Anthony
I wholeheartedly agree with you, and count myself extremely fortunate to be
able to play with Jimmy on a regular basis. Besides holding hundreds of
tunes in his mental database, he has this amazing bounce in his playing, and
he's also brilliant at keeping time with a very secure foot tap which has
been an enormous boon to Alnwick Pipers' Society (assuming his foot is in
one's line of sight of course!)
However, as I've said to Jimmy several times, some of us 'late starters'
just haven't got the time (in terms of the number of years still available
to us) to learn all the tunes that we want to learn by ear so have to resort
to using music at least at the start, but then I accept that the ideal is,
of course, to commit them to memory as soon as possible when one can really
start to play with feeling. Problems arise when performing those same tunes
with a different group of people and then some sort of (preferably
unwritten) consensus on how they are played is needed. This I guess comes
from years of playing with others, and just as importantly, listening!
Jimmy will say that learning tunes by ear isn't difficult, but he has had in
excess of 60 years to hone the skill and has been fortunate enough to learn
many of them from the 'late and greats'.
I'm sure that most of the people on this list are 'old hands' but, to anyone
starting out, as it were, I would say from my own experience, that the first
few tunes were very definitely a huge obstacle and much patience,
perserverance and practice were required to overcome this hurdle, but then
the joy of actually playing them confidently without the music for the first
time was immeasurable! And it does get (slightly) easier as time goes on!
I do feel very strongly that we should all seize any and every opportunity
to listen and learn from musicians like Jimmy Little, and others of the same
ilk.
Di Jevons
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Robb" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; "colin" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2009 8:08 AM
Subject: [NSP] Re: this list is safer now
Or just too busy making music? I'm involved in a project with Jimmy
Little at the moment. He was one of the ranting Teddy Boys spied by
Louis Killen at Alnwick in the late 50s and learnt pipes from his
father and grandfather in an isolated farmhouse on Alnwick Moor. None
of them read dots. He came up with a goodun last week when he said a
lot of people now rely on dots too much and the tunes comes out "as
flat as the sheet they are reading it from". Got me thinking, surely
style is secondary to life/bounce in the music?
As aye
Anthony
--- On Mon, 8/6/09, colin <[email protected]> wrote:
From: colin <[email protected]>
Subject: [NSP] Re: this list is safer now
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, 8 June, 2009, 8:46 PM
That's the last one I got as well.
The "new" member's list appears just as quiet as well.
Perhaps we've all run out of tubs to thump :-)
Colin Hill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave S" <[1][email protected]>
To: <[2][email protected]>
Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 7:11 PM
Subject: [NSP] Re: this list is safer now
>
> Is it really this dead after the what me mail ? or has a lurgy got
settled
>
> Dave S
>
> Wayne Cripps wrote:
>> I should also add that the NSP mail list can no longer
>> transmit computer viruses.
>>
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>>
>>
>> To get on or off this list see list information at
>> [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>>
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>>
>>
>> No virus found in this incoming message.
>> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.339 / Virus Database:
>> 270.12.37/2130 - Release Date: 05/23/09 07:00:00
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
--
References
1. http://uk.mc862.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]
2. http://uk.mc862.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]
3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
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06:01:00
