TESTIMONIALS

“As a long-standing student in Susan MacLean’s Cape Breton piano accompaniment classes, I am excited to see her teaching techniques from over the years brought together into her comprehensive instruction book for aspiring learners of the Cape Breton piano accompaniment style. Creating this book has been a labor of love for her, and a labor of much time and effort at that. The result is an amazingly detailed and thorough resource.

​

Susan asked me to write a testimonial for inclusion in the book, and this is it. I have likely written more than she might have wanted, but as an adult student of Susan’s, I think it is helpful, besides raving about the book, to share some of my learning and experience with Susan as a teacher and why I am so thrilled about her book.

 

I first started learning Cape Breton piano chording with Susan at Colaisde na Gàidhlig, the Gaelic College, perhaps twenty years ago. I did not grow up in Cape Breton where those, like Susan, have received the muse of this musical style from before birth. I started pretty much from scratch.

 

Every summer, the Gaelic College brings incredible Cape Breton-style piano accompanists to teach during their August adult music camp weeks. Every teacher there has added to my understanding of this unique piano style. Susan’s piano classes each summer have helped me improve my playing because of the methods she uses to build students’ accompaniment skills, step by step. This book is a compilation of these teaching strategies from over the years.

 

Anyone wanting to accompany fiddle tunes in the Cape Breton piano style will find this book a treasure trove of instruction on concepts and practice tips. I know of no book like it. I suspect this is because the style has complexities that make it hard to teach. These complexities make it exciting and enjoyable to play but can be frustratingly challenging for learners to get their head around and their hands on.

 

As a regular piano student of Susan’s, year after year, I have made steady progress because of the way she separately teaches the different skills necessary to get the hang of playing in this style. She provides conceptual explanations plus skill building exercises and practice patterns. Besides teaching to recorded tunes or her own on-the-spot fiddling, she created and uses audio clips for practicing specific skills and patterns.

 

Susan emphasizes listening as one of the most important skills to learn, followed by learning common chord progressions found in Cape Breton tunes, syncopated rhythms that sound good with jigs, reels, strathspeys and marches, and complementary walking bass lines. The extra effort Susan has made to create the companion website which contains audio segments that students can use to practice their skills, makes this book even more uniquely valuable.

 

Students new to the Cape Breton fiddle and piano style can be traumatized to learn that the piano accompanist is not playing to a set ordered program of tunes. They have no sheet music in front of them. They may have no idea where the fiddler is going. This is a big challenge for some learners who are not used to playing by ear. Students need to learn to listen to where the fiddler is going, from one tune to the next. Susan provides methods for students to improve their skill at playing by ear.

 

A fiddler might play a set of tunes that lasts ten or more minutes long. The musical keys these tunes are in, might change from one to the next. A tune in a major key might be followed by a tune in a minor key. Fortunately, students learn from Susan, that the keys of sequentially played tunes likely have some logic that can be learned. They learn that each tune is usually played twice, before the fiddler goes on to playing the next tune, and the next.

 

In Cape Breton piano accompaniment, the left hand must maintain a solid even tempo supporting the music, but it also travels around playing what is called a “walking bass” line. The walking bass line is equivalent to a harmonizing melody played by the bass player in a string band. This complementary melody keeps the left hand from playing the same few notes over and over and is one of the feature characteristics of this piano style. It’s challenging to learn options to make the notes played by the walking left hand support the fiddler’s melody rather than distract from it. Susan’s book presents students with a variety of walking bass lines to try, from basic to challenging.

Then there are the chords played on the right hand, which can be shaped on the keyboard in different ways, each sounding somewhat different. And finally, there is the syncopation in the playing of the right-hand chords coordinated with the left-hand bass walks. This syncopation between the left and right hands, is another feature characteristic of the Cape Breton piano accompaniment style. Susan offers students a variety of rhythm patterns to practice.

 

With all these things going on, learning the style is challenging. The piano player is truly an accompanist, who must follow the fiddler. It is an exciting exercise, both mental and physical, in which part of the pleasure of playing in the Cape Breton piano accompaniment style, is staying in the saddle on the horse, wherever the fiddler races off to! This is fun and exciting but can also be terrifying for someone learning this style.

 

As you can see, it is daunting to learn these things as a piano accompaniment student. That is why I have been so impressed with Susan’s teaching methods, which provide structure for learning the different skill parts that will be joined together in the accompaniment style.

Thank you, Susan, for doing the work it has taken to make this book happen! The product of your efforts will preserve and pass on the pleasures of this challenging, wonderfully spirited Cape Breton piano accompaniment style.”

Solveig Overby, Vermont USA