A Little Bit of Butter

First posted Mar 18th, 2012 by newpiper

I've been thinking a little more about whistles, and have been tootling about on an old D whistle. I find them harder to play than recorders somehow the lack of a thumb hole throws me. I've felt that with so little time to play spending time on a whistle will detract from pipes time. But as the fan points out it's all still music - learning tunes, timing and so on. I've not got further than tootling about, but I'll see.

A discussion of whistling technique - you can often spot a piper from the flat fingers on a whistle - led to Julie Fowlis - I had no idea she played pipes. She seems to only play one tune, which is a good one, and familiar because the band play it: The Battle of Waterloo. We printed off the dots and I gave it a couple of runs through and it sounded really quite passable. I did wonder - the dots being without grace notes - quite how to fit gracing in and maintain the timing, but looking at a second set of dots with grace notes some of the timing is subtly altered to accommodate grace notes - especially the big ones. There's a taorluath, for example. Scary. Not that I can't play a half decent one - although I'm a little rusty - but it's the kind of thing that doesn't sound right on small pipes - something lacking in the way of clarity. I need to work on useful gracing for it.

Infuriatingly I couldn't recall Dusty Pipes or Hector for a good run through. The fan pointed out that it's late, I'm tired, and we've drunk half a bottle of wine - and he's probably right, considering I couldn't even remember The King's Breakfast, which is the sort of thing my brain is normally cluttered up with.

I'm raring to go with new tunes all round. Vicki has posted on her blog - not so mad on the current tune, but Bare Bones sounds good, and I still want to improve on the Roros Polska, then there's Nigel's tune and, probably one for the whistle, the Byss Calle 25. So many tunes, so little time, especially with the allotment season just about upon us.

No recording - I ran through Waterloo a few times before I thought about it, and had stupidly stripped down to a sleeveless layer and the bellows (I've still not worked out if it's the buckle, strap or air vent) rubbed my inner elbow raw, so I had to stop before it needed remedial action.