More practice. I'm making the effort to play all tunes through twice over - so A part twice, B part twice, A part twice more, B part twice more. Hopefully this is improving my stamina and also helping tunes embed themselves in my brain and fingers. If the tune goes well I enjoy this. I can actually listen to the music I am playing as I go, and, naturally, I enjoy listening to smallpipes, so that's good. If a tune goes badly I have to push myself to tackle it again instead of going on to the next one, although when things go really badly I find it's best to set a tune aside until I've warmed up with a couple of others. Sometimes I have to admit defeat and abandon entirely, and normally the next time I play the problems will have mysteriously ironed themselves out.
One thing that bemuses me is how I can play a tune with a repeating phrase, play it twice in the A part, twice more in the B part, two more times in the A part again, hit it in the next B part - so the 7th time of playing - and totally seize up and not be able to play it at all.
More good news - my D strike, which has stubbornly insisted on being a clunk of extraneous notes, has suddenly morphed into a proper gracing.
I had another little look at the Kilbarchan pipe band website the other evening and printed out Bonnie Galloway and Flett from Flotta. Hoping to put Bonnie Galloway with The Rowan Tree and the Barren Rocks as a set. The Rowan Tree is coming on quite quickly, dotless.
So, time to revise my playlist.
Pretty much totally dotless
- Atholl Highlanders
- Banks of Allen
- Barren Rocks
- My Home Town
Moving towards dotlessness
- Castle Dangerous
- Leaving Barra
- The Rowan Tree
Stuff I am learning
- Bonnie Galloway
- Troy's Wedding
Stuff I want to learn
- Heights of Casino
- A Boy's Lament for his Dragon
- Flett from Flotta
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