🎻 On slow growth, milestones, and reflecting back (keep going!)

Hi Reader!

There's a good chance that by the time you're reading this, I'll be piled under two cats with coffee close by and a full heart from a week in my original home state of North Carolina at the Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week.

It was during this week 11 years ago that a friend asked me if I'd heard about University College of Cork's Masters program for Ethnomusicology...

And it was during this week 9 years ago that I got my first foray into interviewing Liz Carroll, John Doyle, Kevin Crawford, and Colin Farrell for my Masters Thesis (from University College of Cork).

Fast forward to now, and I run a podcast that lets me interview peers and mentors in the Irish traditional music space + I get to work with students in private lessons or group workshops, and still more members in my Tune Library to help them build repertoire while getting the real feel for Irish fiddling.

Amazing what grows over a decade!

Each time I've been to Swannanoa, I have learned more about Irish, Scottish and Cape Breton music alike, built repertoire, and heard from many perspectives of other people who share this love for the music.

My takeaways from this year will have to wait until next week since I'm writing this in advance. (I know myself too well to think I'm going to be able to focus on writing anything coherent during travel...)

But I do find it interesting to reflect back on 2016 Hannah and what lay before her over the next decade. Sometimes it can seem like progress creeps along slowly, but then you look back and realize that those seemingly slow and tiny steps have added up.

Weekly Tune Library Update

You get a rest week from new tunes in the library! (And in case I haven't mentioned it recently, there's no pressure to learn them all -- just the ones that you want to learn!)

This upcoming week you should see a tutorial for The Gold Ring under jigs, and the other two Martin Wynne's (3 and 5) are on deck!

Liz Knowles had a comment about this in her Find your Lilt episode: one of her students that she's had for 2-4 years is very self-critical and doesn't tend to reflect on her progress. So Liz had to say "don't you remember when you couldn't read music?" Or "don't you remember when you couldn't do x technique? And now you're doing it!"

If you think back over the last 10 years... what has changed in your playing and your understanding of Irish traditional music? You're still you -- but how have you continued to grow?

I still remember when I was playing Lads of Laois very straight off the page with nothing at all Irish sounding about it. Now I'm teaching it in my Tune Library...

Probably in a couple years, I'll have thrown in a couple new variations and play the tune totally different from how I do now!

Happy playing! Enjoy the process!

~Hannah