How to Get Better at Bagpiping
(or anything else)
Today I was teaching a new student a lesson. I have a tendency to lead with a plan on what the student should learn for the lesson. Many teachers like to do the opposite and ask the student what they would like to learn. But this is, sorta, like a double edged sword. If the student is pretty new, then they really don’t know much about anything at all and therefore won’t have anything to know about what to learn. On the other hand though, if a student is learning, and they already knew all what they wanted to learn, perhaps they wouldn’t need a teacher…
Anyway when I started the lesson with my student, I thought we’d take a shot at a tune she wanted to learn for her band. I try to introduce new things for the student to make it exciting so as not to only do exercises in fundamentals. However, after breaking the tune into parts, we focused on the first full bar of music. There were too many notes. Split that into 2 parts. Notes were not being played clearly. Then I had her focus on just the transition from the note D to the low A. After a while, she started to produce clean transitions. (This is a fundamental of bagpiping; some call it scale navigation).
Fundamentals cannot be overlooked… In Stephenie Burns’ wonderful book Practice Strategies That Cause Musical Improvements (Overcoming Musical Hurdles), which is about how to practice efficiently and get better in the world of bagpiping (and even pipe band snare drumming), Steven McWhirter, multi-world solo pipe band snare champion talks about how it’s ALL ABOUT THE FUNDAMENTALS.
I told my student the same thing. The main thing of today’s lesson therefore would be doing clean note transitions. Just simply go from point A to point B. I didn’t care if it would take 60 minutes to do so. Rhythm was unimportant. Focus on a small goal and get it perfect. As she got better I showed her some 3 note arpeggio exercises (perfect for 6/8 rhythm reinforcement and scale navigation by the way).
This was all after yesterday’s competition in Covenanter. Although I had finished 1st place overall in my grade, I certainly didn’t think it was my best day. I did a very poor performance in my Strathspey/Reel competition. In my scoresheet notes from the judge, I saw the same type of comments: not enough pointing, playing too round, untidy bottom hand, poor B echos. I then made a resolution to pinpoint focus my energies on making sure that these problems disappear. I practiced my exercises very cleanly but also with very pointed note changes. I did the very same arpeggio exercises that I had shown my student earlier in the day (after all, I had already told her that this exercise was just as important for a top player as well as a beginner). Just simple exercises...but making sure I could get them as perfect can be…
Always return to those fundamentals and don’t ignore the feedback that the judges are giving—many times that’s just the mind conspiring to take another vacation. Don’t stop until you get it right; then repeat it over and over. The worst thing we can do is ignore that slight mistake that our higher bagpiper within us keeps nagging us about to fix, even if it means slowing the tempo down to half. (At this point the mind chimes in to complain it doesn’t want to be bothered with slowing down. Turn off the brain chatter; do the exercise slowly. Slower if you need to get it—just right)…
The road to perfection is a pendulum. You need to push yourself to get better, then relax and just play, then go back to the drawing board and perfect those fundamentals ad infinitum. As Jim McGillivray talks about, it’s not about the end (whether that’s to get into a pipe band or play in the world championship), it’s more about the process. So enjoy the process. It actually makes you a better a better human being…
Trust the process and play those damn fundamentals well!
Have any questions? Shoot me an email.