For those of you that appriciate music.

[Cortexian]

I know that there are few people here who play instruments (including myself, Bagpipes - world class grade 3) and I just had the urge to post a pet peeve of mine... For some reason unbeknown to me a lot of the best bands and orchestras out there read sheet music while performing, now I've never player any other instrument and I've never even had any interest in any other instrument but I see this as extremely UNPROFESSIONAL. Regardless of the style of music, all of the members should be able to play their part flawlessly and in time with everyone else, I don't see why sheet music is required for a few reasons. One, if you screw up because you've lost your place in the tune then you shouldn't be playing that tune in a band performance yet. Two, memorizing tunes IS NOT that hard, I've memorized every bagpipe tune I've ever learned and now I can't keep track of them all.

So my point here, why don't some of the good bands/orchestras out there take a que from the worlds pipe bands and just memorize their WHOLE PERFORMANCE? For example:

The Alberta Caledonia Pipe Band (My instructor is a member of this Grade 1 Pipe Band):
A1VSodta_Fk
There's even a tempo change in this medley, if you can memorize that, you can memorize anything. I can play this by the way, it's one of my favorite sets.

The Simon Fraser University (Located in Vancouver, Canada. Won the world championships last year):
t20Tju4QrN0


EXPLAIN!?

E: Fuck, every time I listen to that AlCal medley I have to listen to it like 50 more times ITS SO DAMN GOOD IT DESERVES ITS OWN THREAD, but I'll restrain myself.

E E: I fucking SEE ME in the first video, but I won't point myself out because I believe I'm sitting on the ground with my legs in a fashion that you can kinda see up my kilt. Not that you can actually see anything in that bad quality video.

[Sever]

The only musicians that I've seen with sheet music are unprofessional - high school and middle school bands/orchestras, pianists/organists for churches and plays, etc. However, i must agree with you - any 'professional' who requires notes for performances simply isn't one. Also, bagpipes for the win! one of my favorite songs has bagpipes in it and they work much better than keyboards or programming would for that part.

:/ rep must be spread before I give some to you again...
Stop making logical arguments!

[Cortexian]

The only musicians that I've seen with sheet music are unprofessional - high school and middle school bands/orchestras, pianists/organists for churches and plays, etc. However, i must agree with you - any 'professional' who requires notes for performances simply isn't one. Also, bagpipes for the win! one of my favorite songs has bagpipes in it and they work much better than keyboards or programming would for that part.

:/ rep must be spread before I give some to you again...
Stop making logical arguments!
Well, I'm talking about actual performances, like so:

9QOV4xu1r14

A53l8xOkPFw

etc... And I'm pretty sure these aren't your run of the mill high school/average orchestras... :p

[Bodzilla]

i'm a guitarist and i play a 7 string... just to fuck with bass players.

Band? collaborating? heh.

I AM THE BAND
WORSHIP ME AS THOUGH I WHERE A GOD

[n00b1n8R]

I MEMORISE MY MUSIC YOU GUYS ARE ALL NOOBS
:frogout:

Alternatively, I'd be interested to know what styles of music (are there "styles" of babpipe music or is it mostly the same sort of thing) you play and how many new tunes you learn a year.

[Cortexian]

:frogout:

Alternatively, I'd be interested to know what styles of music (are there "styles" of babpipe music or is it mostly the same sort of thing) you play and how many new tunes you learn a year.
Styles as in Jig's, Hornpipe's, Medley's, March's, Strathspey's, and Reel's? Those sorts of things? As for the amount of tunes learned per year I have no idea but I'll try and add them up...

Band Tunes/Year:
In a band we learn a minimum of six SETS a year, a set is usually a combination of 5-8 different tunes. There are two main types of sets, "MSR's" (or "March, Strathspey, Reel's") and "Medley's" (which are basically a combination of Jigs, Hornpipes, Medleys, and what ever else you want to throw in there).

This year's MSR sets have a total of 22 tunes in them (6+9+7), our Medley sets have a total of 20 tunes (8+5+7) so that brings me up to 42 tunes in the band.

Solo Tunes/Year:
Now depending on what I feel like entering in and what's offered for solo competitions (see: awesome (http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4749/scan0001small.jpg)) I usually learn at least 2 Slow Aire's, 2 March's, 2 Jig's, and 2 Reel's which is 8 more tunes. All solo competition pieces for world class Grade 4+ (the world classes are Grade 5[worst]-Grade 1[best], and then there's a level BEYOND GRADE 1 CALLED GRADE 1 2! No really, it's called "Professional" and it's solo only, not for bands) must be at least four parts long (a.k.a. repeats don't count as parts) and are usually 6-8 parts long depending on how much you want to show off to the judge.

There are also more songs that you learn randomly through the year, for instance last year when I was an Air Cadet still, I went to a summer camp as a Staff Cadet (a.k.a. boss little kids around and make sure they don't hurt themselves) and I ended up being a Staff Cadet for the Pipe Band so I learned most of the tunes they learned (another 3 or 4 sets) by sitting in their classes with them.

So on average I'd say that 50 new tunes a year is about accurate. Granted that some years you play some tunes that you already knew from previous years, so you just need to brush up on them.

[Ifafudafi]

Dude, haven't you ever been to a marching band show?

They don't just memorize the music with all the tempo and dynamic changing fluff, but they memorize complex movements and shapes across the field. High-school level bands do at least one of these, while many college marching bands work on several at once.

Now I know next to nothing about bagpipes, so there may be something deeper going on here, but it doesn't sound like much tbqh.

[Varmint260]

Never occurred to me that some "professional" orchestras still have the sheets during a performance, but it does seem a bit unprofessional... just great! Next time I watch one of my DVDs where one of my favourite bands is backed by an orchestra, I won't be listening to the music, but looking for sheet music! Way to go!

As for myself... being somewhat unoriginal, I play a 6-string electric guitar and a 6-string acoustic. I might possibly buy a bass guitar and amplifier one of these days, when I have the money. Want someone to make fun of? I probably can't even remember how to read sheet music. I haven't read any since playing Recorder in third grade. It's learning by ear and the occasional guitar tab for me.

[TVTyrant]

i'm a guitarist and i play a 7 string... just to fuck with bass players.

Band? collaborating? heh.

I AM THE BAND
WORSHIP ME AS THOUGH I WHERE A GOD
Yeah, but most bass players have the skill of a kazoo player anyways :eyesroll:

And yeah, I play da geetar too. Best instrument imo.

[Cortexian]

Dude, haven't you ever been to a marching band show?

They don't just memorize the music with all the tempo and dynamic changing fluff, but they memorize complex movements and shapes across the field. High-school level bands do at least one of these, while many college marching bands work on several at once.

Now I know next to nothing about bagpipes, so there may be something deeper going on here, but it doesn't sound like much tbqh.
We do all of that stuff in pipe bands as well. Except we don't make neato shapes. All pipe bands are "marching bands", and there's nothing more complex then a spiral counter march with more than 5 rows, which we do all the time... They may memorize patterns of marching, big deal, I did that in our Air Cadet Precision Drill team (our squadrons team has won the provincial championships for that four years running) and then I showed our pipe band how to do it... We then proceeded to mock the precision drill team by doing their formation shows while we warmed our pipes up.

Marching isn't as hard as people make it out to be, if you can keep a beat to ANYTHING you can march. And if you know how to change direction while you're walking, you can do precision drill. Maybe I'm just awesome at this stuff, I don't know. :confused:

[rossmum]

I automatically fall into step with whatever I'm listening to, within reason. Old habits die hard, I guess...

[Ifafudafi]

My point was more that this isn't really something truly extraordinary, as most high schools and colleges take part in similar activities.

Not that they're bad, or anything. But once again, I know fuck-all about bagpipes, so :haw:

[Limited]

There needs to be a law against bag pipes, seriously they are so freaking irritating, I hate them with a passion, I'm shocked you like them freelancer.

[=sw=warlord]

Only time i have any interest in bag pipes is if their used at funerals, i saw a bag pipe being used at a funeral once, seemed alot more appropriate than some old coffin dodger on a piano.
Playing pianos at funerals are only their pastime, theyl usualy swell in libraries waiting for you load youtube or wikipedia to connect to your pc and log you out

[Limited]

old coffin dodger on a piano.:lmao:

I agree they are suited to funerals, someone I went to had bag pipes playing at their funeral.

[musicman888]

Well Freelancer you do bring up interesting points on this matter. I play violin (along with a few other instruments) and I play/am learning classical music solo/orchestra. I also play Jigs, Reels, Bluegrass, etc.... But I will ask this: Have you ever tried memorizing a Tchaikovsky Concerto orchestra part? I have and it is rough as hell (not counting the rests :P ). Now I am not an expert on bagpipes by any means but I'm sure there are a lot of things going on while bag-piping but there are a lot of things going on while playing in orchestras as well.

On to what I guess I'm trying to get to in this post: Answer me this....Does the memorizing of sheet music make the player a professional or is it the quality of the music being produced that makes a professional?

To me, it is the quality of the music that is being produced. Sure, having the music memorized makes it look better and all, but in the end (to me at least) its the quality of music.

I do respect your views on this and I will have you know that I do try to memorize what I can after I learn it. :)

Good marching pipe bands there! Was in marching band myself in high school.

Well...see you around Freelancer, just wanted to say my opinions/views on this.

--musicman888

[Cortexian]

Have you ever tried memorizing a Tchaikovsky Concerto orchestra part?
I have no idea what that is, but it can't be much harder than memorizing harmonies (modifications to the tune that usually get you playing a couple notes up or down from everyone else) for a piece. Listen to the first YouTube video, during 0:50~ and you can really hear the harmonies.

However I HAVE played with brass band/pipe band mix, it was at the Cadet Honor Band '07 for Western Canada (all the best Cadet musicians), I won't post the video because it's horrible quality and we had a couple of people in our pipe band who really SHOULDN'T have been there (they made mistakes and weren't good enough overall to be there). However it consisted of the drum corps doing a drumline performance, the brass band drummers played something, the pipe band drummers would echo it (and echo it better if I might add), then they played a drumline performance together with all that fancy stick hitting and tossing shit. Then the whole brass band and whole pipe band played a set together, but the brass people couldn't keep the tempo with us even though they HAD sheet music and a conductor to keep them in line.

Obviously we weren't professionals at the time, but both bands were pretty good for what they were comprised of. My point is that there's no reason to use sheet music, regardless of the complexity of the tune. Granted there are only nine notes on bagpipes and no octaves, but we have lots of embellishments and such (extremely fast notes that you play when transitioning from note to note, maybe looking at the sheet music will give you an idea, I'll scan some in a bit).

So yea.

[Ifafudafi]

...but it can't be much harder than memorizing harmonies (modifications to the tune that usually get you playing a couple notes up or down from everyone else)...

Someone get him some Tchaikovsky sheet music and see if it's reasonable to memorize 10-odd pages of ridiculously complex rythms, rests, and yes, playing different notes than everybody else. Seriously, by what it sounds like, what you're doing is extremely easy. You only have nine notes to work with versus three times that many for even the most limited wind instruments; and if playing different notes than other people is the hardest thing you guys have to do, then welcome to 6th grade band/orchestra.

Have you ever actually looked at the kind of music that professional orchestras/wind ensembles play? Having been there myself, believe me when I say memorizing that stuff, especially in the timeframe required for constant performances of new material, is pretty much impossible for anyone without a literally photographic memory.

It's not unprofessional to play without sheet music. In a marching band or something like that, yeah, it's generally not done; but with the ridiculous complexity of sit-down concert pieces, you have to.


Unless you're in middle school or a lower high school level, of course.

(Sorry if I come across as a little harsh here; I greatly enjoyed my musical career in middle school through college, so I get a bit worked up about that kind of thing.)

[musicman888]

As requested by Mr. Ifafudafi, here are two pages from the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, First Movement. This is the Solo Violin part, and probably a good amount is also written in the First Violin Part as well. Now very professional players, like Gil Shaham or Itzhak Perlman, actually do memorize this crazy stuff, but this is after a LONG era of playing and practicing their instrument. But Freelancer, this is Tchaikovsky: http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_inside.html?item=3366807&cart=344710398833823242&type=image&page=01&cm_re=detail-_-lookInside-_-thumbnail:inside

You may also view page two in the left side of the page and obviously clicking on the page subtitled "2" lolz.

Enjoy!

--musicman888

[itszutak]

I have no idea what that [Tchaikovsky] is, but it can't be much harder than memorizing harmonies (modifications to the tune that usually get you playing a couple notes up or down from everyone else) for a piece.
UH.

No.

I play the oboe, I have for years-- and I can tell you that trying to memorize a piece of classical music is fairly difficult.

It's not just about harmonies, but timings and knowing the balance of other instruments. Not to mention changes between instruments where you may be playing a completely different "tune" to the rest of the orchestra. You may repeat the same part multiple times with slight variation, and you need to know when to repeat and for how long and at what time. Just getting the music down with the sheets can be difficult at times.

Also, that tchaikovsky didn't look too bad. I've played much more frustrating songs- The worst (so far) was a Copland piece with super-tricky timing.

[musicman888]

Keep in mind though that those were just the first two pages of a three movement piece (if I recall correctly) and Tchaikovsky gets more intense for the strings/soloist near the end. Youtube a concert of it if you are further interested. :)

[Cortexian]

That looks on par with some of the bagpipe stuff we memorize.

Here's the original (slightly modified in the video) sheet music for the first tune in the first video I posted. This probably won't make very much sense to you, but the "embellishments" that I mentioned earlier are all the small notes located to the side and above the actual notes. You can barely ever "hear" embellishments because they'd be classified as a 64th or 128th (:gonk:) note if you played them normally...
http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/8520/themanfromskye.jpg

So like I said, that's one tune out of a set, about 5-8 tunes in a set. As for ridiculously complicated stuff, please see Piobaireachd's (pronounced "Pea-brock"):
AG42CtJmOjE
This is one of the shorter Piobaireachd's I could find, some range up to 25-30 minutes long.

Needless to say, the two worlds are very different, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone that can play bagpipes and some type of other regular wind/brass/string instrument.

E: Oh the 1812 Overture, I knew what that was but I never payed attention to the composer though. Anyways, yes that's very impressive... Now image them doing it without sheet music, how amazing would that look?

[TVTyrant]

As requested by Mr. Ifafudafi, here are two pages from the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, First Movement. This is the Solo Violin part, and probably a good amount is also written in the First Violin Part as well. Now very professional players, like Gil Shaham or Itzhak Perlman, actually do memorize this crazy stuff, but this is after a LONG era of playing and practicing their instrument. But Freelancer, this is Tchaikovsky: http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_inside.html?item=3366807&cart=344710398833823242&type=image&page=01&cm_re=detail-_-lookInside-_-thumbnail:inside

You may also view page two in the left side of the page and obviously clicking on the page subtitled "2" lolz.

Enjoy!

--musicman888
Can I get that in guitar tabs? K thx, bai.

Just kidding, that seriously looks like a bitch. As a guitar player, I will tell you that sometimes I look up a badass tune and the parts are literally scary to look at. Check out some of the sheet music for Children of Bodom and Megadeth and you'll see what I'm saying. Also, early Metallica's bass parts. Cliff Burton loved to needlessly complicate things :mad:

[musicman888]

Being a violin player Freelancer, I don't just play classical, I also play Irish or Scottish music (as stated in a previous post :) ) so I do know a bit about grace notes...as a matter of fact I think some Celtic violin music may have been derived from bagpipe music. And those grace notes are insane at that speed if I may say so. I can tell that bagpipe music is difficult and as you say the two world ARE different. Both are equally challenging to play and equally impressive to hear. In the end though I'm happy to see that there are other musicians who play the same or different instruments than I do as it lets me be able to learn more about the instruments that I do not play.

One more thing I'd like to add on the notes of the "they are different worlds" part, that's why professional orchestras play using music. Since the start of classical music it was becoming common practice to perform these with music because sometimes they would have to sight-read all of that right there. So now orchestras keep using music to keep in with common practice. Actually some of the professional orchestras don't even need the music, but it is just there for the common practice. (Next part may be wrong due to my inadequate knowledge of bagpipes), but I believe that when bagpipe music was starting to come alive it was rare to ever see a bagpiper using sheet music. So bagpipers keep up with that common practice of not using sheet music, while orchestras keep up with the practice of keeping music on their stands. (That's what I think at least.)

Thank you Freelancer for showing me a bit of what bagpiping looks like. :)

On the subject of guitar playing and Megadeth lolz.....yea I have looked at guitar tabs before (even though I don't play guitar) and they are pretty crazy. Look up some Classical guitar though, it may help with technique and positions to play all that Megadeth and ridiculous bass tabs. Just a suggestion....

Thanks again!

--musicman888

[Cortexian]

Historically all bagpipe tunes were learned by ear with no sheet music what so ever. As the tune base increased in size the need to start archiving tunes became required, so sheet music started floating around. However, even in today's culture, no bagpipe bands that I know of use sheet music during any kind of performance, you use it to memorize your tune, then toss it away or archive it. That's that.

For example, the picture I took is out of the Scots Guards books, there are two books that go for about $65 each and include a ton of tunes.

[TVTyrant]

But how many tunes do you have memorized out of those two books?

[Cortexian]

But how many tunes do you have memorized out of those two books?


So on average I'd say that 50 new tunes a year is about accurate. Granted that some years you play some tunes that you already knew from previous years, so you just need to brush up on them.
Reading the thread is pretty awesome.

However, specifically out of those books, I probably only know 1/4 of the tunes. Remember that you can't "remember" everything you learn unless you've got some ridiculously powerful photographic redundant memory going on, which is extremely rare. Memorizing bagpipe tunes all comes down to "muscle memory", as I suspend is the case for most musical instruments actually. If I'm asked to play a tune with a band that I memorized along time ago (I've been piping for 5-6 years now) and I don't fully remember it, I just need to hear it a couple times to pick it up again. Most decent bagpipers are like this.