Choose a Tune That Makes You Better

This is the time of year when a lot of pipers and pipe bands start looking ahead.

The competition season is winding down, new music is being discussed, and decisions are being made about what we’re going to play next year.

There are plenty of things that go into choosing music. Does it suit the band? Is it musical? Is it interesting? Does it fit the player’s ability? Will it work in a medley or competition set?

But I think there should be one more question:

Is there something in this music that I’m not very good at?

Whether you’re choosing solo music or music for an entire pipe band, I believe there should be at least one tune in your repertoire that challenges a weakness.

Not a tune that is completely beyond your ability.

A tune that exposes something you need to improve.

Don't Always Play to Your Strengths

We naturally gravitate toward music that feels good under our fingers.

If your doublings are clean, tunes full of doublings are comfortable. If your birls are strong, you probably don't mind seeing plenty of them. If certain rhythms come naturally to you, you tend to enjoy tunes built around those rhythms.

There's nothing wrong with that. Your music should show off what you do well.

But if everything you choose plays to your strengths, what forces you to improve your weaknesses?

Sometimes the right tune is the one that makes you say:

"I really need to get better at that."

Maybe it's your D throws.

Maybe it's grips.

Maybe your birls aren't consistent.

Maybe it's crossing noises between particular notes.

Maybe your tachums fall apart at speed.

Or maybe the problem isn't an embellishment at all. It could be keeping your fingers relaxed through a difficult passage, maintaining clean technique at tempo, or putting an embellishment in exactly the right rhythmic place.

Choosing a tune that contains that weakness gives you a reason to finally work on it.

The Tune Isn't Where You Fix the Problem

This is the important part.

If you struggle with a particular movement, playing the entire tune over and over probably isn't going to fix it.

You need to take the problem out of the tune.

Break that difficult movement or transition down into a very small exercise. It might only be two or three notes.

Then get out the metronome.

Start much slower than you think you need to.

Play it correctly.

Then play it correctly again.

And again.

Once it's consistent, increase the metronome slightly.

What you're trying to do is replace an unreliable movement with a reliable one. Speed comes later.

Eventually, put that movement back into the phrase. Then put the phrase back into the tune.

Remember to come back to this exercise for weeks as it will take a while to really become something for you to play well naturally.

Now the tune isn't just something you're learning for next season.

It's giving your practice a purpose.

Give Yourself Months, Not Weeks

This is one of the reasons I think this time of year is so valuable.

If you choose music now, you have months to work on it.

There's no need to panic because a competition is three weeks away. You

can spend ten minutes a day working on one small weakness at a slow tempo and allow the improvement to happen gradually.

Ten focused minutes with a metronome can accomplish a lot more than repeatedly playing a tune from beginning to end and hoping the difficult part

eventually fixes itself.

And there's another benefit.

Once you've fixed that movement, you've improved more than one tune.

That D throw, grip, birl, transition, or rhythmic problem is going to appear in dozens of other tunes throughout your piping.

You weren't really practicing one difficult passage.

You were improving your piping.

Bands Can Do This Too

The same idea applies to pipe bands.

When choosing next year's music, there should be pieces that the band can play confidently and make musical. But there can also be a tune that deliberately asks something more from the corps.

Maybe there's a technical movement that isn't as clean across the band as it should be.

Maybe a particular rhythm tends to become uneven.

Maybe the corps struggles to keep technique together when the tempo increases.

That can become part of the band's offseason practice.

Pull the problem out of the music. Build exercises around it. Put the metronome on. Slow it down. Get everyone playing the movement exactly the same way.

Then gradually build it back into the tune.

Instead of spending the winter simply learning next year's music, you've used the music to make the entire pipe corps better.

Pick Your Challenge

So as you're looking through music for next season, don't only ask:

"Can I play this?"

Ask:

"What will learning this make me better at?"

Choose plenty of music that suits you. Choose tunes you enjoy playing. Choose music that allows you or your band to sound your best.

But put at least one tune in there that makes you work on something you'd normally rather avoid.

Then don't attack the whole tune.

Find the weakness.

Break it into a small exercise.

Turn on the metronome.

Slow it down.

And give yourself the offseason to turn that weakness into something you no longer have to worry about.

Next year's repertoire shouldn't just give you new music to play. It should leave you a better piper than you were this year.