I sat down with the fan to try out On the Ocean again. The moment he reminded me of the starting note I was away. A part done and dusted.
The B part is proving trickier. Partly because it simply is more complex, more varied than the A. It's also at least in part the top note, using (for the first time ever) my extra key. Trying to grace that note, or to move between it and something - anything - other than the next note down is quite a tall order. Having all of my top hand off the chanter, other than my thumb against the key, feels distinctly odd.
The B is also tricky because the fan sometimes forgets the variation he has created for me to make the tune playable within the range of the pipes, and sometimes he updates and amends the variations as we go along. It did my head in, as they say. In the end, he played, explained and guided me, I played, and then I wrote down the notes I had played. So the A was born dotless, as it were, never having existed in any other state for me. The B started dotless, and now has dots, which I suppose I will use to learn from. It's not necessarily the best of both worlds, but it gets me out of a corner.
Now, I wonder what would sound good with The Ocean?
Ramblings of an easily distracted learner piper
Monday 13 July 2015
Thursday 9 July 2015
The downside of the dotless life
I may have mentioned that I've had Out on the Ocean in my head a lot of late, so I decided to learn it. It's quite basic, it's lively, it's Irish, people at the session know it...
The fan had no dots for the version he plays. He printed some from the session for me. They were all in keys I can play...but they all had too many notes. So the fan taked me through the tune until I could play it. The B part was a challenge as some of those extra notes had to be turned into other notes. I actually used my extra keyed note, and discovered that gracing on that is a serious challenge. I played phrases over and over until I had them nailed. And then...life intervened, the tune went out of my head, and I 've only just this evening had the opportunity to get back to my pipes. I asked the fan to hum the tune, then he went out. I picked up my pipes and...no tune. Totally forgotten. I googled. I found a version. Got it. Picked up pipes and...no tune.
The fan will come home later and I'll be able to ask him to take me through the tune again. Hopefully the tune will sink in, my fingers will remember and the tune will be learned. But what would have happened if I'd got the tune from someone in a session? Someone just passing through and not intending to return. Am I supposed to play the tune for several hours solid and thus remember it forever from that one time of playing it? Or does learning from ear only really work if you are learning the tune from a neighbour or someone who you see every month or week at a session? I think that next time I go through the tune with the fan I'll be noting the dots down and getting the best of both worlds!
The fan had no dots for the version he plays. He printed some from the session for me. They were all in keys I can play...but they all had too many notes. So the fan taked me through the tune until I could play it. The B part was a challenge as some of those extra notes had to be turned into other notes. I actually used my extra keyed note, and discovered that gracing on that is a serious challenge. I played phrases over and over until I had them nailed. And then...life intervened, the tune went out of my head, and I 've only just this evening had the opportunity to get back to my pipes. I asked the fan to hum the tune, then he went out. I picked up my pipes and...no tune. Totally forgotten. I googled. I found a version. Got it. Picked up pipes and...no tune.
The fan will come home later and I'll be able to ask him to take me through the tune again. Hopefully the tune will sink in, my fingers will remember and the tune will be learned. But what would have happened if I'd got the tune from someone in a session? Someone just passing through and not intending to return. Am I supposed to play the tune for several hours solid and thus remember it forever from that one time of playing it? Or does learning from ear only really work if you are learning the tune from a neighbour or someone who you see every month or week at a session? I think that next time I go through the tune with the fan I'll be noting the dots down and getting the best of both worlds!
Sunday 5 July 2015
Great Expectations
It's funny that you define a goal, see a possibility, aim for it, reach it...and immediately, it seems, become dissatisfied with it. What looked from a distance to be enough turns out, on closer inspection, not to be enough at all, just a point on the way to getting somewhere that is still just out of reach.
I'm partly thinking about the tennis, of course. As Dustin Brown is quoted as saying in the paper today: "When I came to quallies, if someone would have said 'sign here for beating Rafa, making the second round and qualifying' I would have signed". But now, of course, it's not enough, because once he beat Rafa to go through to the third round he could see himself going through there, too, and suddenly it's not what he acheived that he can see, but that shining next round that he missed. I suspect Heather Watson and James Ward feel the same. They acheived more than they could have hoped for and all it does is hold out the possibility of more, and the disappointment of the failure to reach that.
Even when you do reach those shining Elysian fields and win a Grand Slam, or two, it's still not enough, because you want to do that again, and again.
It may be that this is because tennis is a competitive game, so that part of the point is always to be better than the person on the other side of the net. Part of it is perhaps the rewards. When you normally earn slightly less than it costs you to get to the tournament it must be such a relief to win a couple of year's salary in one week. And the better you do the easier it it to get into other tournaments: no need to qualify if your world ranking gets you straight in, and hopefully you'll be playing players ranked below you. Yes, life must become easier in all sorts of ways.
And yet. And yet there are players who slog away at minor tournaments, clambering through qualfiying rounds, hoping for wild cards, who in a career spanning years never make it past the first week of a grand slam. If it was fame or money or an easy life they were after they could have found easier ways of achieving those.
At the end of the day they must surely play because it is what they want to do, what they enjoy doing. And it is for themselves that somehow their best is never good enough, and acheiving something new is only a tantalising glimpse of more that might be possible if only they push on, one more time. It is, I think, a lot like playing music. Somehow there is always more to be achieved, more you could do, another round you could get to.
I'm partly thinking about the tennis, of course. As Dustin Brown is quoted as saying in the paper today: "When I came to quallies, if someone would have said 'sign here for beating Rafa, making the second round and qualifying' I would have signed". But now, of course, it's not enough, because once he beat Rafa to go through to the third round he could see himself going through there, too, and suddenly it's not what he acheived that he can see, but that shining next round that he missed. I suspect Heather Watson and James Ward feel the same. They acheived more than they could have hoped for and all it does is hold out the possibility of more, and the disappointment of the failure to reach that.
Even when you do reach those shining Elysian fields and win a Grand Slam, or two, it's still not enough, because you want to do that again, and again.
It may be that this is because tennis is a competitive game, so that part of the point is always to be better than the person on the other side of the net. Part of it is perhaps the rewards. When you normally earn slightly less than it costs you to get to the tournament it must be such a relief to win a couple of year's salary in one week. And the better you do the easier it it to get into other tournaments: no need to qualify if your world ranking gets you straight in, and hopefully you'll be playing players ranked below you. Yes, life must become easier in all sorts of ways.
And yet. And yet there are players who slog away at minor tournaments, clambering through qualfiying rounds, hoping for wild cards, who in a career spanning years never make it past the first week of a grand slam. If it was fame or money or an easy life they were after they could have found easier ways of achieving those.
At the end of the day they must surely play because it is what they want to do, what they enjoy doing. And it is for themselves that somehow their best is never good enough, and acheiving something new is only a tantalising glimpse of more that might be possible if only they push on, one more time. It is, I think, a lot like playing music. Somehow there is always more to be achieved, more you could do, another round you could get to.
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