Murray Henderson: Thank you everyone for coming along today. It’s an interesting mix we have here from one end of the spectrum to some of the other ends – laughter – which is great. And I think it is really important to remember why we are here, I mean Jimmy McGregor: some of you knew him very well. I first met Jimmy and it is just a few days just short of 40 years ago, and at that time I was one of the very young ones on the scene and he was a friendly face, he was very welcoming and he was very supportive: he loved to see the young ones coming through and made them feel at ease – I think it is tremendous that the CPA are honouring Jimmy in this way and he would be here in full support had he been with us saying competition preparation is the key element of any performance.
So it is going to be very informal – I do want questions, I do want thoughts: we are here really to share. I have specific ideas of how I think good competitors should prepare for competitions but we are all learning and we are here to share our thoughts. I do not think I have ever seen a gathering like this attempt to do something like this. Normally may be over a pint in the bar afterwards you say I did not get this right or that right and you say well it went okay for me but we seldom ever delve deeper than that – why did it go okay for piper x and not piper y? And you know we could say a couple of words and then just go home really; a darkened room and a key, lock yourself in and prepare – that really is the bottom line. We really have to think a bit deeper than that. What are we going to do in the darkened room and should we just throw the key away or just keep it in case we want to come out and perform. And I think, I think competition and preparation comprises of 5 key elements and I see them as a chain and if one link in the chain is deficient well then the performance on the day is going to be deficient.
So if you do a google search, because this is what little Tommy did, the smallest Highland Games, it came up with the Sauchiehall Highland Games – anyone heard of it?
Audience member: “No”
Murray: It is on a roundabout. There is piping and dancing, heavy weights all on the wee roundabout and Timmy, he was all prepared, he went along, won all the events, great stuff. It happened to be on the same weekend as Inverness, so he went up to Inverness for the silver medal thinking this is great – what happened? He went on the platform and broke down on his tuning notes, because he had a weak link in his chain.
So what we are going to do is think about the strength of each individual link, so what I am thinking is we have got the 5 categories, we have got
· technique,
· musical interpretation,
· instrument and sound,
· tutor self-assessment
· mental preparation.
Some of you may have other ones you want to throw in the mix, I see those as the key things: if you can tick those boxes well then the chances are you are going to get up and compete to your capacity. Now that does not mean to say you are going to win anything because well then we get onto a different topic all together, you know the result is in the eyes of the bench on that particular day so that is something we have no control of, so we can throw that away – all we are interested in, with competition preparation is to prepare as well as we can for the ultimate performance every single time that we compete.
I think it is important to set the bar, okay you do not want to play to your capacity once in 10 or once in 5 or once in 2, you are really looking to play to your capacity every single time you perform. It does not really matter whether it is competition or whether it is playing to the budgie in the lounge or whatever, every single time that you play your pipes you should really be thinking of it as a performance. You have to try and get in that zone of putting yourself under pressure every single time. Are we thinking that we do that generally – yes, no, may be? Some yes some no.
Audience member: “I think a lot of people play better in the kitchen the night before the competition than they do in the competition”.
Murray: You see I can never come to terms with that
Audience member: “I know”
[Laughter]. Yes, my answer to that is if the preparation is thorough, well then you are looking for an audience to play to.
Audience member: “So is that nerves?”
Murray: The kitchen doesn’t work for me to be honest
Audience member: “So what is it that makes a difference between the kitchen and the next day? If it is really good in the kitchen is it the nerves or is it the …”
Murray: If it is really good in the kitchen and it is not the next day then there is an element, one of the links in the chain or several of them aren’t strong enough so we are going to work through them. But you know I am thinking that might be mental preparation that is falling down there. I am always of the opinion that it does not matter whether it is practice chanter or bagpipe in the kitchen, Eden Court whatever, nothing changes - because you should be putting yourself under the same pressure in the kitchen as you are at a competition. You are not turning the screw hard enough, Peter, in the kitchen. Turn the cooker up – put the heat up.
I think we will start with technique - because while I see all the components as equal when we learn, the first thing we learn is how to hold our fingers low G, low A, so I think we start with technique. Okay so there can simply be no flaws. It is as simple as that. Everything has got to be a given … so what if it’s not?
Audience member: “Excuse me, may I ask, how were you with you were teacher, and when you were taught?”
Murray: When I was taught? Okay I was probably quite lucky in that my father played, so I had tuition available all the time and I was never allowed… (I was going to say never allowed but that sounds pretty harsh, I do not mean it in that sense). I was always told to do things correctly so if you are lifting from B to C your little finger must go down exactly, all the changes must be absolutely correct. All the notes must be exactly on the change of the finger; all the embellishments must be played slowly and then built. I was built with very strong foundations.
I have been going out to Seattle for the Mastery of Scottish Arts over the last 7 years and it is pretty high powered, Roddy, Willie, Stuart, Jack Lee, Bruce Gandy, Brian Donaldson were featuring there…. and I was paid what I consider one of the ultimate compliments by one of the pipers that I think has the best technique in the business, Stuart Liddell. We were socialising over a beer one night and he said to me, “I have never heard you miss anything, how do you do it?” And I said “well, why would you want to miss anything? [Laughter].
Well it is a mind-set, if you are taught correctly and you always make sure you do everything correctly , Jack you are a doctor: imagine if you were a surgeon and you know you take the knife and you make the incision, you have to get it right. You know, think about the day job and transfer it to your hobby. Get it right, concentration.
Audience member: “I fear there is a danger though… if you do it and you have to think about it too … for lesser mortals some things do not come naturally…. for some people technique is not automatic: perhaps they have to think about it a bit harder. Admittedly I take your point that you can do something about that, but sometimes you cannot legislate for missing half a crunluath, or stuff like that?”
Murray you are saying “lesser mortals” but once upon a time, everyone was a lesser mortal
Audience member: “Yes absolutely but some people like Stuart, even for someone like him will perhaps have in his own mind flaws which are not obvious whilst watching him. What I am trying to say to flip it on its head, we are all lesser mortals the way we do things.”
Murray. Yes you know it is training. It is training. My feeling is that sometimes pipers want to run before they can walk or before they can crawl. The danger is that you listen to a good piper and you go “oh that is how you do that, that is the speed you should play that, that embellishment, speed: that is what we should be doing” But I think that sometimes the masses forget that the piper has spent a lifetime honing those skills and continues to hone them at the stage that they are at.
So we come back to basic technique and the time to learn it is when you are learning and make sure that it is always in the bank, everything has got to be in the bank, it has got to be a given. To improve you know we have got to have everything revving up. So, I mean I accept that it is not going to be everyone that is going to win the Gold Medal or the Clasp or whatever. The important thing is to be the best you possibly can at the level you are at. and always remember the level that you are at.
So you take everything back to its most basic form and I see technique as a game: can I play you one part of a 2 4 march without missing anything? It is easy. Can I repeat it? Mmm second part, third part. So then you go from part to part to tune to tune, from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year so that you make it into an interesting game so that you are always on edge. You are setting yourself; you are moving the bar up all the time. You know it is fun, I think trying to have really good technique, is fun!
Audience member: “What do you say to a piper who, no matter how much technique practice you do, as opposed to musical practice for example, do you recommend that someone sits and does exercises for the first 10 minutes or whatever they do piping wise, whenever they pick their pipes up? “
Murray : I separate them entirely, I practice technique on the practice chanter and I practice musical interpretation on the bagpipe and in thought. I would never use a practice chanter to try and play more musically. I see the practice chanter as solely a technical tool and there is no substitute for hard graft practice chanter practice.
You know I would think nothing of spending half an hour on the practice chanter on basic technique. Doubling exercises, start with them slow, build them right up to speed, slow them down, build them up, slow them down, build them up, embellishments, taorluaths, throws, – the whole gambit. Making sure your fingers understand how to do every movement slowly. at the speed that you want to perform them.
Sometimes you go round to teach at seminars at schools and you will get a player coming along, taorluaths rubbish for instance, and you say to them “play it slowly for me” and they will say “you know what, I cannot do it slowly”, so I say “well if you cannot play it slowly you have got absolutely no chance of playing it at speed”. Your fingers must be totally at ease with understanding what they are required to do and your mind has got to understand that it needs to tell your fingers what to do.
Audience member: “What do you think of the sort of stories you hear of people like Donald McPherson who never picked up a practice chanter very often and always practiced on the bagpipes if possible?”
Murray: Yes, okay … I would actually draw on a little story in relation to comparing pipers, Pipe Major Angus Macdonald, for instance. Jack, when we competed 40 years ago, you went to the Edinburgh City Police competition for instance and there was one big tuning area, a common area and Angus MacDonald would always have his practice chanter. If he wasn’t competing he would be walking around playing it. Donald MacPherson on the other hand, you would never see him with a practice chanter.
Is one right and one wrong? – No. You find out what works for you and do that. It is never one size fits all. You must find what works for you. I personally needed the comfort of practicing basic technique for around about half an hour a day. You could catch that at lunchtime. When I was first over working on the farm I would have an hour for lunch well it took me about 20 minutes to have my soup and then practice chanter. That is use of time – time management. So you would train your fingers exactly what to do but never just rely on your fingers to do it, your mind has to tell them, it has got to remind them.
When I play, for instance, I sing all my technique: it does not matter whether it is sight music or piobaireachds, I sing the movements and the strange thing is you never miss them! You rattle them out every time, and because your mind is going through the motions you do them. You’ve got to be at ease, you got to be totally rehearsed.
Never shy away from any technique. Okay, it is so easy to duck something. If for instance a D doubling from G and a short E - then you avoid tunes with a lot of that sequence or if you do not like the dari movement you say “mmmm I’ll stick to the bottom hand” or whatever. I always thought that my F doublings were my weakest aspect so I purposefully learnt Atholl Cummers to force myself – [singing] hydehydehyde – you know. I wouldn’t dream of putting it in at a competition until it was ready, and if it was never ready, it wouldn’t go in. Always make sure that you don’t avoid anything because sooner or later it will come back and bite you.
Audience member: “Was it ever ready?”
Murray: I actually won the Strathspey and Reel at Oban with Atholl Cummmers and John Morrison so ultimately it was ready. [Laughter]. Pick tunes or ask your tutor to pick tunes that are full of things that you need to strengthen, don’t take them out : hammer them home, hammer them, hammer them, try them at the Games. It may be okay at home then not so good under pressure: live with it, get friendly, tell yourself it is not hard. Piping isn’t difficult, you know we have only got 9 notes; it’s easy. [Laughter].