Curioser and curioser

These are things for which I have no explanation.

Today, despite strapping in as usual, I cannot keep my pipes in place: drones slips down over my bust, bellows slip down my elbow, and everything feels as thought it is heading towards the floor. My fingers, way too tight on the chanter, so I feel I am prising them away for each note, suddenly hit that soft perfection whee they bounce effortlessly. Despite all this I get the buzz....

I'm also at a loss to know why the version of The Road to the Isles or Burning Sands of Egypt printed in The Piper's Delight is described as being "as arranged for the pipes." It's a pipe tune, written for pipes, so how can it be "arranged" for pipes?

Less mysterious, but equally irritating, has been my failure to find a video of pipes playing The Braemar Gathering. Youtube of course just finds me videos of pipes playing at the Braemar Gathering. Luckily, I remembered that it's on Even in the Rain. 

Ghost in the machine

Of course, having decided that the buzz is simply the result of a certain level of pressure I played around with bag, bellows and elbows in the hope of finding that perfect point. I could't find it.

Not only could I not find it, I suffered from the opposite of the buzz - a thing so awful that it has no name. It feels as though everything is flat - not musically flat, but dampened and dulled like a grey day or a really drab shade of brown. The sound seems to lack any vibrancy, is almost muffled, and the chanter feels lifeless in my hands. After a while things improved, but whether that was to do with the reed warming up, my fingers warming up (it has turned cold here rather suddenly), or a change in pressure I don't know.

Something else I thought I understood the workings of is my musical memory. It only takes me a handful of play throughs to pick up a simple two parter. That may be generally true, but it doesn't work for Isles, which I play over and round and the moment I stop I can neither hear, see, nor hum a single bar.

I've been playing Flanders slowly and plainly with only the necessary graces (I think, although other may creep in if my fingers feel so inclined) but listening to the rather more ornate, and rather wistfully lovely, version of Mr Macleod I'm wondering if that needs to change.

Where do you go to, my lovely

First day back at work after a week away was a busy one, with the usual email avalanche and three meetings that weren't in my diary when I went away, two of them placed so as to wipe out the chance for anything but the briefest of lunch breaks. Nevertheless I felt reasonably upbeat, humming tunes to myself through the day.

It occurs to me that I haven't had tunes in my head of late. I don't know why, and rather like swallows I don't think I noticed them going, but I did notice when they came back again.

The tunes in my head needed to be played, which gave me a spur for my week of playing. I played a couple of tunes, shifted the bag to make it more comfortable, and suddenly got the buzz. I played through three tunes, not wanting to stop in case I lost it. But the bag got less comfortable, I had to shift it an inch...and the buzz vanished.

I kept on playing, anxiously checking to see if I could perhaps almost, sorta, kinda feel the buzz...but I think it's like being in love: you know when you are and if you have to ask then you aren't. Given that it came and went I can only assume that, rather prosaically, the buzz is linked to pressure levels, but I only know that I had it once and then lost it.

Pop-up piping practice

I've been thinking about getting back to playing, and playing regularly. We've just been away for a week, so of course I've played nothing at all until this evening. It went well today. I played for over an hour, everything was reasonably comfortable, I had good, even pressure in the bag, my fingers wre reasonable nimble. I played tunes I know and mostly had few problems with them. I ran through a pile of tunes, mostly sight reading things I have heard, things I used to play and never nail down, and The Road to the Isles (aka The Bens of Jura, among other aliases), just because it was there in the book and the fan had mentioned it recently.

You'd think that, considering how well everything went, I would have got the buzz, but there was no sign of it.

But it's the session (again!) at the weekend, and I need to get back into practice, and somehow a whole month is too much to commit to for daily playing. So my plan is that I do a pop-up practice and play every day for week from time to time, and hopefully least monthly, with the sessions there to remind me.

Gile na gile

I found a translation of the poem. I also realised that much of the novel takes place earlier than 1932, but certainly not as early as 1892, the year in which women were admitted to Glasgow University.

In the end The Albannach is about Murdo, the protagonist, finding his true self, his identity as a Highland Scot, a Gaelic speaker and a piper. Oddly enough, considering the misogyny, it turns out that the great Murdo, the man who leads his village from the horrors of Calvinism into the sunny uplands of Alba, seems to have been taught to play the pipes by his mother.

"'God about us!' exclaimed Duncan Lachlan Iain, as if in the greatest consternation. 'A woman piper! I won't believe it. The day I see a man bear a child that day I'll see a woman tune the pipes, and that day I'll know I am dead. Man, man, they have not the wind nor the trick of the fingers nor the musician's ear not the poet's heart.'"

The Albannach, Finn Mac Colla.

This evening I certainly felt unfit to play. Following the fan's suggestion that I work on more reels and jigs I've been working on Troy, Miss Girdle and Crossing the Minch.  I've been thwarted by an utter inability to hold pipes and bellows in a way that doesn't involve a numb arm, cricked neck and sore thumb. Maybe it's the drop in temperature - I've had to resort to playing in fingerless mitts. In the midst of all the physical discomfort I got the buzz: there really is no rhyme or reason to it.

As you were

I haven't played for a while. As ever I have nothing much else to show for the lapse: still only on row 69 of the endless knitting project, weeds flourishing at the allotment, can't remember when I last completed a crossword, although I have been reading quite a lot of late.

Whatever the reason it's about two weeks since I last strapped on my pipes so I did so this evening with some trepidation. I worried that my new tunes might have melted in the recent heat, and that those I had polished would have tarnished.

As it turned out the first tune that came to my fingers was Flanders, which I thought I had forgotten entirely. After that everything came tumbling out: Perth, Valery, Vittoria, Flett, Dargai, Home Town, Sleat, Bonnie Galloway, Father John, Whaling Song. I had a couple of glitches in Women and Bee, which also needed a couple of goes to start it, but everything else seemed pretty much as I had left it. I even got the buzz....

You win some

The fan was a bit late home this evening, and, as often seems to happen when he's late, I was able to leave early. Still, it gave me a bit of piping time, unhurried by dinner on the hob.

All my tunes were there, including Flanders. Bellows were awkward again, so that I have to shrug them round my body as I play. I don't seem to be leaning my wrist on them, but I get tingling and numbness in the little finger of my right hand. I also feel as though my piles are slipping down, and in fact they sometimes do slip and then stock and drones press uncomfortably on my front.

Despite this I got the buzz this evening, and the chanter felt alive under my fingers. It doesn't seem to affect, or be affected by, how I play, but it does gladden my heart.

Andy has been winning some. Hope he can avoid losing some.

Not blogging, but piping

At the session on Sunday I played March of the King of Laoise and mentioned to one of the flautists, on only his second visit, that I offered it as my concession to Irish music, noting that it's clearly a Scottish tune, because it's so clearly a pipe tune. Not at all, replied the flute: pipe tune, certainly, but Irish war pipes, not GHB. Not something that had occured to me, and now I wonder, where is the rest of the repertoire of the war pipes?

I've just finished Roderick Cannon's very enjoyable history of piping and will blog on that this weekend, hopefully.

Played a little with the fan this evening, and for the first time in ages I got the buzz!

Speak to me

"Donald asked RSM Maclean 'Well, John, and how is the pipe going?' John replied, 'She's going so well she's speaking  to me'."

Archie Maclean, as quoted in Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland, Bridget Mackenzie, Birlinn, 2013.

Is this speaking the same as, or related to, the buzz, I wonder? Note that the pipe is referred to in the singular, and that, like cars, motorbikes, ships and countries, it takes the feminine. I have always given names and genders to objects of importance. The Monkey is male.

And while we are on the subject of the naming of things I note that the Shores of Loch Bea/Bee aka The Sands of Loch Bea/Bee is formally known as The Glasgow Police March Past. 

Also on terminology, tunes, and poems or songs, are not written or composed in this book, but are 'made'.

I'm intrigued by the number of pipers who went on to be schoolteachers (not necessarily of music) or in to the police (where the pipe bands might have been a draw, I supose). I don't know if this was just the case in the Outer Isles.

Here's a tune. Braemar, again, and still tightening up in the same places, still not relaxed with it, still struggling not to mix the 1st and 3rd parts.


Check this out on Chirbit

Kiss and make up

Sunday was our regular session. After last month's surge in numbers we dwindled back down to four. Four would be fine, although I only count as a half, if that, as I never play along with other peoples's tunes. The problem is not the lack of numbers so much as lack of shared repertoire. The fan and the Irish piper seem to have forgotten the repertoire they shared in the days of the band. The fiddler seems to have a pile of new tunes each month, but none of them are ever anything the others play or even know, and somehow no one seems much inclined to  learn his tunes either.

In some ways I'm the one creating shared repertoire and everyone is happy to pitch in for The Heights of Dargai, The March of the King of Laoise, My Home Town or Bonnie Galloway. It may be that they are catchy tunes, and it may be that my limited repertoire means I play most tunes most months. So despite the fact that I didn't much feel in the mood to go out yesterday evening I was all geared up to play lots of tunes.

And then disaster struck. The fan had terrible problems tuning drones. I think the problem is that, rather shamefully, I've not used drones since I last gave the monkey a polish. I'd forgotten that, so didn't ask the fan to do a pre-sesson tuning. The drones were difficult to tune, and wouldn't stay in tune. As I played the pressure was uneven, adding to the general awfulness of drones. I scraped through Flett, John Macmillan's boat trip, Dargai, and Home Town, but it wasn' t right, and it just got worse, with the chanter sounding sharp and the tube kinking and cutting off air a couple of times. By the time I accepted the Irish piper's suggestion to play without drones I was so cross and unhappy that I failed to be able to play either Woman or Galloway and I am afraid I gave up in a huff. By the time we got home I had pretty much decided that I was clearly in need of a break from piping....

But...I have tunes to play, other tunes I want to learn. And I didn't want to let the sun go down on an argument, to get the monkey out in a month for the next session thinking about how I'd been let down, how we had fallen out. So this evening I played my pipes. The fan got the drones about right. I played a tune with drones then flipped them off and ran through my current playlist and it all went well and I loved it. I think the monkey has forgiven me for doubting him: I got the buzz tonight.

Click

Just as I was beginning to feel that perhaps a break from piping would be nice, everything clicked. Bellows were comfortable, well out of the way of my wrist. Drones (mostly) sat high and left the bellows alone. I got the buzz! Various bits of Arthur Bignold fell into place. My fingers were fast and furious and (mostly) accurate. I played new tunes, old tunes, tunes from The Piper's Delight which I had on my music stand having discovered (thanks to pipe tune search) that it has Farewell to the Creeks in it.

Still listening to Skippinish in the car. Still loving it.

Buzzing

Despite various logistical challenges and time constraints (i.e. too much to do and not enough time to do it in) I was determined to play this evening. What with one thing and another it seemed appropriate. I also hit the buzz this evening. The fan has asked what I mean by "buzz": it is just that. The chanter seems to vibrate in my hands, under my fingers, the sound seems extra full and rich. It doesn't seem to be linked to how I am playing, although when it comes I think it improves my playing because I feel so joyous about it. I suspect it's to do with atmospherics, heat and humidity. Or perhaps the Monkey just felt in celebratory mood.

As if by magic

Kilbowie Cottage appeared in my head today. It's at that stage where I can hear it, but on the whole I can't hum it, and even if I sit and listen to it the moment I pick up my pipes it vanishes. The bits I can hum I can play: that's most of the A part, just about by heart, with a slightly muddled mess in  the two bars in the middle.

I find that the dots guide me in the shape of the tune, confirming the notes I can hear in my head, but where the timing is wrong in my head, or not there at all, I struggle even with the dots to play the tune properly, despite being able to read music.

I've had tenderness in my right index finger this week, at the middle joint and tip, and soreness in my elbow and shoulder. I am hoping it's excess use of a PC at work and that it won't interfere with what seems at the moment to be an insatiable desire to play. It has meant that I've failed to be comfortable with my bellows and had to abandon before doing my elbow serious damage. It's a shame, because apart from feeling the love and being keen to get this tune sorted, I just started getting the chanter buzz this evening, and as well as feeling good that always sounds fantastic and spurs me on.

Women on my mind

Well, it's no longer summertime (despite the blue skies it has been serious knitwear weather today) but I've still got women on my mind. They wandered back mid-morning and stayed all day.

I did wonder if they looked a little plain so I have been working on some gracing, a doubling on B before a strike on B, a grip in the first gap between two high As in the second B part. I thought that might be tricky. It's the kind of serious grace I haven't used in a while, but I like the effect and actually it's easy enough and the speed came very quickly. I say it's easy but I think I am dropping down only to low A instead of low G, and I blame cold fingers, meaning not very flexible fingers, and not very good placement of fingers over holes.

I tried again to introduce the women to Flett and the Heroes, but that induced such a fit of the sulks that I had to go on to Braemar and Troy.

I stopped there: cold hands, the bellows feeling airless, no buzz at all in the chanter.  I should get Women sorted soon: just as long as they don't vanish again.

No women or heroes in Magersfontein

Those pesky women still hadn't reappeared by this evening so I flushed them out with the help of the dots. B part still needs work to get it into my musical memory.

Since they were there I tried to introduce them to Magersfontein or Heroes, but no mattter which way  I tried I couldn't make a pairing, far less a threesome. I even threw in Flett, but that was a non-starter as well, so after my initial flurry of excitement around sets I am back to a pile of stubborn singletons.

After that Bonnie Galloway, Loch Bee, Braemar. I am trying to take this last nice and slow to check I have notes and timings all in the right place. It sounds, at a slower pace, rather naked without much gracing.

It was one of those evenings where the chanter literally buzzed in my hands, always a really good feeling. I have no idea whether it's to do with temperature or humidity, or is just my imagination, nor do I know what, if any, effect it has on the sound.

I had to stop mid way to rearrange various items in and out of the oven. When I came back the buzz was still there but the bellows jammed themselves on my wrist, my right thumb seized up, and Troy came out as a bit of a mess.