Teach Yourself Bagpipes by Lindsay Davidsonbringing quality 'piping instruction to you for free
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Intermediate Exercise 41 This exercise is intended to help with strathspey figures and rhythmical discipline.
It helps in this by isolating figures that are common in strathspeys and spelling out clearly how they may be approached rhythmically. As ever there can be more than one appropriate interpretation, and this is only one proposal. Watch out for the moments when very few fingers remain on the chanter (this helps with relaxation of grip as a side benefit...) and consistency in your doublings. Also listen carefully to the gracenote lengths, especially in the half speed and quarter speed videos. Also be aware of crossing sounds (F-E-C in particular as this is a common figure in strathspeys). The exercise has been designed to promote discipline with the eighth notes that have dots, and those that don't. Please give this contrast special attention as highlighting this in performance is a very powerful interpretative (especially semiotic) tool. How to practise Solid bagpipe technique is not about being able to squeeze more wiggly bits into an ever smaller space of time. Solid bagpipe technique means that you can choose how long or short every finger movement will be (and why, according to your physical situation and musical interpretation), and the actions come out as exactly you want. These exercises are designed to make this happen, to give you total awareness and control over your embellishment rhythm by helping establish patterns in your brain. The Magic Maxim: "If you can play slowly you can play quickly, but the converse isn't necessarily true..." This means exactly what it says - the better you become the more exactly you should be able to control what you are doing, and so to test ourselves, we shouldn't practise more quickly, but more slowly. To think like computers - a sampling rate for a recording is a measure of how many times a second the computer will measure what is happening in the sound. A higher sampling rate makes for a higher quality of recording, up to a point beyond which it doesn't make much difference. It is the same with piping - the more times in a beat you can say exactly what is happening, the better your piping, up to a point.. Playing exactly with the midi files at a quarter speed is a fairly good test for a group, and this extra secret can dramatically affect the strength of playing within a band, and the confidence. It is true that using this approach, you can bring about a positive revolution in your band's playing and attitude. So to repeat, as you get better and your finger and rhythmical control become more exact, you should go from the fastest videos...to the slowest. Please be aware that youtube will allow you to change the playback speed, which means you can train your rhythmical skill with more subtelty. Videos
to play along with (start with the fastest and gradually move to the
slowest)
Low pitch normal
speed Low pitch half speed High pitch normal
speedLow pitch quarter
speed High pitch half speed
High pitch quarter speed
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