly from the notes. I work on all them at once, spending a little time on each one, trying to understand the flow of the music, and making sure I'm not messing up my fingerings.

When I start to get one tune down well, then I try playing it without looking. Sometimes, but not always, along with a recording. I will typically find that for any given tune there will be a problem spot or two. These are places where the tune does something different. Usually if the tune has a really cool spot, this will be a problem spot. So once I've identified the problem spots (problems with memory) then I practice those spots. Maybe a bar; maybe two. I will work on that spot maybe going through it 5 times. Trying to do it without looking. Then I put that back into the part and try it once or twice.

Then I move on. Diminishing returns.

My favorite practice quotes:

"Figure out what your worst part is and work on it until it's your best."
"Amateurs practice until they can play it right; professionals practice until they cannot play it wrong."

one more note: if you are just playing through stuff that you can play well, then you're not practicing at all, but playing. Playing can be a lot of fun, but it's not practice.

[deisman]

Thanks for clarifying my post Tjones. I agree with your comments to Bob. What I was trying to express there at the end of my post was make sure you have a good audio and notation source so you learn the correct version of the tune. There are lots of versions and personal interpretations of tunes out there and you don't want to learn from a poor version and have to relearn it later. I agree that variety is important to learning and to make it fun.

Cheers

[Tjones]

Highland Piper is right ~”The best way to practice depends on what you're trying to accomplish.” Highland Piper just joined a pipe band, and his goal is learning their tunes. Scottish tradition relies on the printed sheet of music with all the notes printed out in great detail, so they all sound the same when then are competing.

Irish tradition is an aural tradition. Just the very basics of the tune is written down, and it depends on who wrote it down as to the setting your getting and if the other person knows the same setting. You aren’t competing.
Listening is very important, but passive listening isn’t enough. A total emersion approach, playing along with the tunes without sheet music, makes you really hear the tunes, and learn your instrument. A good player can hear a tune a few times through and pic it up and play along. At this stage, when you are exposed to more tunes, it’s not the just the tunes your are trying to learn, it’s the music, and how to learn the tunes, how to play your pipes, and how to listen so you can hear what the other player is playing. The more tunes under your belt, you’ll start to hear patterns, and understand what comes next. You’ll have more control over your pipes. The dots are an important tool, you can use them to work things out, but learning to play by ear is kinda the Irish tradition.

[highland-piper]

Irish tradition is an aural tradition.

All music is.

But memorization is a brain function independent of the myths of tradition. If one person finds that dots help them memorize it won't hurt their musicality. But a lack of listening sure will!

Clearly written music is a part of the Irish tradition, because there are written sources, not to mention anecdotes of celebrated Irish musicians using written music -- not playing from it, but using it as a tool. I suspect that if we had no audio recordings people would have a very different view of sheet music.

[Peter Duggan]

Scottish tradition relies on the printed sheet of music with all the notes printed out in great detail, so they all sound the same when then are competing.

No, no, no, no, no...

In some piping contexts, perhaps, but not Scottish tradition or even Highland piping in general!

[CHasR]

fwiw, i feel trying to get "tune-centric" at the earliest stages of contact is counterproductive. I have not seen any good come out of it when(for ex) at the 2nd lesson an overeager ghb piper gets the charts of amazing grace & scotland the brave thrown at them so thay can play in a band; likewise learning as much ITM as they can so one can presumably sit in at a sesiun. go & look at every single 'standard' instrument instruction book, one will not find a 'real' tune in them. Child tunes like hot cross buns, lightly row are simply finger exercises with a name.
Sure the "real" tunes are great, everyone wants to play them, and it absoutely *should* be a goal to have as many well played tunes on hand as one can manage,,, but in the embryo phase there are imho, far more important concepts to grasp

[Brazenkane]

I cannot over emphasize learning by ear, enough. If means you have to slow a tune down (w. software) and have it playing all day long, then do that. Turn it off, and try to lilt your way through it. Force yourself to learn w.o. the sheet music. Practice very slow, and don't speed anything up until you can do it perfectly, slow.

Try that!

[ennischanter]

I cannot over emphasize learning by ear, enough. If means you have to slow a tune down (w. software) and have it playing all day long, then do that. Turn it off, and try to lilt your way through it. Force yourself to learn w.o. the sheet music. Practice very slow, and don't speed anything up until you can do it perfectly, slow.

Try that!

I have Amazing Slow Downer, and it helped me a lot! I just learned a very complicated reel.

I should seriously try more.

[highland-piper]

A great program for slowing down music is Sonic Visualizer. It is open source, and the audio quality is very good. Has some handy tools too, like one that will show you the harmonic content of the recording superimposed on a piano keyboard.

[bobkeenan]

I took several of the ideas posted so far. Thank you very much.

I start now by playing random notes. Try to repeat them. Play whatever comes into my head. It actually is kind of empowering. But here comes the mini-miracle. I have put together a tune book of the tunes that I play. And I usually play by the notes. I have tried before, playing a tune a bunch of times, and then saying to myself... now play this without looking. And I either cannot do it or I can only do part. I have played each of these tunes many dozens of times.

But today after just messing around playing whatever notes i wanted.... one of those tunes popped into my head... one that I could not play without notes in front of me. So then I tried another... and it popped out of my head as well. I even tried the Youghall Waltz, which is one of my more complicated tunes, I could play it without looking!!!

Now these tunes were not with out errors and pauses but the tunes were coming out without looking at the sheet music.... Kinda amazing for me. I had myself convinced that i could not learn any tunes by memory.

So the moral of my practicing story.... screw around on the pipes for a while before you try to play a tune and practiced tunes are indeed in your head.... the trick is to access them.