Tuesday, July 12, 2005
A Fiddle Flop
Jan Tappan has judged me on fiddle three times: at the May 2004 nationals, at the May 2005 nationals, and this last weekend at Grandfather Mountain. When I got up to get my score sheet from her, she said reassuringly, "You get better every time I hear you".
But I just can't see it. Maybe I am getting better in my contests, but in low-stress situations, like in front of an audience, I'm getting so much better so much faster, all I can see is the gap between my "best" performance and my typical competition performance growing. It's really frustrating me, and has sucked the fun out of the fiddle contests.
Part of it is my set. The tunes I have picked are so "ambitious" (a synonym for "hard") that the least bit of stress really mucks me up. I plan to compete on them once more, and then switch to something more comfortable. I chose hard tunes as an experiment, to "stretch" myself. And I'm just not feeling the desired effect.
On the pipes, the 2/4 march contest went well. My pipes were cold, so my D and E were flat, and I made some tiny flubs in the 3rd part, but the judge was sufficiently impressed with my overall playing and the sound of my pipes to give me 4th out of 18. The piobaireachd contest went well from a playing standpoint: the judge only had praise for my playing and expression and musicality. But he hated my pipes, and I came in third from last. The word on the street is that this judge has a huge bias against seeing soles on chanters, and immediately hears only bad things of pipes so equipped. One competitor told me last year that, after a similar experience, he played for this judge with the same chanter, but the sole replaced by a wooden cap (to hide the threads), and the judge only had good things to say. This, to me, is irrational - to let appearance so strongly influence one's sense of sound. I am glad I played so well, but I feel like if that were the case, I deserved to place - and that the presence of a sole on my teacher's chanter is a poor excuse to deny me this.
The jams and ceilidhs in the evenings at the Mountain were fun, and I seem to have an increasing corps of fans there (and a few people on whose nerves my constant practicing around the campsite gets. Oops!). I finally got to see Off Kilter. Jiggernaut was there, and I had fun saying hello to Matthew et. al.
All in all, a decent weekend, despite a few disappointments.
But I just can't see it. Maybe I am getting better in my contests, but in low-stress situations, like in front of an audience, I'm getting so much better so much faster, all I can see is the gap between my "best" performance and my typical competition performance growing. It's really frustrating me, and has sucked the fun out of the fiddle contests.
Part of it is my set. The tunes I have picked are so "ambitious" (a synonym for "hard") that the least bit of stress really mucks me up. I plan to compete on them once more, and then switch to something more comfortable. I chose hard tunes as an experiment, to "stretch" myself. And I'm just not feeling the desired effect.
On the pipes, the 2/4 march contest went well. My pipes were cold, so my D and E were flat, and I made some tiny flubs in the 3rd part, but the judge was sufficiently impressed with my overall playing and the sound of my pipes to give me 4th out of 18. The piobaireachd contest went well from a playing standpoint: the judge only had praise for my playing and expression and musicality. But he hated my pipes, and I came in third from last. The word on the street is that this judge has a huge bias against seeing soles on chanters, and immediately hears only bad things of pipes so equipped. One competitor told me last year that, after a similar experience, he played for this judge with the same chanter, but the sole replaced by a wooden cap (to hide the threads), and the judge only had good things to say. This, to me, is irrational - to let appearance so strongly influence one's sense of sound. I am glad I played so well, but I feel like if that were the case, I deserved to place - and that the presence of a sole on my teacher's chanter is a poor excuse to deny me this.
The jams and ceilidhs in the evenings at the Mountain were fun, and I seem to have an increasing corps of fans there (and a few people on whose nerves my constant practicing around the campsite gets. Oops!). I finally got to see Off Kilter. Jiggernaut was there, and I had fun saying hello to Matthew et. al.
All in all, a decent weekend, despite a few disappointments.
# posted by Peter @ 11:14 AM 
