MUSIC 101: Ableton Live and the Pipe and Tabor

So I've been reflecting upon my learning of the pipe and tabor and how it has stalled in its progress. Not that I have stopped learning how to play the instrument for I believe my approach toward its mastery is also a big part of my learning. I have learned a number of important lessons, its just the lessons do not have me actually playing the instrument, what I have learned about is my approach to learning the instrument.

My lessons learned are as follows;

1. I need feedback. I need to also train my ear and it is difficult without any actual musical reference.
2. For me, learning the instrument is also in learning the songs, their melody, and lyrics (if available).
3. I need a quiet place to practice that won't disturb the family

My deliberate practice;

1. Get the Ableton based studio working with the new MIDI keyboard so I can listen to the songs on the piano, then play them on the pipe.
2. Be able to record my practice so I can listen, get feedback and train my ear. 
3. Use Abletone in Live mode where I could listen and play along, while also recording.
4. Iterate between playing the music on the piano and then playing it on the pipe.

Next Steps;

1. Finish configuring Ableton Live 8 to work with the new Oxygen 25 MIDI keyboard
2. Become proficient with Live 8 to record my sessions and listen live to my iterations between piano and pipe
3. Memorize the lyrics to "Go enlist for a sailor"

Learning Outcome(s);

1. I will be able to use a Digital Audio Workstation (Ableton) to record and playback the playing of a pipe and tabor while alternating this play with the MIDI keyboard.
2. I will be able to sing "Go enlist for a sailor" in its entirety (this does not mean I will be able to sing it well)

My Deliberate Practice

After my reading of "Talent is Overrated" I will be including a deliberate practice approach to my learning of the pipe and tabor. I will bring a more deliberate practice to much more of what I do. For the time being a deliberate practice will have me reflecting upon my learning where I focus upon what is holding me back. Until I have a foundation which to build upon I need to create my broad and stable base for my musical study. Keep in mind I should be considered a beginner musician. Many of my coming posts will be the writings about this deliberate reflection. My reflections will include;

1. recent lessons learned - a candid review of my most recent learnings
2. the actual practices - where I believe I need the most practice
3. next steps, and - what I am going to do to facilitate the practice
4. learning outcome(s) - the specific outcome(s) of my learning

Personal Learning Ecology

I was prompted by a very interesting tweet the other day. Nancy White asked the question "What was the difference between a Personal Leaning Network (PLN) and a Personal Learning Ecology (PLE)". This question got me thinking and I have reflected upon it often in the last few days. One thing that jumped out from this reflection is to add the Personal Learning Environment to this question.
This is how I define these three related ideas;

• Personal Learning Network is global and includes wherever your network reach extends, all resources are available (these resources can be; filtered or unfiltered, human, digital, printed, or otherwise). It is important to consider everything in your network that can contain or process knowledge and provide skills acquisition or understanding as a part of this network. Your PLN is very broad.
• Personal Learning Ecology is more geographically related... the learning objects are what is available in the "local area" or within easy reach (digitally or otherwise). Items in the learning ecology are what come available as the learner goes through their day and are the items in which the learner has built their knowledge. These objects have the ability to be viewed through multiple intelligences and consumed using multiple tools. They are the things that are on the current learning path and not too far out in the persons network. What is in the ecology is a subset of your PLN and these items are very easily accessible through multiple modalities at the right time. Often it is the objects that are right in front of you during your learning that are most important, its the "when the student is ready the teacher will come" idea. And with PLEcologies the teacher can come in many forms. Depth and breadth is also important, therefore when the learning opportunity presents itself it needs to be explored in its entirety.
• Personal Learning Environment is the full extent of the tools used to gather knowledge and deepen understanding. This PLE is more technology based and includes all your devices, approaches and collaborative technologies.

An example:

I have taken it upon myself to develop an expert understanding of the Morris dancing and related folk music tradition with focus on learning to play the pipe and tabor. I've committed myself to this journey and for me its about getting to mastery, not the rate in which I get to mastery. I purposefully put myself in positions to learn more. I have been documenting my process in learning the pipe and tabor and regularly seek out opportunities to deepen my understanding of Morris dancing and playing these traditional musical instruments. I have felt this is slowing due to not getting the correct mentorship and feedback as I try to learn, and not knowing what is my next step toward deliberate practice is difficult. I continue to read books on the subject and attend festivals and face-to-face workshops to learn more. Recently two things have occurred that I consider show the difference between a learning ecology and a learning network.

1. A while back I was searching for books in these subject areas. My emerging learning network on this subject pointed me toward a couple of books which I have begun to read. One of the books describes when learning the pipe and tabor it is good to do this by ear, and it is a good idea to practice while sitting at a piano so you can listen correctly to the notes as playing on the piano then play them on the pipe. This back and forth between piano and pipe will greatly assist in learning the tones that occur when over-blowing the pipe. Training the ear is important to learning the pipe. Even though the book(s) came via my network, it is the presence of these books close at hand that put them into my ecology.
2. I have also been focused on learning a jig called "I'll go and enlist for a sailor". Some of the steps were eluding me. Over this last weekend I attended the Marlboro Morris Ale and was fortunate enough to meet John Dexter, who could teach me the jig. I was shown the steps in detail by a master of the dance, much of the mystery of the steps were demonstrated, they are no longer a mystery. All my reading of the dance, watching videos had prepared me well for this master / apprentice type session. I was ready to learn and the correct situation presented itself as I was on my learning journey. The Morris Ale became a part of my learning ecology.

These are both examples of how what was right in front of me from within my PLEcology is what I needed best. How this is different from the PLN is that I focused my learning on what was directly in front of me as resources instead of searching my broader network. Most often it is important to hold the faith that the right learning is available at the right time.

Lyrics for I'll go and enlist for a sailor

Oh list, oh list to me sorrowful lay,
And attention give to me song, I pray,
When you've heard it all you'll say
That I'm an unfortunate tailor.

For once I was happy as a bird in a tree,
My Sarah was all in the world to me,
Now I'm cut out by a son of the sea,
And she's left me here to bewail her.

Why did Sarah serve me so?
No more will I stitch and no more will I sew;
Me thimble and me needle to the winds I'll throw
And I'll go and 'list for a sailor.

Now me days were honey and me nights were the same,
Till a man called Cobb from the ocean came
With his long black beard and his muscular frame,
A captain on board of a whaler.

Well he spent his money both frank and free,
With his tales of the land and his songs of the sea,
And he stole me Sarah's heart from me,
And blighted the hopes of a tailor.

Well, once I was with her, when in came Cobb
“Avast!” he cried, “you blubbery swab.
If you don't knock off I'll scuttle your knob!”
And Sarah smiled at the sailor.

So now I'll cross the raging sea,
For Sarah's proved untrue to me.
Me heart's locked up and she's the key;
What a very unfeeling gaoler.

And so now, kind friends, I'll bid you adieu,
No more me woes shall trouble you;
I'll travel the country through and through,
And go and 'list for a sailor.

Transcribed by Reinhard Zierke and Garry Gillard
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/guvnor/songs/illgoandlistforasailor.html

MUSIC 101: Mastery of the Pipe and Tabor

This is what I would consider mastery of the Pipe and Tabor!

MUSIC 101: Introduction to the Tabor Pipe

WEEK 1

Activities:

• With great excitement I received my new Tabor Pipe last week. I immediately unpacked it and gave one of the three pipes a quick blow. So wonderful to have it in my possession. I ordered three, because my friend Henrik (who is already a whistle blower) will be helping me learn the pipe and I figured I'd give him one in thanks.
• I also transposed "twinkle twinkle little star" to the music sheets I created for my learning, this was a great help to get used to the holing as I learn to read music. I hope soon I will no longer need the sheet with the holing indicated and I can just read the music.
• I spent a fair bit of time learning the piece and I can now play it from memory. I really enjoyed sitting on the beach a few days back and spend a good hour playing the tune.

Recording:
At the end of the week I recorded "twinkle twinkle little star"; yes, I've got a long way to go to be considered a master of the instrument. Consider this the base line to my ability to play the whistle... a recording of where I started.




Reflection:
I learned much this week; about music, about being a whistle blower and about my simple recording studio. My main lessons were;

1. No matter how hard you try, your instrument has to be in the correct key for the song to sound right.
2. Overblowing as a way to have all the notes from a three hole pipe is going to be part of the challenge.
3. Need to remember / study music notation sooner than later.
4. Writing out the sheet music is also a good learning activity.
5. Spending time working with the music studio will pay huge dividends, and I'm best to start with audacity as my recording software and move to ableton when I I want more full music studio features. This is mostly due to the learning curve of ableton.

If your an adult learner who has ever aspired to learn a musical instrument; be bold, begin it now. If you don't believe you have the talent I suggest you read; Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.

Cumulative commitment: 10.5 hours

• 3 hours playing
• 1 hour reading
• 0.5 hour transcribing to sheet music

So I built my own Pipe Chord

I wanted to start transposing some simple songs to their fingering on the pipe. I couldn't find any blank music sheets to transpose to, so I built one myself. I'm thinking this will work well for me, only after I actually transpose some songs and use them with my learning will I really know.

The idea being I will write the notes on the staff and then figure out the pipe fingering based on the notes. All good. Nice thing is I will also be bringing back some of my musical knowledge that I never really gained.

Cumulative commitment: 6 hours

• 1.5 hours creating sheet music template
• 2 hours reading music, transposing "twinkle twinkle little star"

twinkle twinkle little star

I'm still waiting for my pipe, thinking it will be here this week. So, my first task is going to be learning the scales then quickly move into learning a fairly simple tune.

It has also been suggested "twinkle twinkle little star" is easy to learn and has a simple beat so I can easily integrate the tabor. First step is to map the pipe fingering chart to the music. This should be straight forward. My ability to read sheet music is almost non-existent so my learning curve is going to include a many corners. All fun!

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - Music and Lyrics 

Fingering and Notes (with blow strength) for the Pipe

Location of notes of the staff

Also found a great website with blank sheet music. Going to print out the 6-stave (large for elementary school use), just about my speed I suppose; http://people.virginia.edu/~pdr4h/musicpaper/widerule.pdf

Cumulative commitment: 2.5 hours

• 1.5 hour reading
• 1 hour blogging (refecting upon)

Networked and Open also means Collaborative

This is what the Networked and Open PhD (NOPhD) is all about. It is about working with others in an open and collaborative way so everyone deepens their knowledge on a shared subject domain. The great part would be if everyone who is in the collaborative cohort aspired to develop a PhD level of knowing within the subject they share a passion. Due to the networked (and collaborative) aspect of the NOPhD I believe a number of people in the cohort need to make it to the PhD depth of knowing, otherwise it couldn't be considered networked. So I have faith and begin to encourage (and hopefully inspire) the people around me (virtually and otherwise) who are interested in this pursuit of developing a deeper knowing of Folk Music and Dance. And those interested in pedagogy, technology and life-long learning; for I will be drawing on these skills and knowledge as I build upon this anchor subject.

So what exactly does this look like? Well why don't I describe my week and how certain events fit into the networked and collaborative;

1. On February 24th I committed to Folk Music and Dance as the anchor subject for my "nophd". This decision was assisted by my network.
2. I did some searches on the history of Morris dance and the instruments used, I knew of and was looking for a whistle type instrument played in one hand. I discovered the pipe and tabor was what I had been looking for. I found few sites and ordered some pipes and some books. During these transactions I made contacts, exchanged emails and have added a couple more people to my network directly involved with my chosen subject area. They offered assistance if I request.
3. I also found a couple of groups online, including one in facebook. So I asked a couple of questions and already have replies. It was even suggested that I start with learning Good King Wenceslas. So once I get the scales down and am feeling comfortable with the fingering I will start with this song. I need to trust the suggestions of my network.
4. I also had an email exchange with the whistle blower in our Morris side and he is jazzed about having a pipe and tabor in the group and is also interested in learning the instrument.

After discussion it would seem I can adjust flute scores to the pipe.

So there you have it. Five days after committing to Folk Music and Dance as the anchor subject for my Networked and Open PhD I already have begun engaging three people in my new online learning community and have made face to face contact with another who is interested in my journey. Ahhh... self directed and collaborative learning at its best.

Pipe and Tabor

So my first steps toward "nophd" begin. I have ordered a couple of pipes from the taborers society. And I have purchased a couple of books from Kelischek Workshop for Historical Instruments.

I also have a recently burned CD of our Morris sides popular music and I will be loading this into my Ableton live based studio. Here I will begin to record my musical learning, I will record my first attempt at playing the pipe so we have a baseline to my progress.

I have also joined the Pipe and Tabor group on facebook, and this already seems to be connecting me to my new learning network. All good!