The Fiddler's Joy Low Pitch Normal Speed

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The Fiddler's Joy
Strathspey
Discussion Points
1 The doublings and throws fit into the same space as each other, though their internal rhythms are different. The first note (D in the throw, C in the C doubling, F and high G on those doublings) sounds on the beat, and the repetition sounds on the next 32nd note. Where this is a cutting or chopping gracenote the proportion is 3:1 between the note and its gracenote, and where it is a strike that is making the doubling action (throw and High G doubling) the strike is half that length (6 tails, really short).
2 The 'double tachum' in bar 5 also follows the pattern above. Listening carefully to the videos, especially the slower one, will help you get a 'feel' for this.
3 The low G preceding all the throws is a 32nd note.
4 The birls feel and sound quite open. The first low A is on the beat and the space between As is a 32nd note. This give an effect of not waiting long when playing quickly, but when playing slowly it feels better. If this was in half the space it would be too short; the practical alternative is to have the first two low As, on the beat, as triplet 32nd notes, tied over the triplet on the low A...this sounds good, but is terribly complex to programme into your fingers. Exercise 78 will help with this. On the other hand, the slightly more open version gives a touch of control and refinement to the interpretation.
5 Bar 6 there is a special interpretative trick. This was taught to the writer as a point of style by Jimmy Inglis. His advice was that where we have two cut notes together, to give a little extra time to the first one and use that as a kind of platform to give emphasis to the second note. This works ideally in bar 6 with D and F. The trick is to say 'tri-pe-let' in your mind when you are playing, and map onto those sounds ('tri-' and 'let' are F and D).
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 practice more quickly, but more slowly.
To think again 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..
By remembering the five steps in learning (see how to practice), we can see that at the point when we assign time to our actions we can get better by increasing our sampling rate. We do this simply by dividing by two, and playing at half speed, with awareness of twice as many points in the beat. When we succeed at this level, we half our speed again, and double the number of places in the bar we try to feel and be aware of what is happening. We keep doing this until every gracenote can be measured opening and closing. If you know the 'New French Method' of rhythm, this helps dramatically, as it automatically gives us a sampling rate of four points per beat.
Start with a quick video (or a medium one) and when you feel you are playing with this nicely, go to a slower one, and try to feel more detail. First listen carefully, bearing in mind that most things are divided by two, to find where the actions occur. Obviously, when you accomplish this, go to the next slower file.
Once you have gone to the slowest file and played along correctly, start to go through the faster ones again to see how much more precisely you are playing, and hearing what you are playing.
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.
It's a simple set of tasks, the trick is in disciplining yourself to do it.