The Captain's Corner

Feedback

Your feedback is so essential to the design and implementation of new programs. In addition, feedback from you will assist all pipers. The constant sharing of new and old ideas, ways of teaching and the different levels of understanding will make us all better players. So please share your thoughts.

Share your thoughts with me......

Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Subject: Teaching at the Ontario School

Hello Ken,

It was such a pleasure to meet you at the instructor's recital at St. Andrew's last week. Colleen is spending another week at the school and enjoying it! We spent last weekend with her and she couldn't stop talking about how much she enjoyed your classes. She showed us the words of encouragement you wrote on some sheet music and I can tell you have done wonders for her confidence.

The weekly phone sessions with Sue Gagnon have been great but nothing beats a personal lesson from time to time. She wants to go back to the school next year and has her fingers crossed for getting you as an instructor again. And, she 'gets' pulsing now, something that she found hard to grasp when first coming across it on your site. Learning tunes, she said, will be much easier now. (We heard about everything last weelend)!

So, as parents we thank you for everything you have done for her. If all she walks away with is more confidence and a renewed sense of enthusiasm, it was money well spent. However, we know she has come away with a lot more. If only you lived near Timmins!

Cheers,

Liz and Bruce Cowan

Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 8:14 AM

Subject: Good Morning, Captain!

Happy Wednesday!

Imagine my pleasant surprise to see my name in your blog! I hadn't checked
it in a couple of days, life just gets in the way sometimes, so I was doing a
bit of catch-up reading before getting dressed for work this morning.

I am absolutely thrilled with your new classroom! And I have to admit, a
bit pleased that I was your "inspiration"! ;-) I have worked through the
exercises a time or two, and plan to do more as the week goes on. Do you
remember our first session at Shreveport? I thought "G-grace on the scale?
Of course I can do that! I've been doing it for months!". So what a
terrible realization it was to learn I couldn't do it with the metronome! I
was appalled!! So now I never assume I can do anything. I still struggle
with the metronome, we are not friends. But I am determined we will be...
some relationships just take more work than others!

Thank you so much for creating the new room, I know you've helped so many
others by helping me. I already can't wait til next lesson!!

katie

Hi Ken,

Glad to give you some feed back.Your combination of pdf's and mp3's are working well for me.
If you are looking for a specific issue, I could use some help in breaking down reels.I have changed .... to John Cairns by conference telephone. He is helping me on timing specifically to 2/4's and 6/8's and we just started on Piobaireachd.However, the reel is coming slow, and if you have any thoughts on attacking reels that would be quite helpful.

Thanks, Keep up the great site, I find it very helpful and have recommended it to several others.

By the way, will you be back up in Aurora this summer.

Sheldon Hamblin

Hi Ken - great to hear from you. Judging from your blog it sounds as if a good time was had by all in Louisiana. I've been playing the Blackberry Bush and trying to take it to the pipes, quite a work out at this point and continuing to work on the Ewe. I've also started working on the Black Bear and the piobaireachd of Donald Dhu. I don't remember if I told you that I signed up for grade 4 solo competion in June competing in the slow march and 2/4march. I am planning to play Leaving Lismore and Donald McLean's Farewell to Oban. I was looking at Jim McBay's welcome in your library, reading along as you played and you prefaced your playing with some remarks about the speed at which the tune would be played for competition - 50 to 55 beats per minute. Does that hold true for the music and level I am playing ? And what speed for the slow march ?

I read the article on memorization by Dr. McKerrell - all very true. Hearing the music and getting a good feel for the tune makes learning from the written page much easier, like you actually know the tune on some level and you know where the notes are going. And that's one of the great things about your Website being able to read the music and listen at the same time .

Take care... Dave Pijan

Hello Ken. I am the mother of Zachary Smith, the 11-year-old who was at the Shreveport workshop.

I want to thank you for taking the time to show me a couple of things I can do to assist my son in his quest to play the pipes. I've been working with him on keeping his left hand ring and middle finger straight; and to keep the mouth piece in the center of his mouth. I cannot say I'm very popular...he gets annoyed with me, but it is working. He's even beginning to correct himself!

Zachary had me preview your website tonight. What a great concept! I would like to subscribe to your service. We listened to a couple of your lessons. He said if he closed his eyes it was like he was back in class with you again. In a very short time, you made a big impact!

I look forward to hearing from you regarding this service.

Respectfully yours,

Cathy Smith

Hi, Captain!

It's me, Katie.... your most favorite student from the RRPD workshop! :-)

I cannot begin to tell you how much you did for me last weekend. Tommy was
right, I was scared when I got there. I am fairly shy and have zero
confidence, especially when it comes to piping. But he had assured me when
I first met him on Friday night that you were a good friend of his and I
would be well taken care of. Little did I know that by saying I would be
"taken care of", that he meant "become class guinea pig" !! hahaahaaa But
you knew best, your gentle disposition and easy-to-understand teaching
methods calmed my fears and soothed my shaky nerves. Even when I couldn't
play a stinkin' G-grace on the scale with the metronome! How embarrassing
was that?! But I quickly learned that I was not totally alone.

You will be glad to know that my little metronome and I have been working
together daily this week. We still don't like each other very much, but I
am determined to make this relationship work! ;-)

I've only just visited your website today, and can't wait to explore it
further. I see there is a fee for access to the whole site, I think I may
do that. If the rest of your site is as valuable as the one article you
gave us in class, it will be well worth it!! I also see that you do lessons
by phone. I'm not sure I'm ready for that quite yet.... would you recommend
that sort of thing to a rank beginner like me? I would still like to have
information on that, even if I can't do it right now. Would you mind
sending me your rate information?

Thank you so much for making my first workshop experience such an
educational and unforgettable one. I already can't wait for next year....
ooh, do you think you could move up to the D Class so you can still be my
primary teacher?? If not, I may have to repeat E again!

Katie

From Bruce "Wrangler" McQueen:

Captain, The lesson was great. I think it will keep me on track in my remote portion of the world. Monday, Feb 27 at 3pm my time will work well�.I penciled it in but we can change if your schedule requires. That gives me a good target for Mrs MacD and George C PC review, and the MSR. I�ll take a look at the new 6/8 tonight. I�ve been trying to sight my way through music books from time to time to improve sight reading skills, so if it gets rainy again I will try to look for something too.

From P/M Laurie Gardner, Juneau,

I'm faithfully visiting your site and going through everything provided. I love it!

From Dave Pijan:

Thanks a million for the Strathspey lesson ... a really great practice tool and no problems at all with your website.

From Gord Fyfe:

Thanks for another interesting and fun lesson.........My head hurts, you are making me think too much!

Thanks in advance for taking the time to record P/M Donald MacLean of Lewis for me.

From Scott MacLean, a new subscriber:

I've applied what you wanted me to do by decreasing the distance I lift my fingers on grace notes and particularly the G grace note. Found that I can keep time better as you said it would and I also like the way it blends in with the music on the pipes.

Ken ,

It was great to see you at Winter Storm, excellent job of emceeing the competitions and concert, and I have to say it was great to see someone who has been around piping a long time still get excited by a great performance. When Stuart was playing there at the end, you had this huge smile on your face and were the first person out of their seat to give him applause.

Kevin Arnold, Omaha, Nebraska

Good Morning, Captain!

We're all a bit bleary this morning (Diana says you're a bad influence!).
As always, we enjoyed your company immensely. Thanks for helping Carraig
with his G gracenote technique - the idea of using the G finger to lift or
lower the theme note is brilliant.

Dr. Michael New, DVM, Juneau, Alaska

Hello!

I was in the Winter Steam 2006 beginner workshop in Kansas City. During the Sunday morning session you mentioned a couple of items to request from you by email. Well, I finally found your business card with your email address on which I scribbled down the note to myself to email you!

The items you recommended for us to request from you by email were:

1. Structure of Music

2. Arpeggios

I would appreciate it greatly if you could email me the information at your earliest convenience.

Thank you so much, and your workshop session was truly inspirational to me!

Cheers!

John Findlay

Student Piper

KC St. Andrew Pipes & Drums

Ken,

Our band had an all day practice yesterday..it was awesome we had been practicing all the things you had given us at the Winter Storm....we went back and are re-learning all our tunes cleaning them up as we go. It was amazing at the difference it made on pipes in just 1 practice. I am struggling in keeping up with your lessons, so I just save them and will get to them when I get there.

One thing I would like to work on is keeping my grace notes and doublings even, I seem to shorten some of the grace notes and not on others. You have any suggestions to work on that?

Thanks

Randy

Hi Ken , Thanks so much for the passwords into your site what a useful tool. I'm using it to learn the new hornpipe. Its like sitting down at a chanter lesson with you. If its not to much trouble could I ask you to send (at your leisure I know your busy) an mp3 file of you playing Ewe with the Crooked Horn like you did for the Blackberry Bush? It doesn't have to be more than one time through at maybe 80 bpm so I can clearly hear the rhythms. After working with the hornpipe I'm amazed at how useful this system is in learning a tune. Thanks again for everything.

Dave Pijan, Juneau, Alaska

Randy Dear, from Austin, Texas writes:

Ken,

I love your website, on my days off I spend hours reading and playing the
chanter. As I told you at Winter Storm, we .... rushed to learn
quickly . The downside to that is I never got to "learn" about pipe music, building tunes,
arpeggios and most of importance of the chanter work. I would love to learn all
these things you speak of, please show me how. Keep up the great teaching.

The Sponge,
Randy

..........I realized what was bugging me ...... the problem is your voice tone. The Ken Eller I know doesn't express himself that seriously. I always hear you expressing yourself with a smile in your voice and with passion. This is the only thing I can suggest that you to improve.

And this shall be attended to immediately....Voice lessons for the Captain !

The following is an email I recieved recently as we strive to perfect our system on line. It came from Roberta, one of the early subscribers, who has diligently responded to the early downloading concerns that exist with all websites. Thankyou Roberta for all your efforts:

Hello Ken,

I just had to look and could see there was already a change on the web page. The audio download is perfect and I was able to get it onto the hard drive and reopen it from there.

I am relieved that the lesson is on the practice chanter. I like your phrasing technique and the speeds demonstrated. I am thankful for the recommendations on playing speed too.

I can really hear the specific doublings now ( and their associated beats). Just like you intended, I imagine, as though "we" were all in a classroom for chanter practice. I am thrilled!! I have a real instructor for the first time. There is little piping in northern Wisconsin as you well know and I have at least 3 new recruits for you in due time. (No, none of us can practice together ...maybe in a few years).

Again, thanks so much Ken, for such an endeavor as this.

Roberta

The following comments were received recently from Jim Clough, Pipe Major of the Mohawk Valley Frasers of Rome, New York. This fine organization consists of three competitive bands in Grades 5,4,and 3. I had the pleasure of doing a weekend workshop with them in March of this year. Here is what Jim had to say a week after my visit.

Ken,

Sometimes the simplest ideas turn out to be so very powerful.

I've got to tell you how what a powerful teaching tool I am finding your explanation of doublings as being a G gracenote (coinciding with the beat) on the theme note and then thinking of the theme note as running through the note's duration -- with the doubling's second active gracenote being merely superimposed over the theme and momentarily maskng the theme. The idea is universally applicable; it works for every doubling and is helpful for veterans as well as beginners, fast fingers as well as slow. It prevents pipers with slow doublings starting the doubling early to "allow room for their slow fingers," and when combined with the idea that G is our "power" gracenote, it allows band pipers to feel comfortable just making a G rather than the whole doubling: like a drummer with his "unison chips" a "G-only" piper can take pride in the idea that he's adding to the "power" (and the band is a lot better off than if he were making big clumsy doublings). For solo players, too,

the idea is invaluable: I've found it useful in getting Nick Lundberg to open and strengthen the G of his doublings.

Also liked your reminder to the Grade 5 that it's the lightness of your right thumb (which doesn't even have a hole to cover) that frees up your fingers on the other side of the chanter.

Thanks for a great job.

Jim

Now isn't this a great bit of knowledge that is being shared with all of us.

Write me with your feedback...it is eagerly sought.

The Captain

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