Here a Birl, There a Birl, Everywhere a Birl…

So.  This past week, in between practicing hard on my newest tune, “CWTB”, I’ve been playing birls.  Lots of ‘em.  All over the place.  I birl when I’m typing (see, I just did it then!) and when I’m just sitting around.  I found the finger movement to be easier than I thought.  I’ve also had the devil of a time trying to memorize “HR2G”.  GAH!  It’s like a nightmare–all those C doublings with just enough B doublings in there to throw you all off.  I’ve almost got it.  By my next lesson, I’ll have it down, I’m sure.

I went to my lesson on Sunday afternoon and played “CWTB” for Rodney.  He says I’m coming along pretty well.  He’s working with me more on my expression of the tune rather than my fingering technique, which I take as a very good sign.  I take it to mean that my fingerings are solid enough to start thinking about how I’m expressing the notes.  John (the other seasoned piper) has also taken to spending some one-on-one time with me and giving me some really great pointers about how to express the tunes and also about how they “work” as a tune.  I’m having to learn the Celtic way of phrasing music, which is slightly different than Western classical music.  I have to admit, I like the Celtic way better…  The tunes sound so difficult at first, simply because they are played so god-awful fast.  But once you break them down into their repeating phrases…they are quite easy to get the hang of.

I’ve moved into the first two parts of the four-part tune “The 79th’s Farewell to Gibraltar”.  It’s a lively marching tune with a lot of those ‘Scotch Snaps’ that I’ve never seemed to get the hang of on the pennywhistle.  John has me breaking each group of four fast notes down into 2s.  So the first part goes “hoooold, cut” “hoooold, cut” and the second set goes “cut, hoooold” “cut, hoooold”.  Hanging onto the held notes a hair longer than my instinct tells me to makes all the musical difference in the way the tune sounds.  I’ve picked up the basics pretty easily to these first 2 parts.  I have to work on the timing, speed and a few places where my expression is off.  The birls come easily at the ends of each measure…I find it to be a natural way to finish off the end of a part. 

I look up the history of each tune I learn.  The “79th” is by far the most fascinating.  A brief article on the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, see the Wikipedia entry here.  A very interesting and full history of the regiment can be found here–complete with first hand accounts!  Several very cool regimental art prints can be seen here.  Make sure you read Colonel Cameron’s 1804 letter regarding the abolishment of the uniform kilt and also Piper Kenneth MacKay’s rallying pibroch to help the British save the day at Waterloo here.  Fascinating stuff!  Happy piping!

 

Leumluaths & Taorluaths & Birls, Oh My!

So, my lesson this afternoon went pretty well.  I played “Highland Laddie” for Rodney.  I thought I was really bad at it–I was pretty sure nearly everything was wrong.  (Though, I must say, my high-A doubling is pretty good.)  Anyways, Rodney listened to me playing and right away told me what I was doing wrong.  Seems that (once again) I was playing the music as it was written.  STUPID ME!  Like I said in my last post, Rodney plays this tune with a lot of expression–holding some notes and cutting others.  I just made little notations on the music of where to hold and where to cut and voila!  it worked.  So now I’m into the next embellishment exercise and tune.

And the leumluath (lem-loo-ah) or “grip” is pretty simple–I got that right away.  The taorluath (tar-loo-ah) was a little harder, but I still got it fairly quickly. 

(Side note: I firmly believe that it was easier for me to pick up the leumluath & taorluath because I’ve been playing the heavy D throw from the beginning.  The leumluath is exactly the same as the first 3 gracenotes that make up the heavy D throw, and the taorluath has the same rhythm, but instead of making a C, you make an E gracenote into the melody note.  Very simple!  Hard work in the beginning paying off already!!  The problem now is that my fingers want to play a taorluath instead of the D throw now.  Must work on that!)

The tune I’m working on now is “Carles Wi’ The Breeks” (or “CWTB”).  It’s nice, because it’s a slow air.  Everything’s nice and slow…I’m going to get this one fairly quickly, I think.  The hard stuff (the leumluaths and taorluaths) are right in the first part and the second part is really easy.  That will free me up to polish up my “HR2G” and “Highland Laddie”.

Rodney also started me on the birl.  It’s like a low A doubling.  There are a few different ways to do it, but Rodney has the band do the “7″ movement.  Only it’s upside down.  Basically, you make a low A, slide the pinky over the low G hole, and then move it back up and curl it in.  I actually found it easier than I expected (there’s lots of talk about how hard it is).  Of course, I can’t play it to speed, but it’s nothing like trying to learn D throws.

I found out today that nearly everyone else’s practice chanter came with countersunk holes.  Mine doesn’t.  I’ve been having the dickens of a time finding the holes with my fingers, especially the low G.  I think I might save some money and buy a new practice chanter.  I definitely want it to be wood and it needs to be a “long” and it needs to have countersunk holes.  I like this one…it’s cocobolo wood, which I think looks great.  Plus it’s a little cheaper than the ABW.  I’ll have to save a bit, but it will be a nice investment.

That’s about all for tonight.

 

Updates! Getcher updates here!

Okay.  So another week has gone by and I have made good progress.  I went to my lesson on Sunday afternoon and got some really great tips from Rodney and this other guy John.  (John’s been piping for a really long time and is gruff, but a fantastic teacher.  He’s very patient with noobs like me.)  They figured out what my rhythm problems were with “BHM” and why I couldn’t get it sounding quite right.  I mean, it was ‘technically’ ok, but musically, it was really wrong.  Turns out, I wasn’t holding the dotted eighths quite long enough or cutting the sixteenths quite short enough.  Now, I hold the longer notes a split second longer than I feel like I should and cut the shorter notes a split second before I feel like I should, and – miracles upon miracles – it sounds pretty good!

To this point, I’ve memorized both “SWH” and “BHM” and can play them both pretty well.  I’m still practicing “HR2G” and I’m not really very close to having that memorized yet, though I can play it pretty well.  It’s my favorite tune that I’ve learned so far. 

Rodney released me into the next tune, “Highland Laddie”.  This one has been giving me fits.  Rodney plays it with a lot of expression–by that I mean holding every other one of the 32nd notes a little longer, holding the eighths a little longer, cutting some of the quarters, holding the beginning G gracenote…the list goes on and on.  It makes it a little harder to learn the tune, because I’m constantly referring to the recording then the music, then the recording, then making notes on the music, then the recording, then playing it, then listening to it again…  But I’m getting there. 

The “Rhythmic Fingerings” book by Jim McGillivray is AWESOME.  All my pre-tune practicing comes straight out of that book.  I play the beginning gracenote exercises to warm up and then I play through all the first and second doubling exercises (I can’t quite play the march or the jig exercises yet–just the first one and the second one given for each doubling).  At this point in the Green Book, I’ve learned all the doublings except for D, but it’s really not that much different from the B, C, or E doublings really.  So I play through all those.  I also play the first two D throw exercises he gives.  The book is great and it’s helped me loads already.

Another cool thing I got was a CD of Bagpipe Music Writer Gold, a program that takes a code and turns it into bagpipe sheet music and it will also play the music in MIDI format.  (It’s very similar to ABC2Win program, which I use to make up pennywhistle music.)  All the band’s set tunes were also on the CD, so I printed them all out and started a binder.  Now, at the next practice, I’ll have my own music to follow along to.  It should help me out to get a feel for the music and the expression before I actually can start playing with the band.  I’ve tinkered a bit with the BMWG code…it’s much easier than ABC–you don’t have to type in each note, just pick the ones you want..anyways, I made up some practice exercises for myself.  It’s a pretty nifty program. 

That’s about all for now…happy piping.

 

Keep your head up and practice, young man!

So it’s been a week since I last posted.  Sheesh, it doesn’t feel like that long ago.  Where to start??  I kept practicing “BHM” and got it sounding pretty okay.  I’m still having a little bit of rhythm issues, but that’s mostly due to my slow D throws and D slurs. 

I purchased Jim McGillivray’s “Rhythmic Fingerings” book & CD for more practice exercises.  The book is geared towards ‘advanced beginners’ on up.  I don’t consider myself an advanced beginner, by any means, but I’m using the beginning exercises in the book for good gracenote exercises.  It also teaches pointing and rhythm and working to the beat.  All of these things I need to improve.  So I’m slowly working through some of the early exercises during the warm up part of my sessions.  I would recommend the book highly as a great addition to the College of Piping Green Book.

I had my third lesson on Sunday afternoon and got some in-depth teaching on the double C and double B movements.  I found them nearly impossible at first and as Rodney (that’s my P/M’s name) had me slowly play through the next tune: “The High Road to Gairloch” (hereafter “HR2G”).  I was screwing up everything.  Rodney was patient & encouraging – not like the P/M’s of yore.  (The tales of their finger smacking and screaming linger on.)  He said I was doing ok, but I was really doing HORRIBLY.  I couldn’t tell my double Cs from my double Bs or the D throws and, for some reason, couldn’t for the life of me go from the double C to E.  It was a hot mess.

Anyways, I took it home and copied it into my sheet music book.  It’s amazing how much easier I find playing tunes written out in my own hand.  Plus, the effort of copying the tune out really drills into your head the melody and the different embellishments.  I don’t have a problem telling the double Cs from the double Bs or the D throws anymore. 

(FYI, the way to tell the double B from the double C is the middle note of the embellishment.  Each doubling starts with hi-G and ends with the D gracenotes.  In the middle is the final note.  That’s how I tell them apart when I’m reading through the music.  Also, when I was copying the music, I drew in the C or the B with a red pen so they stood out as Cs or Bs.)

After a few days of practicing, I feel like I have the “HR2G” down fairly well.  Naturally, I still have to polish it up some–I’m still having a bit of problems with flowing easily into the double Bs.  I’m hesitating and it sounds like crap.  But it’s coming along.  I think I’ll get it before the next lesson.

Another thing…I’ve been playing this whole time with a Dunbar polypenco practice chanter.  However, my aunt also passed along an African blackwood (ABW) chanter, but I hadn’t played it.  Because there’s a discussion going on in the Bob Dunsire forums about the differences between ABW and polypenco, I decided to pick up my ABW chanter and try it out. 

W. O. W.!!!  I am amazed at the difference in tone and the general ‘feel’ of the instrument.  The ABW chanter takes less air pressure to play (could be good or bad–maybe the seal isn’t as airtight as the polypenco one).  Also, it ‘buzzes’…I can’t explain it well, but it actually vibrates much more along the length of the chanter and the sound that comes out is much fuller and buzzier than the poly one.  It sounds clearer and brighter and much more bagpipe-y.  I also find that I naturally hold it in the proper position without squeezing it too tight.  I love it.  I’m going to play it from now on, even though it’s a little nicked up around the edges.  Looks aren’t everything, you know.

Finally, I purchased 2 new bagpipe music CDs.  The first, as recommended by the folks over at the Dunsire forums, is “Flame of Wrath” by the 78th Fraser Highlanders.  What a freakin’ AWESOME record.  I can’t stop listening to it.  I also got a piobaireachd CD - “Ceol Na Pioba“.  I really like piobaireachd music and can’t wait to learn it.  It is so intricate and beautiful and the melodies are haunting.  It’s really mesmerizing music and once I started listening, I couldn’t stop.  I will be buying more bagpipe music to add to my library and as I do, I will post about it.

That’s all for now, I think.

 

That Brown Haired Maiden is Easy

…Or maybe not exactly “EASY”, but at least easier than at first she appears.  Kind of like a naughty librarian. 

But I digress…

The trouble I had with it is the rhythmic little jiggy melody line with all the doublings that kinda runs the show there after the first little bit.  Here’s how I had to learn it (and I am by no means finished learning it):

There’s a website here, that has a bunch of bagpipe tunes in MIDI format.  While at work, I downloaded the MIDI file for “BHM” into the Windows Media Player.  Then I put it on repeat and listened to it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.  I listened to it throughout the day for about 10 minutes at a time with about 20 minutes in between.  So, I probably heard it about 400 times in an eight hour period. 

Then, of course, I had my instructor’s recording of it, which I played at home while practicing. 

I played each little “part” of the tune separately (while listening to my taped recording) and kind of got them down.

I played the end of one little part and the beginning of the next so I could get the fingerings down.  (And honestly, sometimes, this was just one doubling and one eighth note!)

Then I stitched it together and played that.

And when all’s said and done…the tune sounds pretty okay.  I have to work on getting my throw and slur on D faster–of course–but really…I think I’m coming along.  I don’t know why, but at first I was having a lot of problems with my doublings.  I’d play ‘quadruplings’ or my fingers would just randomly flop all over the chanter.  Who knows?  So…back to a bit more practicing.  I’ll leave you with a final tip I got from my lesson that I forgot to mention the other day:

Always conclude your practice sessions with something you can play flawlessly.  Even if it’s just a scale.  Learning bagpipes is about conquering the mind as much as anything else and if you leave off on a high note–you’ll be more willing to come back the next day.