I often find when I’m teaching beginner or intermediate pipers that the most valuable thing I can do is teach them how to teach themselves. With this in mind, I find the most important word I can utter is, “Slower.”
They don’t always know what I mean by that. They are working through a couple of bars and it is a mish-mash: maybe some short notes are cut out of existence, maybe the gracenotes aren’t where they should be, maybe the timing is completely out of control. So I say, “Slower,” and they drop the tempo a wee bit but continue to blast forward, wondering what’s wrong.
So I tell them this: play it as slowly as you need to play it to play it perfectly.
That seems pretty straightforward, but often they still don’t get it. They bash through it at about 3/4 of the tempo they had been playing, but parts of it are still crushed, inaccurate or bent out of shape. This frustrates me, because when I ask them if they can hear that the playing is not right, they say yes. They know it’s not good. I ask why they just keep doing it over and over again and expect it will get better. They tell me that’s practice. I tell them they are practicing how to be bad, and pretty soon they will be very good at it.
So I prod them more: “Slower yet. Play it as slowly as you can without falling asleep.”
Finally, they play those two bars slower than anything they have ever played in their lives. They take 15 seconds to play one bar that would normally take 3 seconds to play. But this time they play it perfectly.
In other words, they knew how to play the passage correctly all along; they simply weren’t allowing themselves to do it. I “taught” them how to play the passage correctly without actually teaching them anything. I just badgered them until they slowed it down enough that their fingers could figure it out.
They may need to play it a dozen or two more times at this tempo until they are confident of it, but only then should they start to speed it up, and then very minimally. And if it starts to fall apart again, they are speeding it up too much too early.
And for those learners who say, “I can’t play it that slowly” — they are not trying hard enough. Playing fast is hard. Playing slow just takes practice.
Remember: play it as slowly as you need to play it to play it perfectly.
That is your starting point.
-JM
Using a metronome is helping me to slow it down. Although I am still a tad ahead of the beat, there is no way that I can play the tune much faster than the beat of the metronome. It’s a magic learning device.
Sometimes, you can talk to a learner until the proverbial cows come home. Eventually it does sink in, though
I know.
I remember a really useful bit of advice from high school drama, and something I heard from my Dad (a theatre history professor and overall drama master): when you’re up on the stage, do the lines so that it seems as if you’re saying them just a touch too slowly. The reason is this: when you’re nervous, everything speeds up: if it sounds right to you, it’s too fast for the audience. Go a bit too slowly, and it actually ends up being perfect for the audience. This kept occurring to me as I read Andrew Lenz’s competition blog, and popped in my head reading your recent post, too: when you’re nervous, what sounds just right to you is really way too fast. I am nervous playing in front of my teacher, so I have to consciously slow down — and you know what? I don’t slow down enough, and your post is a great reminder to do precisely that. Thank you!
This is very possibly ‘the’ most important thing a teacher could do for their student. I could see myself in that story; knowing it’s not right, hearing it, and still playing too fast to play it correctly. Playing as slowly as one needs, in order to play it perfectly, is the very best advice a teacher can give. Students have to learn how to practice so they improve. This is a great start.
Thanks for this valuable teaching point. I finally “get it” and right away my playing on the chanter has improved. I was so frustrated with constantly making mistakes no matter how well I thought I knew the piece. I thought that slowing down was a step back and getting up to speed was more important. I have an excellent tutor but between lessons I would inevitably slip back into playing faster and make mistakes.
You have made the point clear and loud.
Elizabeth
It is so easy to lose sight of that gem. I agree with Carmine that it is probably THE most important thing to learn. There was a great ditty, attributed to Seamus MacNeill, something about how playing fast meant losing it forever–I don’t quite remember how it went but your advice remended me of it. The first College of Piping tutor, as well as numbers three and four, are chaulk full of the same advice…over and over…play it slowly and play it perfectly and you’ll play it right for life.
Yes, this is outstanding advice. I have noticed that when I play in front of a recorder, my instructor, or a judge, I get nurvous and speed up a bit. This has reminded me to practice slower, in order to play at the correct tempo for solo competition, rather than at band tempo.
I think some of the issue around this is the language we use when we teach. The word practice implies that you should get better, and the single most obvious thing to a learner that they need to do is “get faster”. As long as learners try to improve, this is what will happen.
Indeed, I’m not entirely sure that we should be telling learners to try and improve their playing while they practice at all. I’m not quite sure what this means in terms of teaching practice, but perhaps instead of asking a learner to “work on” or “try and fix” something, we should establish what they can do correctly at their level, and ask them to repeat it until their next lesson. At that lesson, with the benefit of a weeks repetition, learned muscle memory, etc, we can then ask them to bring the tempo up, compress the movement, play it in time, whatever. Then send them away with their new baseline – but don’t let them try and improve that either.
A very good advice, as simple as it is. Worth of hearing and reading again and again. After almost 5 years of learning in which I was told over and over again to play slower (but never did), now I start to understand that this simple way of learning is really the best. Maybe what kept me from playing slower in the past is that I thought »it just can’t be that simple!« – but I guess it is.
Some weeks ago C.o.P. principal Robert Wallace told us how he asked a student to play a tune slower, and the student said »I can’t play it that slow!« so Robert answered: »Well, one thing’s for sure; you can’t play it fast either!«
My tutor’s admonition to me, most of which I can’t repeat but that which I can, is..it’s not a bloody hornpipe…make haste slowly! I’ve realized that, through recording myself, even when I thought I was playing much more slowly, in reality it wasn’t slow enough to be in control and express the subtleties of the music
Thank you! I knew I was right when I was nagging my son to slow down – now I have you affirming what I’ve been saying all along.
Well I’ve heard it said that if you can play it slow you can also (eventually) play it fast.
Accuracy and pointing are everything and no mistake. But my question is how do you learn to play reels and hornpipes upwards of 200 beats per minute? There seem to be lots of players who can do this and yet I haven’t a clue as to how to get there. The old timers seemed to be able to do it.
I don’t find the 78s particularly enjoyable. It’s hard to imagine the stately 1910 Willie Ross (of the photo) playing on the boards at the tempo of his 1910 recorded 2/4
march. There are some old 78s of John Burgess. Did he play as fast as his teacher?
Could it be that the old time greats recorded faster tempos than they played normally because the recording technology of the day made short recordings the rule? Or were they trying to encourage young pipers to learn to play fast?
I enjoy your blogs. They are really informative. Down to earth too!