Out with the old

I didn't play yesterday and today... Well, it's a while since everything has gone quite so spectacularly badly. Nothing felt comfortable, nothing felt right. My pipes didn't sound good. I couldn't play a single tune without mucking it up. I gave up in disgust.

Roll on 2014.

The last time

Many years ago I had a friend who often used to forget my birthday. She once sent me a card that said "Don't think of this as a belated card so much as the anniversary of the last time I forgot your birthday". I thought of it because I'm currently amazing myself with my ability to repeat mistakes. I feel like a horse at a fence: "uh oh - it's this horrible one where everything goes wrong. Think I'll just stop here..."

I'm currently consistently making the same mistakes in the same places in Loch Bee, Magersfontein, the King. I'm skipping to B parts after just one play of the A part. I am trying to play the Trail or the Captain and accidentally playing the Captain or the Trail, or even the Farewell.

I am playing with A each time, and each time my right hand wont stretch, my wrist rests hard on the bellows, the straps pull my clothing awry, the drones lean heavily across my chest. My right hand thumb is uncomfortable, my hands are tense. I go round and round with the same old tunes. I've played for four days in a row and don't feel that I am getting back into the swing of things at all.

I keep playing just three tunes on the A and decided to branch out today and went for Galloway, Tree, Whaling Song, King, Farewell and Home Town. I moved to D and went back to Farewell, and took note of the different way the gracing sounds, the different way the pipes sounds, the tunes sound.

I should listen to pipe music, look at my books of dots, try new tunes, revitalise my playing. The days of the old year drift slowly away. I listen to Deadly Buzz and knit and knit.

Getting a grip

I played quite a lot yesterday. Not hugely successfully. I lacked the concentration to get tunes right: both Loch Bee and Magersfontein keep letting me down. My hands were uncomfortable on both chanters. I'm inclined to blame the cold and my marathon knitting sessions, but I suspect it's more down to an embarrassing lack of practice.

My stamina is good, though, and yesterday I just went from tune to tune, although I could probably have done with stopping at least once to get the bellows in the right position. It was one of those where my wrist rested on the bellows, neatly cutting off circulation in my fingers...

Today I've played through a number of tunes. I dredged up Teribus from somewhere in my memory. It's a bit shaky, but not in bad shape, considering. Still working on Troy. I think the speed is good, still having problems with accuracy. Currently losing the plot on the C part where I really want double high after after both the low A (correct) and the B (wrong, wrong, wrong). I also still have a tendency to play the first and the last part only of the D part. I suppose that the D, being the only non-repeated part, I've probably played only half as often as the rest of the tune...

The fan gave me two volumes of Donald MacLeod for Christmas. He was pleased to find Jack Adrift in volume 5, which he had been looking for. I was pleased to find an arrangement in the first volume of The Highland Brigade at Waterloo. In the B part, in place of the odd drop to low G then a D grace on a low A between two high A's, and the two drops to low G around a D between two high G's, there are grips. I can play grips! The other interesting thing is that I thought this was one of those tunes that was refusing to filter into my musical memory, but several times I found I was playing the remembered version (from the David Glen Collection via Ceol Sean) instead of the version in the dots before me.

January is coming. Knitting still not finished (yes, yes - it was Christmas knitting, and Christmas has been and gone) but I will play every day. And I will learn some new tunes - I've no excuse with two volumes of P M MacLeod.

Habit forming

How are habits made? Some seem forged very quickly. I find we only need to be on holiday for a day or two before we start talking about "our usual route to town" or "our usual cafe".  Some things take a little longer. Despite loving home made bread and using a lot of bread it's taken me years of intermittent baking to reach the stage where I bake every week. That's partly finding a method that has helpful timings, so it fits in easily with other things I do.

Piping, one way and another, doesn't seem to be becoming much of a habit with me. It's something I need to think about. I enjoy it very much when I do it, it doesn't take two minutes to pull the pipes out and get going, I think about music a lot, but somehow it's always an effort and there are always other things to do.

I'm not a hugely single-minded person. I like to dot about, doing a bit of this, a bit of that. I'm knitting a lot at present, but that's because I have Xmas presents to finish. Sometimes I spend a day at the weekend sitting on the sofa and reading all day. That's reasonably rare, and normally means I am very tired. It makes me peevish, the fan always says, and I always feel at the end that I've wasted a day. Even so there are times when I read very little. While I've been knitting it's taken me three weeks to read a single book.

While I might occasionally think that I haven't read much of late, or that I haven't done much knitting I never feel that ought to to do either. The mood comes and goes. I suppose the only hobby at all like music is needlepoint. I can happily have a piece on the go for two years. I like doing it, I like the finished product (although they tend to end up in the back of a cupboard), but I just do a bit here and there as the mood takes me. I don't feel any particular urge to complete the current piece. It's a very contemplative thing to do - I consider colours and the best way to fill a space, but don't normally think of the finished object.

So much as I like playing, and although I want to get better at it and need to play (a lot) more to do that, I somehow don't find the time, I haven't formed a habit of playing, and I don't know why.

O' but ye've been long a'coming

Oh - the shame - two whole weeks without posting. Worse - practically two whole weeks without piping. Mostly it's down to my continued pre-Christmas knitting frenzy. Not everything will be done in time but so far I've managed a neckwarmer, some socks, a scarf, part of a second pair of socks, and a mild case of knitter's elbow.

I've dragged the Monkey out this evening. Our upstairs neighbours are back today from foreign parts. If I had just got off a 13 hour flight I would drink a mug of tea, have a shower and get into bed. The last thing I would want to hear is someone else's music. I've played at the front of the house, away from bedrooms, but the thought of irate neighbours banging at the door made me nervous. Still, I managed a good run through of my regular repertoire, including dusting off Alick C McGregor, because listening to Seudan has reminded me how good it is. Reasonably fast, but total reliance on dots, mysteriously.

Yes, enjoying Seudan very much, and got out Seaforth Highlanders and found several of the tunes in there: Hot Punch, Tullochgorm, Fingal's Weeping, All the Blue Bonnets. Tried some on the chanter, then found MacDonald of the Isles, which sounded good. I must find new tunes.

Still putting the A chanter on the pipes when I put them away, and so play the first handful of tunes on A each time. Not surprisingly this means I'm finding it much easier to play A again, and the switch between the two is also easier.

But I really must play more. I should play every day in January. I don't feel I go backwards much when I don't play, but I certainly don't go any further forwards, and I have to keep marching on.

For Glasgow

I thought that as I'm short of new tunes to record I would re-record a few hoary old favourites, in the hopes of demonstrating how far I've come. This is the Rowan Tree, which is one of the first I learned by heart, and which is a favourite of mine for sessions. I've got it here in A and D. A bit messy as I edit between sections of the recording (a mid tune chanter-swap being beyond my capabilities!)

I'm still finding A less comfortable. I was using too much bellows action, feeling a lack of air, leaving some distinctly wavery parts,. Bellows-panic led to some poor timing and poorly placed fingers. D is better - I relaxed once I had D although my mind's not on the music tonight. I finish with D droneless, a sort of pipe equivalent of fade.... Not sure you can really hear that on the recording. I really need to play A more often. I really need to play with drones more often. I hope I sound better than this at sessions.

I'm dedicating this tune to Glasgow.


Check this out on Chirbit

When Braebach came to town

I wish I could blame my silence here on hours of pipe playing, but sadly I'm playing very little at present. It's partly the pre-Christmas knitting rush. Like other knitters at this time of year I am knitting against the clock. One neck warmer done, one pair of socks cast off this evening. A scarf will be cast on this evening, then that leaves another scarf and another pair of socks. How long
until Christmas?

At least I've been out to see some piping this week, when Braebach came to town again. They are a good band to see live. They have a good line in banter and jokes. The pipes have more power live - I find them a little washed out on their CDs. Our local folk club is in an old church, with a fantastic acoustic for pipes.

They mostly played from their new album, Urlar. They threw in Good Drying, from Desperate Battle of the Birds, and the Caber Feidh set and The Rolling Hills of the Borders from The Big Spree. I like this song, and I enjoy the use of Gaelic song that Megan has brought to the band. I can live without Calum's singing. He's a fine piper and whistle player, and presumably a decent string player, so I don't know why he persists in singing. I'm not keen on either his voice or his choice of songs.

The band is definitely Scottish, but they have lots of big bass lines, and a jazz feel. Perhaps this is the way the Easy Club might have gone! They have a good mix of traditional (how many bands play pibroch?) and modern. I love James D M's piping and did the fan thing at the interval and went to tell him (he was on the merchandise stall) how much I am enjoying his solo album.

Take your partners

I have a few sets potentially coming together. I feel a bit like a marriage bureau. You pick a couple and you feel they have much in common. Sometimes it's love at first sight. Sometimes it starts well and ends in a nightmare of recrimination and violence. Sometime it starts bad and ends up just perfect. Sometimes it just doesn't work at all.

I'm wondering if the Rowan Tree might get along well with Magersfontein. I'm in too minds about tempo changes in sets - it can spoil the mood somehow. But they start on the same group of notes so the segue from one to the other seems to work.

The Nova Scotia tunes (Captain and Cabot Trail), well, they both come from Novia Scotia, so surely that's a good starting point for a relationship. The main problem is that the pair of them insist on flirting with the Whaling Song and while no one can agree to a menage a trois neither can any pair bring themselves to commit. The Whaling Song is getting overly attached and I find that the A of Whaling keeps running into the B of Captain.

I'm also thinking about introducing Flett to Bee. There's a geographical link again, with both of them hailing from Scottish Islands (Flotta is Orcadian, Loch Bee is on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides)

Meanwhile, I'm flirting with the King again. Our early passion drifted into quarrels, but we're working on patching things up.

Noting today my stamina - just under an hour and many tunes back to back, breaks few and short. I played D and A. A was for the King and Farewell. I made the mistake of playing D first and struggled to adjust, with the bag, drones, bellows all feeling different the moment I switched chanters. Everything felt heavier, more hard work, less comfortable.

Declutter

I can't bear clutter. Excess stuff weighs me down, makes it hard for me to think. I like clear, tidy, open spaces. I've been steadily collecting a pile of printed sheet music and the bigger the pile gets the less I can think about what I want to do with it, the more untidy it gets, and the harder I find it to locate tunes or remember what I am doing with them. I've decided to be brutal and jettison a whole lot.

The tunes are all very nice, but somehow I just haven't clicked with any of them. Maybe they don't sound their best on pipes (Farewell to Whisky, Braes of Castle Grant), maybe they need to live with other tunes (Dragon, Brose), maybe they aren't that fun to play (Sleat), maybe I've never quite got them right (Cassino), or I've never got them by heart and felt at home with them (Lochanside, The Congress Reel). Whatever it is they aren't tunes that are right for me just now, and I need to get rid of them.

I'm hoping to concentrate instead on finishing Troy, learning some new tunes from the Seaforth Highlanders, and maybe tackling some harder tunes (Snuff Wife, Alick C McGregor).

Nearly new

November is an auspicious month around here. It is the month of my birthday (don't ask), Morag's birthday (two!) and my birthday as a piper (also two, although the fan likes to point put that I played chanter for a year before that).

At the end of my second year of my piping life I feel good. I feel confident enough to tell people that I am a piper. I play in public. I know a handful of tunes. I really feel as though I have a good grasp of all the basics: I know how to play the pipes. It's not that there isn't more to learn, or that I can't improve in what I am doing - far from it. But I can just pick up the pipes and play without having to think about anything. Even if I have a break I don't feel as though I've gone backwards and need to pick up the threads again: I just get on with it. It's second nature, now, it's what I do.

Identity parade

I don't often seem to have tunes in my head these days, which is a shame. However, there was definitely one rattling round my head today. It seemed rather familiar and I was pretty sure it had escaped from the Desperate Battle of the Birds. The problem was that once I was in the car, playing the CD, all the tunes were familiar, but I couldn't quite picture *my* tune. I thought I would know it when I heard it, but apparently not.

I thought I recognised Battle of the Somme when we went to see Anna and Mairearad on Monday, but it turned out to be Ellie's March. It was a very good evening. I'm not the world's biggest box fan (OK, I'm pretty much allergic to boxes, with exceptions given for Dermot Byrne and Simon Thoumire - always assuming a concertina counts as a box) but I do love jokes, musicians having fun, great guitar work and good tunes. My only disappointment was that the fiddle and pipes only made one brief appearance apiece. More pipes on the CD, luckily.

Too much of a good thing

I'm not doing very well with either playing or blogging. My day job is pretty dire and it seems to be sucking all the energy out of me, so I'm not getting round to much else at all, annoyingly.

Earlier this week I took delivery of a cubic metre of compost for the raised beds on the allotment, primarily for my new asparagus bed. It took about two hours in total to scoop it into buckets and chuck it into the beds. I managed to avoid blisters, but my arms have been feeling the strain.

So when the fan reminded me that it was the Foresters session I though I'd better get the Monkey out and see if I was fit to play. I played happily through a few tunes so felt happy to go out. I wasn't brave enough to try the Nova Scotia set, Loch Bee or Magersfontein. I stuck to Flett, the Whaling Song, the Tree and My Home Town. That was a small risk as I haven't played it in a while and wasn't sure if I remembered the B part, but the mice knew it, of course, and I just left them to it.

I don't want to play the same old tunes each month, but the fan says it's useful for the others to get to know my tunes so they can learn them too. Not sure how much use that is in a session that has, apart from me, the fan and the organisers, a pretty shifting population.

One who seems to be becoming a regular turns up in the middle, plays three songs, loudly, in a row, and then walks off with out saying a word. This time he brought a friend who said to the table at large "is it OK if I borrow your mandolin", with his hand already on the fan's baby. The fan said he felt he could hardly say no, and restricted himself to pointing out that it is £2k worth of instrument... Luckily I can't imagine that another piper would ask to borrow the Monkey, and it's not something that people dabble in - you're either a piper or you're not. Despite having been brought up to share anyone asking to play the Monkey would get a very firm"NO!!" in reply.

I got the recorder out this afternoon, but then couldn't remember what I had recorded lately. I played McIntyre's Farewell in A, which reminded me that I should play A more often. I went on to the King, which the fan always says sounds better on A. Struggled to get it right. Played Galloway, just to prove I can still get through a tune on A. Switched to D and got the King at last, then various of the usual suspects. I wonder if I've got to  many new tunes on the go: I forget what I'm playing, forget which tunes I already know.

I just need to practice more - it's the one thing I can't have too much of.

Just passing through

Not getting much playing time and kicking myself for not making more effort when I had 4 days off work last week. Interesting discussion on the Session around how to fit practice in, how often to practice, how long for. Several people saying 15 minutes a day is better than nothing, whereas I've come to the conclusion that is just tokenism and doesn't help anything...

I had the practice chanter out this evening to work on those tricky bits in the Highland Brigade at Waterloo. Slow, but coming on.

Emma Sweeney was excellent last night. She has a style all of her own and sounded less American live with just a guitarist than she does on the CD.

Trick or treat

Just listening to Emma Sweeney. She's playing down our way this coming Monday and we'll be there. Maybe too much American influence for my liking, and I know the fan will spit feathers because she's only 20-something and such a good fiddle player...

I've played a little this evening. Still working on Troy, which is all there, but is in serious need of some polish. Playing around with putting Loch Bee with Flett. I think Flett will need to come first. Still finding it hard to pair tunes up. Magersfontein still trips me up from time to time, but I do like it. The Nova Scotia tunes I played, too, and Galloway. I forget which tunes I know, and have to think about it.

Working hard at the Highland Brigade at Waterloo. It's a rather sombre tune. Still enjoying that C part, and still struggling with the B and D parts with those high As split by two quick notes and a grace. Playing the As, the other two notes, no graces, and as if all four notes had the same time value. I just need to get the fingering right and relaxed and fast. It's a job for the practice chanter, really.

The recording is the Sound of Sleat. Not sure now why I wanted to play it. It's on Seal Song, of course, and in one set on my Grand Concert CD. The timing has taken a bit of work. The opening bars I found difficult, specifically the second bar. The last part is a doddle and I play that faster than anything else. Generally I'm playing too slow. I think I'm there now, timing-wise, but I vaguely wonder why I bothered. It seems a bit dull, somehow.


Check this out on Chirbit

Goldilocks

The fan is out this afternoon - the band has a gig. I could have gone to the plot where there are courgettes to clear, but it's snug inside and dark and windy outside and I didn't fancy working on the plot with one eye on the weather. There's supposedly a storm coming...

I got out my music stand, and my pipes, and the recorder...but couldn't find my stool. My stool is a short, four legged reject from our bathroom, and as it happens it is just right for playing pipes on. The height is good, I like being able to face different directions as I play. I have no idea where it has gone. It normally lives in a corner of the bedroom. We have another stool. It's a smart designer stool, and the height is OK, but it fixes you to look in one direction only. Still, it was all I had.

I'm struggling to find the right moment to ditch the dots. It used to take me forever. And now? We'll, I think I've played Loch Bee on four occasions and already I have big chunks of it by heart. It's disconcerting: I can't quite believe I'm ready. And I'm not totally ready, but it does mean that the awkward patch where the dots distract from what I remember and vice versa comes ever earlier. It also comes at different times for different tunes.

I know that it rarely works if I hit record the moment I start playing, but finding the right moment is not easy. If I leave it too late I can end up being too tired. I warmed up with Troy, Harlaw, Highland Brigade, Whisky. In between I played My Home Town, Flett and Whaling. I ran through Loch Bee...and it was poor. My timing seems to have gone to pot and, as I've said, the dots were distracting but I don't know it enough to go dotless yet. I stopped for a mug of tea and listened to the tune a few times over. The version I have here is OK, but not great. Generally good - smooth, rhythmic, musical, reasonably graced, but some bits fluffed.

Harlaw is going to take much more work. I've listened to it with the dots and it's not clear always where the pipes and end the harpsichord begins and I *think* that sometimes the harpsichord is doing the gracing. B and D parts causing most trouble. I feel I need some of the gracing. The drops down to G between two high As dropping to D are going to take some work. It's good, actually: it's a long time since I worked on grace notes.

Highland Brigade at Waterloo I need to listen to. It also needs work on the gracing because it doesn't sound right with the gracing stripped out, and my usual repertoire of simple G,s, Ds, As and strikes won't work either. The C part is the challenge - high A again, this time with low A to E interposed, and before those a drop to low G with a G grace. It must have a name, but I don't know it. To make life easier for myself, and hopefully speed up the learning process, I am going to stick to the first three parts and leave the other three for now.



Check this out on Chirbit

And there's more!

Another new tune - The Shores of Loch Bee, aka the Sands of Loch Bee or the Glasgow Police March Past. I wish I'd got the recorder out, because I printed the tune out and played it for the first time this evening at a really good pace, and it sounded great. Slight hesitation  over the timing of the end bar of each part, but other than that really good.

The tune was in my head, which really helped. On the Session, where dots are verboten, there is a saying along the lines of you shouldn't play a tune until you know the tune. Certainly knowing a tune makes it easier for me to play through with the dots. Part of me feels that actually I should just be better at reading dots...

Interestingly, one of the sites offering the dots described Bee as a "difficult" tune. In terms of the notes it's a really basic tune, nicely repetitive in the standard way, and short. I guess it's the gracing that warrants the rating, although apart from a handful of taorluaths there's nothing hugely challenging (says she, cheerfully ignoring 90% of it, as ever!)

The tune felt very familiar, and the fan said he thought he knew it. I reminded him that it opens the final set on Sealbh, and played it to him. Oddly, Iain pays it at a slow and stately pace, where I've been playing it at a lively lick. It sounds so familiar at the faster pace. I wonder if I can have heard it somewhere else?

Normal service

I feel as though I've not been interested in music for weeks, but actually, it was just a few days. Driving home on Friday I heard Last Word. They were noting the death of Charles Craig, distiller, and they chose some music to go with it - Neil Gow's Farewell to Whisky. I was impressed, although I suppose it might have been a lucky Google find rather than anyone with a knowledge of Scottish music.

Anyway, I noted the tune, and that was it. I felt like an ex smoker looking at a cigarette and feeling...nothing. Not a glimmer of desire. But this morning that same tune bubbled up and I've been humming it all day. By the time I got into the car I was picturing my pipes, thinking how nice it would be to hold them. By the time I got home I was desperate to get my hands on those pipes. The Monkey came out and we rolled through a heap of tunes, old and new, and I felt a great relief. It was only a temporary blip, this being able to live without music.

The new tunes are the Farewell to Whisky (nice, lilting tune, going well). The Highland Brigade at Waterloo bits of it going well - sounding like the tune I know. Oddly the march version sounds more familiar than the quickstep. It's long though: seven parts. I love the C part = ABE, ABE - something very satisfying about the finger movements to make those changes.

MacDonald of the Isles' March to Harlaw intermittently sounds familiar.Needs a lot of work - I need to listen to it carefully - but doable,  I think. Struy Lodge I printed because I know the name, but the tune doesn't seem familiar and doesn't grab me at all. One for the reject pile. Oh, and the Sound of Sleat, which is good, especially the last part. I love those AEAEAE bars, and because that bit of the tune feels very familiar I can play at a good speed.

Old tunes played: Flett, Captn and the Trail, Angus wotsit's lament, Bonnie Galloway, the Whaling Song, My Home Town, Magersfontein, Troy.  I think I must have played for quite a while! No ill effects, other than a tired left arm, which is good because it means I was using the bag and not relying on bellows. Back on track, I think.

Intermisson

I feel as though I haven't played for weeks, although I played at the weekend, and I think once or twice the week before. It's not lack of time: I just don't feel very inclined to play. I'm not thinking about my pipes much. I don't have tunes going round in my head. I printed a pile of new tunes a few days back and haven't tried a single one. I don't feel that bothered about listening to music. I don't have potential blog posts bubbling through my mind.

Maybe it's the change of seasons. Maybe I've just overdone the music in the past months and need a sort of break.  A bit of quiet.

More, more, more

I feel in need of new tunes, but am struggling to find any. I need lots, because so often when I think I've found a tune it turns out not to suit me, somehow, and falls by the wayside.

I had a quick squint around Nigel Gatherer's website this evening, but didn't find anything I couldn't live without. Sadly all the Shetland tunes I looked at were for fiddle and not playable on pipes. I've checked Mr MacInnes' various CDs and found dots for Neil Gow's Farewell to Whisky, The Sound of Sleat, MacDonald of the Isles' March to Harlaw and a few others which I may print and try. I also have a birthday forthcoming and am hoping that either the Seaforth Highlanders or some of Donald MacLeod's books might come my way. If those fail to inspire then Braebach have a new album out - and they are coming to our local folk club next month!

The usual session at the weekend. I was too cold. The fan despaired of tuning my pipes - flat, apparently - but the pub was warmer than our flat and once the Monkey and I had warmed up we were fine. I played a few tunes. Someone remarked how relaxed I looked. I think I can relax with the old faithful tunes (it was the Rowan Tree that elicited this particular comment). After the first tune I felt smugly free of stage fright and immediately went into a fit of shivering. I was glad I was sitting down because my lower body shivered so much I think my legs would have given way had I been standing up.

Two of a kind

I lay in bed this morning, feeling lazy in the sunshine, and I thought about a house I used to know in Italy, about my allotment and plans for an asparagus bed, and then about music. I started wondering whether the Dragon might not be a good companion for Brose and Butter.

I didn't get to try my plan out until the evening. I was earlier distracted by breakfast, our weekly trip to the farm shop, a visit to a garden centre, a chat with a neighbour, some gardening, and then a hunt for a good recipe for mincemeat....

In a way the two tunes are similar inasmuch as I can play neither. The Dragon doesn't like to be too slow, but if I play very fast the mice win out over the woodpecker and get confused and over excited and it doesn't turn out quite right. The dots are hopeless and only confuse me, because I keep stopping to wonder what note that is there, and what note did I just play, and oh, I'm not actually on that bar, am I.

Brose is just as bad. Although I've only played it for a few days I'm already past the stage where dots are useful. I think that Brose will come in after the Dragon, but I couldn't get a decent enough run at them to record and see.

I played various other tunes. The playing was comfortable, but somehow my accuracy in remembering tunes was rather poor. In the end I switched from D to A and decided to give Castle Grant a go. I feel that slow tunes sit better on the lower chanter.

Having just switched from D to A the pressure was an issue, as was hitting all the notes, especially low G, cleanly. I am playing slowly - more slowly than Mr McVarish - but that's because that's how I think I'm going to get that dreamy lilting that I feel I hear. I've stripped out almost all of the gracing to the same end: I don't want anything to disturb the flow of the tune.

There are plenty of...pauses while I check what I am doing next. A lot of these are down to me checking the dots against what I think I am playing: that odd no man's land between needing the dots and being able to move on from them. I'm being thrown by reaching that point so much sooner than before.

No drones, and just the once through. The parts are longish and occasionally I'm having to scan the page to find where my repeats start. some straightforward fluffs where I just play the wrong note.

As I've mentioned, I have no idea at all how this sounds compared to the standard pipe version, but as a tune inspired by a fiddle tune it's not bad, it's sort of approaching what I was hoping for. It needs work, but it's going in the right direction.


Check this out on Chirbit

Language barriers

Although I read rather a lot I rarely read much that is translated: most of my reading is books written by English speaking authors. The point of translation is to remove a barrier, to allow the speaker of one language to access the literature of another. Certainly without translators I would never have enjoyed the fun, literary mysterys of Artuo Perez-Reverte.

On the other hand, translation can be a barrier, as some of the clunkier attempts of online services for automatically translating websites so neatly demonstrate, or those marvellous handbooks that some with electrical gadgets and are apparently translated into English from Serbian via Chinese by Greek and Dutch working in lose collaboration.

A translator has to strike a balance between being true to the original and producing something that is readable in the new language. Sometimes they take it beyond readable and produce something that reads well in the new language, but perhaps loses some of the subtleties of the original, incorporates its own meanings that weren't really in the original, or overlays the voice of the translator over that of the author. Especially where poetry is concerned such a translator can almost create a new poem that stands alongside the original but is a new and beautiful thing in itself, recreating the spirit rather than the letter of the original.

I once picked up someone else's copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. I was so struck by the beauty of the language that I rushed to get a copy of my own. Alas, I had not stopped to note the name of the translator, and the version I had lacked the poeticism of that borrowed copy, so I didn't enjoy it at all. A new translator can produce a different book, otherwise why ask people to translate Proust when Scott Moncrieff has already done the job? And why does my modern edition of Heidi leave me longing for the Charles Tritten edition I had as a child? (OK, I admit I miss the pictures.)

Music can be translated, too. Of course there is a matter of interpretation by different players, but in a way that's more akin to different people reading a book. The real translation comes when a tune intended for one instrument is played on another. I'm partly thinking about that because I'm listening to Springwell (again!). I listen because I love the tunes - many are pipe tunes, yet there isn't a single note played by pipes on the CD. The tunes are played mainly on stringed instruments and cleverly incorporate notes played as pipe grace notes: I can hear the birls and strikes, reproduced on the mandolin. They are clever imitations of the pipe sound, but they are also good sounds in themselves on the mandolin.

I am still working on the Braes of Castle Grant. As I think I've mentioned before I've heard this on Eclection. It's a pipe tune played on a fiddle. I don't think that Mr McVarish makes an attempt to play in the style of pipes: he translates the pipe tune into a fiddle tune. And very lovely it is to. But now I come along, not having ever knowingly heard the tune played on pipes, so I am trying to play on pipes something that I know as a fiddle tune. Certainly the notes are there for me to play, they are all in my range, I can see where gracing might sit nicely, but in my head all the time I have a lilting, smooth sound as the fiddle slides and glides from note to note. Pipes do not glide; they stomp, they step, they march, they trip; they move move between notes in a manner that is pipish.

I'm therefore translating a pipe tune that has been translated into a fiddle tune back into a pipe tune. Maybe like exchanging currency enough times at enough borders the commission and exchange rates will leave me with nothing of value. I may make a hideous mess of it, or perhaps I will create something new and beautiful, which is neither the original nor Gabe's translation, but something new.

Random notes

Home late and tired from work today, and the fan was due home even later, so I got dinner on and whipped the Monkey out. Back to D - got my thumb angled badly, but otherwise fine. I've discovered that if I'm tired, provided I can push on through the first 30 minutes, I get through the tiredness and can keep going - just over an hour today, pretty much non stop.

I'm wondering about putting Flett with the Whaling Song as a set.

Played Brose again today - first part almost by heart already. Second part taking longer because I'm not totally sure about the timing.

The A part of Castle Grant starting to come by heart. Well - it's all starting to come, but I'm going to concentrate on the A part.

Troy very nearly there - speed is good, but accuracy still patchy.

The Snuff Wife is hopeless: one of those where I can't even start to play something that sounds even faintly recognisable. It's as if I've longed to get a copy of a Tennyson poem, finally have it, but when I read it out slowly I discover it's actually something by John Hegley....

I'm listening to the Pipers' Society Recital again in the car and am being annoyed by the tendency of all the pipers to go into some random notes at the end of each piece. I assume it's to do with having air left in the bag, but it's irritating in the extreme. It destroys the mood of a tune and isn't great to listen to. To go back to poetry it's as if someone read out a poem and then decided to read half a page of the phone book after it.

Size matters

I sat on the sofa the other evening working on my latest knitting project which calls for me to switch back and forth between needle sizes. It's not a huge jump, only 2mm difference, but each time it takes me a moment or two and maybe a few stitches to get the tension sorted and get back into my rhythm.

Yes, that's right, after well over 30 years of knitting it still takes me a moment or two to adjust between needle sizes. This is pattern is unusual in switching between needles. Normally you might start with a smaller set and move on to a slightly larger set. More often I'll move between say, the cardigan I have stuck in my work bag (4.5mm needles) and a pair of socks (2.75mm) and when I make the switch it always feels odd, as if my hands are the wrong size, but after a moment or two everything feels comfortable again.

Which is all by way of saying that really it's not surprising that it takes me, after less than 6 months of having combination pipes, a tune or two to adjust to a change of chanter size. Today I moved up to A. The Rowan Tree went well. I got stuck on the King, and after going round a bit moved on to Galloway and the Farewell, both of which were fine, so I think in the end it was the King that was more of a problem than the actual chanter.

Today's play means that, apart from the day when I was in Glasgow, I have played every day this month, plus a bit, as I played for 8 out of 9 days running up to the month. And I do feel as though I've improved again, and I don't much feel like I need a break from it.

I've been humming the Somme recently (I've been listening to Mr MacLeod) and I should try to revive that. I was having problems with the transition from the B part back to the A, so haven't played it much. I am working on Brose and Butter. Troy's Wedding is close. I've been listening to The Big Spree and Tryst lately, and both feature The Snuff Wife. I rather fancy giving that one a try.

Miss Muggins' Jilly

Have I really not blogged since last Sunday? It's been a busy week... Despite my silence here I have actually been playing every day, except, as I rather expected, yesterday. Glasgow and back in a day was very straightforward, and rather tiring.

Glasgow was as good as I remembered from last time, even on a flying visit on a grey, dull day. It was busy, somehow lively and laid back at once, with lots of people about, but everyone seemingly relaxed and unhurried. Sauchiehall Street, seen from the restaurant in John Lewis, was a treetop walk leading down to twin towers at the end. Admittedly it's not so picturesque when you walk it. There were lots of buskers out, mostly with guitars and amps. Some rock, some blues, all sorts. There was even, on Sauchiehall, a man with a fiddle playing a traditional Scottish tune. He stopped as we reached him, and I didn't feel I could wait for him to strike up again. Not a single piper, however - very different from my last visit.

I had a conversation at cross purposes with a colleague in the taxi from the airport. I was explaining that I'd first come to Glasgow in search of the piping, and she was wondering why I was so interested in plumbing supplies...

So, arrived back not too late, but tired, and I did think of having one tune on the chanter, just not to break the promised that I haven't ever quite made this month. Useful as it has been to push myself to play every day, it's artificial and really 5 minutes tired play doesn't count as useful practice. I'm finally feeling that I play because I enjoy it, not because I feel I must practice (not that I don't need to practice more!)

I've started on a new tune today. Listening to Breabach in the car has reminded me what a fun tune Brose and Butter is. I know it also from Tryst, where it sits with My Home Town. It's also on Ossian's eponymous album, where it appears as a song. It's ridiculously simple, fun to play, and because I already know it  I am picking bits up already and hope to go dotless sooner rather than later.

The tune goes by several other, perhaps more, interesting names: Peacock Follow the Hen, Yellow Stockings, Mad Moll and Cuddle Me Cuddy are all listed on The Session as variants. But the dots I printed give it as Uilleam's Callum's Morag, which is presumably a way of identifying a small child through identifying her father and grandfather, in the days when Morag was a tad more popular than it is now.

Wedding jitters

I'm in a fractious mood at present. It's partly the time of year: the usual feeling that summer has gone, that I've somehow wasted it; the realisation that it will be months before the light evenings return; a nostalgia for (mythical) summers passed. There are also various potential changes ahead that are both exciting and disconcerting.

I've hoped that piping would help me snap out of this mood, and it has improved things a little, but not given me the real lift that I needed. I'm still trying to flip between A and D, between drones on and off drones. Today I stuck with D and only used drones for some tunes.

I haven't blogged every day but I have still played every day so far and am inclined now to push through to the end, except it may be taken out of my hands because I have to go to Glasgow on Thursday, where I will be tantalisingly close to the National Piping Centre, and I'm expecting to get back very late and very tired. We'll see.

Back to today, and Troy's Wedding, still droneless as I am still learning it. I was pleased to find I could play the bulk of it dotless, other than the 8 first bars of the D part which I mysteriously missed out altogether. It went so well I thought I'd record...this is about the fourth take when I knew each take was just going to get worse as I got steadily crosser with my inability to play.

First off, it's not as fast as I thought I was going, although in my defence, I did start slow in the hope of mucking up less than on previous attempts. My G finger got over exited and inserted a number of superfluous G doublings. My F finger got slightly sticky and mucked up some notes. The bag cloth wasn't pulled back properly and kept obscuring the thumb hole, making gracing on high A difficult. I pick my way through bits I pretty much almost know and then make a hash of the following bars which I definitely know. Comparison recording here from 2 months ago. More work needed.



Check this out on Chirbit

Auld acquaintance

I started with the chanter this evening, trying the Congress Reel that the fan has printed out for me, then A, with and without drones, then D, mostly without drones because they were out of tune.

I decided to go through my collection of dots for tunes I supposedly know. Very rusty with some. Some I felt I really should dust off and play more (Teribus, Barren Rocks),some I had forgotten how much I liked (Highlanders) and some I actually wondered why I had ever bothered (Waterloo, Banks, Castle). Hopefully I'll always know these tunes, but I feel I've moved on from some of them, our paths don't cross like they used to, we'll go our separate ways.

Mixing it up

I played in A this evening, with and without drones and with some or all drones. It's surely not that long since I last played A, but drones took some getting used to again. I actually made the finger adjustment quickly, and I think it would have been quicker only I was fresh form the allotment (as it were) and my hands were cold and damp.

I played the Farewell, mostly, then swapped to D, with drones, for the Farewell, without drones to work through Magersfontein which I love but which is unreliable, to say the least. Then Troy. A, B and C reasonably - A and B at a good speed. C still proving much harder and then I fiddled about and managed the second half of the D part. The last four bars are the same as the last four of the repeat of the B, and the rest I had got by dint of repeating two bars over and over yesterday. The remaining two are one of the repeated endings. There really are only four bars left to get, which I have been repeating over and over, mostly on my chanter. I'm enjoying having my chanter back.

I also tried to pick up The New House in St Peter's, without a huge amount of success - I perhaps got the first few bars. The fan suggests putting the CD in the car and setting it on repeat as I travel to work and back.

The long engagement

I was idly reading some old blog posts earlier and I note that I have been working on Troy's Wedding since March. Yes, really - March - over six months ago. And I can't have started then because I'm already talking about being able to pick out a few notes. So why is it that all this time later I still only have the A and B, the C sometimes, and bits of the D? I think I'm probably faster at playing it with dots, but it's not a spectacular speed. It's not what you'd call serious progress.

The fan says its not an easy tune to learn, but six whole months, when I can can polish off a short Breton tune in a matter of days? Even taking into account the higher complexity of longer tunes it's utterly infuriating and frustrating that I can't pick this up. I will. I will persevere. I'll get this darned reluctant tune to the altar, one of these days.

Distracted

I have, at long last, got round to making a header for the blog. It's not quite what I had envisaged because it's the wrong shape, really, but otherwise I'm quite pleased with it. The picture shows the lovely Morag on the left, with her boxwood mounts and handy pegs for blocking off drones. On the right is the, frankly bling-ier Monkey, with his lovely hand engraved silver mounts, his D chanter, on which you can see the E key. You can also just about see the very handy drones switch down on the stock. A handsome pair, I think you'll agree.

The rest of the picture includes some of my favourite CDs, some music, and some hints of my various distractions - a cookery book, a baking book and utensils, general reading, and some allotment bits and a small knitting project I've just begun on.

 Looking at my labels word cloud I see that more posts are tagged with "distractions" than anything else, so I thought they deserved a post of their own. (I'm also surprised, and glad, to see that I've tagged more posts as "progress" than "whinge".)

Distractions are anything that stop me playing pipes, so are basically also known as "life". My biggest, and least welcome, distraction, is work. It's a double edged sword. If I didn't have to work I would have more time to do all the things I want to do. If I didn't go to work I wouldn't have the money for pipes, seeds, plants, yarn, fabric...

Outside work I have a home to run. This involves cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing and so on. None of which gets done particularly well or particularly often (with the exception of cooking), but there's still rather a lot of it.

I also have not really essential household chores that I choose to do, and love. This covers making all my own bread, baking cakes and biscuits, making chutney and jam.

The allotment is seasonal and there are several months in the year when I don't visit at all, but it still takes up lots of thinking time. The plot exists in its own time zone. I can't think why else it is that when I pop down for 20 minutes I get back to find I've been gone for well over an hour...

Knitting is a constant for me. I always have something on the go, even if it is only a pair of socks. Sewing - dressmaking, quilting and needlepoint - I do on more of a faddy basis as and when the urge takes me. I've done a lot of needlepoint over the last month

I follow tennis intermittently. Well, I say tennis, it's really Andy Murray. I do also listen to The Archers, although generally only in the winter and usually while  am cooking, so it doesn't eat up any extra time in itself.

Oh, and I read. A lot. All sort of books, many of them, at the moment, recommendations from The Captive Reader. I also follow blogs that cover knitting, and quilting, and piping... Not to mention keeping this blog up to date.

Throw in a few crosswords, some sessions, a rather limited social life, time with the fan and a paltry seven hours sleep a night and it's a wonder I ever find time to play pipes at all.

Moving on

Yesterday I did another pre-session warm up. Monkey in A with drones. Not going well. All the usual complaints. The session went sedately round with each taking their turn, and I skipped my first turn. Second time round I played Flett - in D. It was OK. Some nerves: I've played in the venue before, and I knew some of the people. I guess having another piper there makes me more nervous: she's going to spot every last mistake. But I played on through my mistakes, fudged over them, finished in one piece.

A bit later on I tried the Whaling Song. I did it because I was asked to play - Vicki had not long played a corker of a set including Troy's Wedding and I was feeling musically humbled (not to say depressed). It went down well, though, and I reduced my fluff rate, other than spectacularly missing out an entire B part repeat...

I was going to call it quits then, because it was late, but as people started to drift away I thought I'd have one last go with the Rowan Tree, quietly, on my own, with no one noticing. The fan joined in on bouzouki, as he always does, but I also had some percussion, a nyckelharpa, a flute, a fiddle and piano accordion pitching in. And it was great! Everything went well, I could hear the music clearly, I was able to look around at people, I kept my nerve, it sounded good, and I really enjoyed it.

Glitch over, I think. Let's move on.

Droning on

I decided to have a bit of a play before the session today, mostly to help me acclimatise to drones. I stuck with D, to make life easier. It felt strange, the drones sounded so loud and I struggled to play any tune without errors. I kept wanting just to flip them off so I could concentrate on getting the tunes right. I persevered, but I didn't have any of that comfort and confidence that I've had before. I'm not sure how or when or why I lost that. Was it because I stopped playing so much over July and August, or is it because I've not given myself a break from it for a while?

The session was very small today, and I felt a bit exposed, perhaps, and a bit out of of practice at playing in public. I also worried that I wouldn't feel comfortable with my drones, and I know I ended up relying too much on the bellows. I also worried that my tunes would let me down, and even resorted to dots, as several other had, there were very few people there, and  I really wanted to play my Nova Scotia set.

As it happened I played, I felt a little nervous, and then I heard my drones, and it was like the moment at an uncomfortable party when you spot a friendly face in the crowd and suddenly realise it's going to be OK. I was comforted by their presence.

I didn't play my best. I wasn't fluent enough. My timing wasn't consistent. I was very thin on gracing. My fingers weren't light enough on the chanter. The fan says I really need sets - a single tune ends with an anticlimax. But I'm still not finding tunes that work together and at a session I'm afraid of fluffing and the more tunes I play the greater the scope for fouling things up. Nor do I want to outstay my welcome, musically speaking. The fan will play three tunes in a set, but he plays a lot faster than me. I don't want to feel I'm putting people through 6 or 7 minutes of musical purgatory.

I must get back to those previous levels of comfort. I must become more consistent. I need to know my tunes even better: I need to know that they won't let me down, that I will always get every last note right. I need sets. I need to get better at moving between A and D.

Most of all I think I have to relax and stop fretting. I just need to play and enjoy.

The long and short of it

The problem with long tunes is not just the length: they are also more varied than short tunes. So, to take a few random examples, a short tune might have 16 bars (eight each in the A and B parts) of which nine are unique. That would be Cabot, for example. The Captain has ten unique bars. Flett and Dragon have, I think (the layout of my copies is poor) 12 unique bars. Magersfontein actually only has one repeated bar. But when I say "unique" there might only be a variant of one note.

Then there are the long tunes. Troy has 44 bars, if you count the second time round variations as new bars, which they are. Twenty five of those little blighters are unique. Castle Grant also has around 44 (some of this depends on whether or not you count the lead in notes in bars on their own). I can't face counting unique bars, but there will be many. Longer tunes also have more of those almost repeated bars, and they might have several variants of the almost repetition, so you then have to remember which you need each time. Throw in the fact that you stop repeating straight A parts and B parts but instead have second endings on some parts and the level of complexity ratchets up a notch or two.

I wish there was something in between, but I suppose if I persevere then eventually I will start to learn long tunes by heart.

I've been humming tunes a lot, including, rather oddly, Banks, which I've not played in ages.

While I'm on a run of things I've not done in ages I have actually recorded. I've also gone back to drones. It's too long since I played with them. A mix of worrying abut annoying new neighbours upstairs and learning tunes. The neighbours are away for some weeks and the chanter is back in action for learning on, so I must get back to them. It took the fan ages to tune them up and then they sounded too loud, too droney, and the D (I thought I'd treat myself and play the D today) sounded squeaky, harsh, unfamiliar.

I felt a little short of air, drones wavering. I had half an eye on dots, but the drones distracted me. Still, I think I carry on smoothly after each mistake. It seems a little fast and I think the slower tunes are perhaps better on the A. Oh, and although the fan's fancy new software allowed me to snip off the mangled start I moved straight from mangling into the tune proper so it starts rather abruptly. Still, here it is, MacIntyre's Farewell by Barry W Shears.


Check this out on Chirbit

Not inhaling

I've sort of, kind of, maybe, played yesterday and today. Today I've had the chanter out. My lungs feel fit to burst. By fidgeting around with chanter in the middle of my mouth, our to the left, out to the right, blowing my cheeks out, keeping them flat, I've managed not to lose my lip too soon.

Yesterday I didn't have time to get the pipes out before the band arrived, then they decided to sit around having a long discussion about chord sequences (yawn) and I didn't like to play in case I disturbed them. So I blew very gently in the chanter, enough to hear notes, but not enough to bother the band. Almost practising, but somehow not quite.

I can still play MacIntyre and even bits of Castle Grant are coming, which is very exciting. I've been humming that all day. Like other longer (more than two parts) tunes I've worked on it is difficult to follow as a sequence, so I get various bits that repeat and repeat, but I'm not sure how they go together. I also find that the way longer tunes are laid out on the page it's harder to spot when the end of this part is identical to the end of that part and so on. I guess the answer is that I should hear those, but when variations can be quite subtle I don't yet find it easy.

I'm feeling that I'm more able to recognise quickly a a tune in my head. I can deliberately hum a tune. I can stop a tune in my head and move on to another. I really feel that I am more in control of my musical memory.

Still moving in the right direction and feeling a the moment as though I am putting on a real spurt of growth.

Having such a good time

I started off with the usual drill this evening. Tired, headachey, disinclined to do much. After dinner I thought I might mess about with my newly invigorated chanter for a bit. That was fun, except I very quickly lost my lip. This is the trumpet name for it: I don't know what you call it on a practice chanter. It's not exactly lip, more the muscles along the lower jaw, but once they're gone that's the fun over for the evening, like it or not.

I thought I'd drag out my pipes, just for five minutes, because I felt I was very close to playing MacIntyre's Farewell by heart and I wanted to try it.

The pipes felt a little odd as I strapped myself in. I did have a close look at the bellows trying to pinpoint what what was odd, but I couldn't see anything. It wasn't until I was ready to go with my hands on the chanter that I realised I had Morag instead of the Monkey. She felt like an old friend and, apart from her usual bad habits (needing ridiculous amounts of air, flipping out the connector tubes at inconvenient moments), we got on well. She has a softer, less vibrant sound than the Monkey, a little quieter too, I think.

And I did it! I played Farewell by heart, not just once, but round and round. There are perhaps three places where I sometimes have to backtrack to get the right note, or pause to find it, but find it I do, every time. Admittedly it's just two parts, and on closer inspection only has seven unique bars, but nevertheless, I have learned it from a total standing start (because it's not even one I'd ever heard before) in seven days. Serious progress: a real milestone.

Happy? You betcha!

PHOP

Knitters have a concept called PHOP, or pennies per hours of pleasure. The idea is that you take a pattern from a charity website and the amount you give reflects the hours of pleasure you anticipate getting from that pattern. Patterns give pleasure in various layers. First there is the pleasure of imagining the lovely finished article in various different yarns, browsing yarn stores and eventually buying the yarn, then there are the various hours spent knitting your item, and finally the pleasure of wearing it, or giving it away. Patterns are always money well spent.

It's not unlike the concept of cost per wear for clothes, where you divide the cost of an article of clothing by the number of times you wear it to get the actual cost. So £250 pounds worth of lovely linen jacket that you wear all summer long for five years in a row (yes, writing from experience here) is actually better value than £80 of jacket that you wear twice and then leave to gather dust in the wardrobe.

Why am I talking about clothes and knitting? I was thinking about the large amounts of money I spent on my Monkey. I already had a set of pipes, so I didn't exactly need another. I also paid for extra keys, which I haven't yet used, and silver engraved mounts, which make precisely no difference at all to the way it plays or sounds. It was a large outlay. But when you think how often I've played those pipes since May, of the absolute pleasure I've had from playing those pipes, well they start to look like a real bargain.

The pipes had this usual uplifting effect this evening. Picking out a bit of a tune and wondering what it was I discovered it was part of the Shetland Fiddler, which I've abandoned of late, Clearly it would like to come back.

I was going to add to the hours of pleasure for this blog post by attaching a recording. I recorded McIntyre's Farewell. It's lovely and I'm so pleased with how it's going. I playing it smoothly and fluently, glossing over the minor errors, not pausing between repeats or sections. I'm already humming it, already picking out bars, and I only first played it through a week ago. It went so well I thought I'd do Castle Grant while I was at it, as that's also just early read through stage, but sounding good.

Then as I went to master the first tune I got a "card full" message. Duly deleted two tunes I'd left on, tried again, same problem. Now I know why the fan was keen for me to get a second sound card. He didn't mean that I was filling it up - he meant that he had.

Commitment issues

There are people, apparently, who are happy to hang out with someone and sleep with them, but just don't want to be introduced to family or friends or be referred to as that person's significant other, or have that person call them, ever. I'm starting to feel like just such a cad. I've played every day so far this month, but I just can't bring myself to say that I am going to continue for the rest of the month.

I think it's partly that I played for 8 days out of 9 before the month began, so am actually looking at more than a month in total of playing every day. I'm also feeling low in energy and enthusiasm generally, and although playing actually gives me a boost it's finding the mental energy to pick up my pipes to get that boost that's proving a bit of a barrier. Which all comes down to the fact that I don't like to fail - I don't want to say I'll play every day this month in case I can't actually manage it.

Playing today not as good as previous the two days, but going well, nevertheless. I made it to Nicholson's today to get a new reed for my practice chanter. They didn't have the Seaforth Highlanders in stock, but were happy to order it in for me. Did I play with a band, they asked. No, I said, I'm a smallpiper. It felt a bit reckless, somehow, to tell a piper that I am a piper, rather than say that I am learning the pipes. I'm a smallpiper, I said. Sounds like commitment to me.

A recipe for happiness

Take one long and tedious week, stuffed with boredom and frustration. Sprinkle liberally with end of week lethargy and garnish with the sort of headache that comes with crunching noises in your neck. Add one small black velvet Monkey in D and a collection of tunes, new and old. Apply for one hour.

It works a treat. The only reason I'm not bouncing off the walls in total ecstasy is that when I played Troy fast and furious the recorder wasn't on, and when the recorder was on my playing wan't fast and furious. We all have our off moments.

The fan says I'm almost up to full playing speed and asked how it felt. It feels slightly scary, as if I'm not quite in control or very close to skidding out of control. I'm also finding that although the very small finger movements needed on the D means I can go fast it also means that it takes very little to mess those movements up. If my hands get too warm and slightly damp it means when I lift my finger just the smallest amount it isn't enough to sound the note change.

McIntyre's Farewell is coming on nicely - it really is a lovely tune. Maybe I'll record that this weekend.

Just one more

Still not decided about playing every day. For various reasons my enthusiasm levels in general are not what they usually are, and I get home in the evenings not feeling inclined to do anything much, but once I drag the Monkey out and get going it feels good and I keep thinking I'll play just one more tune.

I played in A and D today. The D felt impossibly small at first, but I adjust to it so much faster than to A. I managed a real speed on Troy. Fiddled around with The Braes of Castle Grant (which I know from Gabe McVarish's playing), and MacIntyre's Farewell, by Barry Shears. I wish I could find recordings of Barry's' tunes as I'm not totally confident about getting the timings right. However, this is a nice tune, I'm enjoying playing it.

Still having problems with My Home Town morphing into Lochanside if I don't stay alert when I'm playing. Playing the King a lot, too.

The fan says I was sounding very fluent this evening, and I was certainly enjoying it. I may even play again tomorrow.

Marching on

I've still not decided one way or the other whether to play every day this month, but I got the Monkey out today, just in case. It was a bit of a rush. It's been warm today, and is supposed to be warmer still for the next two days, so I really wanted to get down to the plot and do some watering, but the evenings are drawing in and the jobs that need daylight need doing sooner rather than later. I got dinner on the go, rushed out, rushed back, got dinner in the oven and then, because I clearly don't have enough distractions and because there was room to push my stress levels higher, I reorganised a kitchen drawer. It's possibly a girl thing, and possibly it's just me...

When I got the Monkey out the stress and rush melted away, and I just wish I'd had longer to play. I picked my way through some tunes in Barry's book. Pretty much everything I play at the moment is a march. They tend to be reasonably straightforward and not too fast, so good for a beginner. Flicking through the book I stuck to trying out marches. These are Nova Scotian marches, however, not Scottish ones, and the difference is clear. The timings are odd, they do unexpected things, there are notes in odd places. Some of them, as far as I could get an approximation of them, sounded good, though. I need to see if I can hear them anywhere to help me with the timings, because these are good tunes, and ones I'd like to play.

Thunderbolt City

The fan said today that I am doing better than he expected. It's not that he thought I wasn't capable, just that he doubted my ability to stick at it, given how many other instruments I've tried.

There are people who marry the first person they meet, and are happy 50, 60 or 70 years later. Many of us are less lucky and have to hunt around, which might entail everything from one night stands and disastrous dates to moving in, to give it a go... As I've mentioned before I played recorder at school - I think many people of my generation did. Before that, at my first primary school, I remember playing triangle for Away in a Manger and I have a tiny scrap of a memory that involves a concertina, but I can't have been older than four at the time. There was the violin, played to please my father. There was the trumpet, which was hopefully close enough to the baritone my sister played to be equally fun without being close enough to annoy her. That went well, and in the end it was a maths O level that came between us because I couldn't do both, and maths seemed more pressing at the time.

There was a guitar - Stairway to Heaven - taught by someone else's boyfriend... There were penny whistles, because Dad thought they'd be fun; there were ocarinas because they came in pretty colours. There was even a mouth organ, but I have no idea where it came from, and we never really worked out how to play it properly. The mandolin, of course, the mandola and bouzouki (too big).

Even when I started with my pipes they were a poor substitute. I'd fallen in love with those big, hunky GHB. I had romantic visions of me on a loch side with my pipes and the music. I wasn't prepared for the harsh reality of marching bands, uniforms, and kissing goodbye to my weekends.

And then, after a while, I stopped pining for those big, chunky, hunky GHB and fell in love with my little Monkey. Why would we not be together forever?

I'm pondering whether or not I feel I want to play every day in September. I've played today, just in case, but also because its the last of my 9 days of holiday. To mark the occasion I've also recorded! This is Cabot and Captain, again, this time with the Whaling Song. I start way too slow, partly because if I am too fast I go into Captain instead of the trail. I then fumble because I realise I have the dots, and worry they will distract me. I speed up. I make a few fluffs. I go through each tune twice.  I fluff in Whaling where there are what the fan calls snaps - at least, if they aren't there Id like them to be, but somehow they make me forget the next note. Whaling is too fast - you cold never sing at this speed. Tempo is something I must get fixed. No drones - and how thin the pipes sound without them. A bit lost. Which makes sense really, because pipes and drones belong together.


Check this out on Chirbit

It's a getting closer

I did play yesterday. I felt it went rather well. Feeling comfortable with my pipes (no drones. I know, I know...) Some of my clunky doublings are turning into the merest flutter of finger on chanter. Some of my single graces are barely a breaking of the seal between finger and chanter before closing it up again. They sound good. Oddly this is some gracings and doublings on some tunes: same doubling, different tune and the result may be different.

Still playing about with Trail, Captain and Whaling. I am sure the three will work together, but I need to try different combinations. I probably need to record variations, so I can sit and listen and see which works best.

Still pegging away at Troy. A part is fine, except for the ending. There are several variations of this ending through the tune and I keep picking the wrong one. I had GDE on AAA sussed at one stage, only whenever I play it, it sounds good, but seems to be saying "that's not right", and I have lapsed back into the bad habit of playing GDG. Even without catching what my fingers are doing I can hear that's it's wrong. The second AAA in that part I am mysteriously playing three Gs on. I don't know why.

The B is OK, mostly. The C is coming, but its that pesky run up with high As interspersed because it is two high A's, one, two, one, one, two, instead of a steady one, two, one throughout. I also, and I think it's because I am concentrating on the number or As, keep playing the run up as A, B, C, D, F, E, so the last two notes are backwards.

And the D part...bits, slowly, maybe. But my speed is coming along, too. In fact, I played for a while and then treated myself and switched to D and ran through the tune at a fair old lick.

I think I'm really starting to get the hang of this piping business.

Lost in translation

Yesterday evening I listened to St Kilda Wedding, mostly because I'd been humming The Braes o' Strathblane for a day or two. I'd forgotten that there are some good pipe tunes on the album, and I'd forgotten because they are not played on pipes. They are played on whistles (which is fair enough, I suppose - pipers seem to play whistles from time to time), fiddle, and Irish pipes. The tunes sound faintly familiar and feel oddly wrong played on Uillean pipes. It's like being abroad and catching a programme you know that has been dubbed. Characters you know as American or Cockney or northern are suddenly spouting in French or German or Italian. It's all the familiar faces, but the voices are all wrong. As well as the language they never seem to try to match the tone or timbre of the original actors' voices.

There was a time when I wondered why a band keen on exploring Scottish music would play Irish pipes. I suppose the answer is that St Kilda was recorded in 1978 before smallpipes were revived or reinvented. Although I do wonder why they couldn't have made a go of it with GHB. By the time we reach 1997 and the Carrying Stream (one of my all time favourite albums) we have smallpipes played by Iain MacInnes and made by Ian Kinnear, the Monkey's maker.

I didn't play yesterday. Today I had two minor breakthroughs. The first was finally cracking Trail and Captn, dotless. I tried them with the Whaling Song - the three seem to go quite nicely together. The second was a small patch where I felt as comfortable with the A as I do with D, felt the bellows and bag pliant and soft, tucked close to me and breathing with me. I had it...and then it went. It's like cats. D is the one that will snuggle and cuddle and purr into your face, A will momentarily rest on you under duress, but then with a switch of the tail is out of your arms and gone.

Times tables

I've been thinking about how many times to play a tune. The session standard hereabouts seems to be three times. I think the point is that it gives fellow sessioneers one time to listen, once to try, and the third time to play along. Then you move on to the next tune in the set.

I suppose different tunes in a set is to do with the link between music and dance. Trad music tunes are short, even played three times round they might be all done and dusted  in 3 minutes, which isn't much of a dance. Presumably playing different tunes rather than the same one over and over keeps things interesting for the musicians, and listeners. I suppose, not being much of a dancer, that the dancers' main interest is the tempo remaining the same.

In Highland pipe band piping the tradition is a little different. There is MSR and medleys, but each tune is played only once or twice through. I guess much here is to do with the fact that it's a performance, and you need to be playing with great accuracy, so the fewer times you play something the less chance there is of making a mistake. Pipes are also very physical, and if you're marching as well...you don't want half the band passed out on the floor before you reach the end of the set.

And what is the tradition for small pipers playing folk music? I've still yet to attend our local Scottish session, but I do know that even in Scotland most of the sessions are Irish, and that most of the pipes will be Irish, too. Perhaps small pipers need to fall in with whatever happens at local sessions, or perhaps, because our repertoire is strange and people don't seem inclined to join in much, we just need to chose our own methods, create our own traditions.

Not going too badly today. Still working on the Captain and the Trail. Home kept morphing into Locahanside and I ended up getting the dots out. Still not feeling totally comfortable with A, with bag and bellows, but getting there.

Little and large

I decided this morning to cut loose from the dots with the Trail and the Captn. I'd been idly thinking that I didn't really know those tunes, but then managed to call them into mind so that they went round in my head. I didn't do too badly - bits and bobs, with bits missing and bits misplaced.

This afternoon I've played Trail over and over. Often I find in a tune that there is one note, a repeating note, that I get wrong every time, and I just need to name that note, and then I can remember it. It's a B in the Dragon, a D in Galloway, and a C in the Trail.

But I'm still not comfortable with A. As I've mentioned before it feels like a different instrument, bigger, more robust. I need more air in the bag, more bellows action. I struggle to hold the chanter in a comfortable spot. And this afternoon I just seemed to have too much chest, and it all seemed to be in the way. Still, I persevered. I will be as comfortable with A as I am with D. It's just going to take time.

I wish I knew, though, how people flip between similar instruments of different size; different sized whistles, say, or mandolin and bouzouki, as the fan does. Maybe having a different repertoire for each helps split them in your mind.

I need to think what the call this switching and adjustment; I need a blog label for it, because this isn't the first time I've written about it and it certainly won't be the last.

How can you have any pudding?

When I was at primary school there was a rule that you couldn't go up and queue for pudding until you'd finished your main course. I don't think we had to clear our plates entirely, and it may have been the vegetables that we were really to eat as I distinctly remember pushing green vegetables of some sort under a scoop of that awful, almost slimy (but containing mysterious crystalline lumps) mashed potato, which also had to be bashed about to look eaten.

It was the same at home. A request for pudding, even a piece of fruit, would be met with the standard "finish what's on your plate first". My parents, and presumably those who made the rules at school, grew up in wartime and knew the value of food.

I suppose I inherited the waste not want not approach to life. I go to the farm shop each week and I calculate roughly what meals I'll cook in the week and I buy just what I need to make those. Food waste makes me miserable, although knowing it can feed the worms, which in turn feed my allotment, helps.

The point it that I don't like to start one thing until I've finished another. I do this a little with knitting. I won't cast on a proper big project (although I have my eye on one) until I've finished the long abandoned cardigan. Socks, baby items and mittens don't count as actual projects in this world view...

I have some unfinished tunes. Troy is close, but not there yet. The Fiddler and Alick languish, to be honest, barely touched on the side of my musical plate. But I can see other tunes that make my mouth water. I've been listening to Springwell again: I rather like pipe tunes played on strings. I want to play Balmacara,Oh! But will you come to town and, my current favourite, Heroes of St Valery. I can't find Heroes or Will You. Balmacara is by Donald McLeod and according to a Canadian site is in volume 5 of his books. The listing for the same title on Footstompin doesn't include it. So I think I need to look at the books in the flesh. I wonder if Nicholson's open on bank holidays...  

A you're adorable

I've gone back to A today, after a brief farewell fling with D. I've got 9 whole days without work and I'm hoping to get to know the A again over that time.

It took about a tune and half to remember where my fingers went. My bottom hand isn't sitting totally clean on the holes, especially that low G. My right thumb got a bit tense - sometimes I worry that I will snap the chanter in half - but I made a conscious effort to relax my hands and slid my thumb down the chanter and inch or two, which helped.

I'm finding that if things aren't quite comfortable I am actually able to make some adjustments while I am playing. One thing that has to be right before I play is the bellows - I can't get away with a loose strap with A as I don't get enough air through. It is the air pressure that's the challenge. Bag and bellows seem to be rubbing the insides of my arms raw. My shoulders feel tense. I'm hunching a little, and also pressing the bellows down on my hip bones.

But I'll get there, back into the swing of A. And its worth it - that big, deep, rich sound, full and rounded. Adorable.

Play list update for August

Finally I feel it's time to add some titles to my play list. I'm a little worried because several tunes seem to be falling off the bottom. I'm not sure if that's because actually I didn't really like them as much as I like the new tunes, or whether it's just what I happen to feel like playing at the moment - Bonnie Galloway, for instance has usurped The Rowan Tree as my go to tune for when I have no brain or just want to feel totally relaxed when playing. My worry is that I will only ever be able to remember a dozen tunes and the more I cram in one end the more they will fall out the other...

Tunes I can play without dots

• The Atholl Highlanders (rare) 
• Banks of Allen (very rare)
• Battle of the Somme
• Battle of Waterloo (rare)
• Bonnie Galloway (my current go to tune)
• The Boy's Lament for His Dragon (with a tendency to go to fast and garble it)
• The Barren Rocks of Aden (same problem as the Dragon)
• Castle Dangerous
• Eagle's Whistle (very rare)
• Flett from Flotta (I play this a lot)
• The Highland Brigade at Magersfontein
• The March of the King of Laoise (Still lets me down from time to time...)
• My Home Town
• The Rowan Tree
• South Georgia Whaling Song
• Teribus (the mice currently love this)

Tunes almost there

• Capt Angus L MacDonald
• Leaving Barra (ha, ha, ha)
• Lochanside (remember this? It seems to go well with the Highland Brigade...)
• Over the Cabot Trail
• Troy's Wedding (A and B I have, C is nearly there, D part needs some work)

Tunes I am actively learning

• Alick C McGregor
• The Shetland Fiddler

I'm surprised to see that, checking over the tunes I've recorded, the only tunes on my play list  haven't done are Atholl (which I recorded about a million times on the previous blog and lost), Castle Dangerous. Shetland Fiddler and Leaving Barra (which is odd - I could have sworn I had done that one).

I feel I need some more new tunes to learn....

Folk in the 80s

I've been listening to Canterach again. It's a bit like the shepherd pipes CD in that the music is good, the tunes and the musicians are good, but there is a lot of percussion, bass lines, and general background stuff that I could live without.

It reminds me a little of the Mozart in the 70s LP my parents had. In many ways it was dire, but the beauty of Mozart shone through, and when I got to hear proper Mozart, as it were, it felt familiar and was easy to get to know and like. I suppose the same goes for the snippets of "proper" poetry that were in the books of verse for children I had when I was small. It meant that when I came across a full poem by Tennyson or Longfellow or Shelley I wasn't thrown by the patterns and rhythms - they felt vague familiar and sometimes I'd find a couplet or a verse that I really did know from my reading. So hopefully Canterach made it easier for some people to move from a rock/pop version of Scottish traditional music to the real thing. It all sounds rather 80s - I'm amazed it's dated 2001...

Nothing can spoil the beauty of the Highland Brigade at Magersfontein, my favourite track. Nor does anything spoil the beauty of James Duncan Mackenzie's playing and his choice of tunes on his eponymous CD. I really love the Heights of Dargai, and long to play it but the dots don't seem to match up at all. I could understand it if the tune was a Reel by Anon, but as it's a named tune by a known composer it's all rather odd.

Cabot trail

A long weekend, and what with various social activities, a spot of gardening and the usual chores, I somehow haven't played as much as I'd envisaged. I'm also being distracted by my current reading. However, I did manage to play on Friday and I actually recorded.

This is my first try at Nova Scotian music. It's a pair of tunes that happened to be on the one page of my book. I muddle the start because the only difference between the opening bars of the two tunes is the timing.

The tunes are Over the Cabot Trail, by Donald A Beaton, and Capt Angus L MacDonald, by PM Fraser Holmes. The Cabot Trail is interesting for its very limited gracing, and what little there is is very simple, with only the odd doubling or grip. I fluff the end of the A part of Angus each time, for no particular reason.

This is the Monkey in D, with no drones. See endless comments on previous posts about lack of drones... This morning I started humming one of these tunes (although I'm not sure which). They are lovely tunes, but very clearly not Scottish tunes, which perhaps makes it harder to remember: they aren't quite following the expected patterns.



Check this out on Chirbit

Close, but no cigar

Yesterday I was persuaded by the fan to accompany him to one of his favourite sessions, at the Nightingale. It's a bit of a way to go for a spot of music, but the music is very good, the natives are friendly and welcoming and the Guinness is decent. An all round very nice pub.

I played Tree, Galloway and Whaling, but was beset again by stage fright, making my hands shake, which means I miss, garble or mangle notes. Still, I managed to keep going to the end each time. I tried thinking about how nice everyone in the pub was, I tried thinking about the tunes, I tried thinking about my breathing, I tried listening intently to my pipes. This is a bad move: stage fright seems to affect my hearing and the drones sounded odd and the chanter reed squeaky, and I know they weren't because the fan would have said. The more I listened the more I heard wobbles caused by shaking hands, which made me feel worse.

I tried looking at the fan and I also tried some staring into the middle distance and closing my eyes in a Kathryn Tickell sort of way. I drank more Guinness. That seemed to help a bit. I'd like to say it got better with each tune, but it doesn't, because knowing I've got stage fright makes me nervous that I'll really make a hash of things.

I was assured that no-one but me spotted that I was a nervous wreck. Considering I can do public speaking without batting an eyelid - I've spoken off the cuff to a conference in the past - it's irritating, to say the least, to get so nervous about playing a few tunes with a few folk. Am hoping I'll grow out of it.

The Kathryn Tickell-ishness must have showed, as I was asked on the way out if I was playing "those Northumbrian small pipes".  Well, they're certainly small pipes...