I’ll Gang Nae Mair Tae Yon Toon Low Pitch Half Speed

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Learning discussion points
1 Rhythmical contrast is tricky in this tune. getting the dotted semiquavers (16ths) and demisemiquavers (32nd notes) to work in good proportion and contrasting that with the simple quavers (8ths) requires a change of thinking. If you are a native speaker of English you might want to say "bouncy ta-ti ta". The 'bouncy' is like the first two notes in the tune, and if you make it bouncy to match the word bouncy then you are going in a good direction.
2 Bar 2 - getting the G gracenote to close on the beat in the C doubling after a relatively long E needs to be worked on carefully.
3 Bar 3 the G gracenote can take half of the 32nd note (D) in order to close on the beat in the C doubling in a solo interpretation but the choice taken here is to make it shorter and thus reduce the amount of rhythmical contrast in any one given tune, where this can be done without artistic compromise. This helps unify your band's style more quickly.
4 Birl in bar 9 - this is a fairly open birl. Listen carefully to the videos...
5 Bar 15 - B doubling using a strike - the beat lands on the first B. Doing this avoids a sense of rushing at the end. Of course an alternative view is equally valid here - that the beat should be when the strike comes up, but this will create the effect of rushing towards the end, or at least, it will not safeguard against this happening.
The Magic Maxim:
"If you can play slowly you can play quickly, but the converse isn't necessarily true..."
This means exactly what it says - the better you become the more exactly you should be able to control what you are doing, and so to test ourselves, we shouldn't practice more quickly, but more slowly.
To think again like computers - a sampling rate for a recording is a measure of how many times a second the computer will measure what is happening in the sound. A higher sampling rate makes for a higher quality of recording, up to a point beyond which it doesn't make much difference. It is the same with piping - the more times in a beat you can say exactly what is happening, the better your piping, up to a point..
By remembering the five steps in learning (see teachyourselfb..., we can see that at the point when we assign time to our actions we can get better by increasing our sampling rate. We do this simply by dividing by two, and playing at half speed, with awareness of twice as many points in the beat. When we succeed at this level, we half our speed again, and double the number of places in the bar we try to feel and be aware of what is happening. We keep doing this until every gracenote can be measured opening and closing. If you know the 'New French Method' of rhythm, this helps dramatically, as it automatically gives us a sampling rate of four points per beat.
Start with a quick video (or a medium one) and when you feel you are playing with this nicely, go to a slower one, and try to feel more detail. First listen carefully, bearing in mind that most things are divided by two, to find where the actions occur. Obviously, when you accomplish this, go to the next slower file.
Once you have gone to the slowest file and played along correctly, start to go through the faster ones again to see how much more precisely you are playing, and hearing what you are playing.
Playing exactly with the midi files at a quarter speed is a fairly good test for a group, and this extra secret can dramatically affect the strength of playing within a band, and the confidence. It is true that using this approach, you can bring about a positive revolution in your band's playing and attitude.
If you know the New French Method, great. If not, you will need to' feel' the rhythm (until we can figure out how to explain the method via internet...).
It's a simple set of tasks, the trick is in disciplining yourself to do it.
Using this method groups (bands) can also learn to play exactly together, without the need to meet, or vaguely copy a master. A great ensemble plays together by creating the same thing at the same time using the same tricks (feel the 'rhythm'). This is one way to create that result.