How I did it: The basics are always practice, practice, practice. I think I did a couple of other things that usually help me to learn. I visualized the final result, I immediately adopted the physical attitudes of better players, I switched between the Yin and the Yang forms of a tune while practicing and I immersed myself in a ton of reading about pipes and piping in general.

I can't say that I'm the best player, but most people would agree I can wrangle a tune or two out of the old bag.

Lessons & tips: Before I even got my set of pipes, I started out by reading absolutely everything I could about piping. I browsed newsgroups, forums, mailing lists, weird university archives and much more. I watched about 1000 hours of video paying attention to how the pipers positioned themselves, how they moved their hands.

About six months before getting my pipes, I started to play the tinwhistle. I practiced the tunes that I wanted to be able to play on the pipes in order to get my fingers used to the movements that I would be making.

Once I got my pipes, I started out with two easy tunes and one hard one. I worked on them every day for an hour. When I practice, I play in two different ways. This was taught to me by my Kung-Fu teacher, Mak. There is a Yin form and a Yang form to each art. The Yin form is quick and mindless and relies on your reflexes to perform the appropriate gestures. An example would be sketching: good sketch artists can draw very quickly and their fingers move to form the appropriate pictures on the page. The Yang form is full of deliberate, passionate energy. It is often slower and concentrates on the mindset you have while performing the action.

The other thing I did was buy a half-set of pipes right off the bat. I was determined to play with my drones from day one. I discovered quickly that anything I learned to play with my drones on I could play better with them off. It's sort of like biking with weights on your ankles. All the top athletes do it.

Frequency is important. I practiced an average of an hour every day. In 18 months that's about 525 hours of playing. If you want to improve, you have to practice.

I spent a lot of time visualizing. Every moment I wasn't playing the pipes, I was dreaming about it. I would place my fingers on lamp-poles or drinking glasses in the position required to play. I truly believe that this was a key component in the learning process.

Another thing I did quite a bit of was "noodling". Noodling is just playing whatever sounds good to you. You can do it slowly or quickly but the idea is to make the instrument make the sounds that it does. This gets your reflexes used to having your hands in a certain position in order to play a certain note. I also resolved from the beginning to *never* look at my hands while playing. I believe that modelling physical behaviour works well and all the greats rarely look to see where they need to put their fingers next. When you get up to playing at a certain speed, you don't want to be mapping out the movements visually first.

I spent time learning from pipers who played better than me at every opportunity I got. This is a big deal. It may not be possible for everybody, I guess I was just lucky.

Finally, I stayed in touch with the magic that had lured me into piping in the first place. I play with a local group of musicians at a seisun and it's a great opportunity to swap tunes, hang out and have a good laugh.

Resources:

• Any website that is listed under a google search for "uilleann pipes"
• thesession.org for sheet music and ABCs of tunes
• My local seisun
• Local pipers and piping teachers

Dec 02, 2008, 03:08PM PST | 0 comments | 3 cheers