Overview

CelticPipes has been written for the use of traditional musicians and those learning one or more traditional wind instruments who have at least a basic knowledge of music theory.

One of its key features is that it is easy to use and because of this, the software does not attempt to restrict the user very much. For example, notes of any value can be dropped on the staff whether it makes musical sense or not! So, even though there are tools to indicate that such actions may not be correct, the user needs to know something about western music notation.

Using Notation vs Learning 'by ear'

Many learners of traditional instruments are lucky enough to be taught directly by established musicians in their area. For this reason, learning 'by ear' tended to be the norm in some regions, particularly in the case of tin whistle and 'celtic' flute. However, not everyone has this luxury and in modern times many learners have started out more formally on another, perhaps 'classical', instrument with the aid of music notation.

The Great Highland Bagpipe is almost exclusively taught with the aid of notation nowadays.

Notation is also useful for the following reasons:

it helps with recording and communicating tunes to others,
it is an aid to learning. Even in the case of whistle and flute, it does no harm to use it to help with the technicalities of getting the basic notes and overall tempo, before the printed sheet can be discarded and the tune committed to memory.

There is of course no substitute to listening to good players of all styles and developing your own style. Good recordings are easy to obtain nowadays so the use of notation and listening to good/interesting players should always go hand in hand when learning a tune.