Practice, Practice, Practice

This is the frustrating time of musical training.  Muscle memory isn’t there yet, everything is awkward and with the chanter you have the added bonus of it sounding a wee bit like a dying calf. 

All those fantastic bagpipers you have heard - be it at a wedding, festival or even a rock concert - have all started exactly where I am now.  Dale Carnegie teaches to Begin with the End in mind, and I see myself out there in a field playing a bagpipe like it’s an extension of my body… I just need to get from here to there. 

My teacher was very clear: Scales, you can do scales now, nothing else.  Not until I can do a perfect scale 20 times in a row am I allowed to consider an arpeggio and the pipers version of Mary had a Little Lamb (The Brown Haired Maiden) is absolutely out of the question.  Having studied music extensively in my youth, I completely understand where he’s coming from.  They are fantastic musical training, but boring as sin.  With all other instruments I’ve played there are multiple octaves.  Even the simple scale could be switched up a bit - not so with the pipe.  You don’t notice it when the experts are playing, but the pipe only goes from low G to high A which provides the range of exactly 9 notes, thus two scales (G & A) are at my disposal to study.  You also don't "tongue" (thus stop the sound briefly while your fingers catch up), which is normal on a woodwind, thus there is no margin of error for fingering technique.  So during this awkward time I’m forcing myself to ½ hour of practice minimum a day, longer on weekends and “good” days.  I shall set my timer on 30 minutes and my metronome on 60 and do scales.  Over and over.

I shall ignore the cry of the cats begging me to stop.  And yes, they are begging me to stop.

Also taping back into my musical training from back in the day, I know there are going to be good days and there are going to be bad days.  Sitting down today with my timer set and my metronome ticking, I figured today would be a bad day.  It was a rough day at work, I have a headache and my evening plans (post-practice) were called off due to events outside of my control.  I’m also still a bit sore from last night’s first lesson where I was taught to keep my wrists at an angle that is unusual for me.  I wasn’t wrong about today’s practice (it was awful), but I did it anyway.

Now that it is past me, I kind of feel the need to do it again.  Maybe I need to change the “end” vision.  Not a field, but on a beach next to the ocean. 

Yep, yep, that’s it.  Piper Girl, next to the ocean, rocking it out with relaxed wrists and nimble fingers.

Sorry friends, I’d keep writing, but I have to go practice my pipe.  A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A!!!!