I've had a chance to catch up on my emails. Thanks for all contributitions. My point about not getting an understanding and feel for the music before starting to play might be illustrated by checking out the following links. In the 1920s the Haka was done by well-meaning All Blacks who had obviously little clue about what it should be like: [1]http://www.nzallblacks.net/haka.asp More recent versions show evidence of input of what it should really be like: [2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU4B-NBuCgo&feature=player_embedded It seems to me, analogously, that in terms of everyday piping we are in a process of starting from the 08 version and hurtling headlong for the 1922 version. It is a source of real dismay to me that I often hear the remark "I hate Northumbrian Pipes but yours don't sound like them". Nice for me but surely bad for piping! Pipers need to get beyong the flaccid, bland sound so commonly heard these days. One way might be to listen to old guys. Whatever you think of them they certainly weren't flaccid or bland and trust me there is no other way for this music. As for the classical approach - I was asked by a classical colleague at Newcastle to give her a fiddle lesson last week. I thought I'd give her a shock and turn up without any dots at all. She was delighted, after an hour she had picked up her first tune by ear and when I offered to email the dots to her she responded as though I'd offered her cup of potassium cyanide! The dichotomy dismissed by Stephen has not disappeared. She appreciated just waht the dots might do to her understanding of the tune. He might want to turn a blind eye to it, that's up to him but as I said originally it doesn't make the problem and its consequences go away. As aye Anthony
-- References 1. http://www.nzallblacks.net/haka.asp 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU4B-NBuCgo&feature=player_embedded To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
