I’m going to double-up on today’s post and give examples of two “deadly sins.” I recently encountered the quintessential “average piper”. Please do not interpret this as negative. It’s anything but “negative”. I’m so happy to be working with him. He played some tunes for me and is doing exactly what I’ve been talking about; sacrificing all the essential elements of the music for the sake of the embellishments. The good news is that his execution of the embellishments is very good. I’ll be working with him to steady his tempos (better use of the metronome) and to put the “music” back into what he’s playing.

He also wrote me “There is one tune not in the book I’ve struggled to master and it’s actually pretty simple, IRISH WASHERWOMAN.” I’d never thought about Irish Washerwoman as “simple” before, but he’s right…to a point. Since he’s already familiar with the tune, I’m going to remove all the dots ‘n cuts, slow the tempo, and use it as an exercise. We’ll set it up at about 175 BPM where each eighth note will land on a click. We’ll move the tempo up and down to challenge his accuracy and discipline. Our initial goal will be to move the tempo to about 90 BPM (single time). Later we may re-introduce the dots ‘n cuts.

This is an example of how to leverage strengths to improve weaknesses.

I also had a lesson yesterday with a young man who is showing lots of potential. He came to me after taking lessons elsewhere for two years. A number of issues are “baked-in,” most notably poor execution of doublings. The individual grace notes are inclined to overlap as opposed to being “separate, distinct, and sequential.” Today I will be putting together specific exercises that will clean up these movements. Hard work for him, but it needs to be done. If you’re doing something incorrectly, STOP! Think about what you’re doing. Break it down and fix it. I’d rather hear a single grace note played properly than overlapping doublings!

One final note here. I very much believe in “layered learning.” If you can put a single grace note where it belongs, you can eventually “layer-in” the grace note that follows to create a doubling. This is the correct way to learn and to play!