Friday, July 31, 2009

On, Pipes!

Last night . . .

It's very exciting!

Last night . . .

I don't know why I'm feeling so accomplished! I didn't do all the practicing of fingering, grace notes, doublings, "triplings", and all those tunes. But still . . .

Last night, Small Son got his own set of (rental) pipes!

Sean (and Dennis) got them all put together and showed him how to work them. He huffed and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he finally blew one squawk out of them. Then, Sean showed him how to pack them in the rolling bag case (provided) and we got a soda to celebrate. He's been counselled to practice 5 minutes a day, and advised that it's going to be frustrating at first.

As Marjie would say, "Boy, Howdy!"

Learning how to simultaneously blow and squeeze and finger the tune . . . and march . . . is about the most frustrating thing I have ever done. Right now he doesn't have to march, of course, and all his drones are plugged off to make it as easy as possible. He's gonna need a LOT of encouragement.

In our last group lesson of the season, we went over individually what progress we had made during the year. My report is as follows:

- I got rid of the highhand-low A squeak
- opened up my doublings
- improved my blowing
- greatly improved my confidence in performing and competing
[- got a first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth (so far) in competitions
- played my first solo with the band]

(The last two are probably due to the first four, so I don't know if they count, but they are the most exciting of the lot.)

But not as exciting as seeing Small Son standing there with his own set of pipes on his shoulder, huffing and puffing away!

[sigh!]

1 comment:

Granpiper said...

So, the second generation has started on the pipes - awesome!

My second generation tolerate my piping. It's kind of disappointing to think that the "tradition" of piping will begin and end with me. Hopefully I've instilled something in the third generation that will prompt one of them to take up the pipes.