Game over

Final day! And I did it - I played every single day this month. I didn't quite hit the promised target of a minimum of 30 minutes a day, and I wish I had played more during my week off, but I'm quite pleased that I stuck with it, despite the rest of stuff that life comes up with.

The fan says he hears a difference. I'm not so sure, but I do feel very relaxed and I enjoy it so much. I came home today - late, again - and flicked through the newspaper and then thought I'd play, before I'd even drunk my cup of tea. It went well - really well. All sorts of tunes went well. Notes in the right places, good speed. All good stuff until the fan pressed me to record and red-button-itis hit me big time and I mucked up tune after tune. The most spectacular was the two attempts I had at the King when I just failed to get past the third bar: I kept thinking that I had no idea what the next note was.

I did wonder whether the batteries in the recorder were my problem. They die very quickly so although it started with reasonably charged batteries I felt I was racing against the clock each time. Had dinner, thought I'd try again, plugging the recorder in to the laptop to avoid the battery problem. Played really well, except on every occasion I hit record. In total I have ten recordings that end with a musical car crash and some growling from me. One that might have been half OK to post (because I managed a tune and a half before it imploded) unfortunately included a rude word, so that one had to go. I started typing this then abandoned to play again because it just seems to be what I want to do this evening. And I love it - it feels so good, and yet I can play nothing at all, not a thing. I shall listen instead to someone who can play all sorts of everything beautifully. One day....

My other problem is my drones. They clearly need a spot of hemp. The high A, in particular, keeps collapsing mid-tune and throwing me.

Hanging on in there

I was out yesterday evening and by the time I'd got home and had a spot of tea and toast it was late. I managed about 5 tired minutes of play, just so I could still say I've played every day this month.

Home at a better time today and heaved Morag out. I played for quite a while, although my hands were too cold really, which mostly means I don't get my fingers down cleanly on the chanter. My hands were cold mostly because I've lost one of a pair of brand new mittens. It's typical that I own tatty old gloves that I've had for years and sometimes accidentally use as gardening gloves and have never lost, and then I have the warmest and loveliest pair of mittens and lose them on about their 5th outing.

Anyway, I listened to the Heights of Cassino a couple of times and worked on it a bit. There's a repeated phrase where I don't think I can do the timing the same on pipes as on a whistle because of the difference between tongued notes and those separated by grace notes. I need to find a pipe version to listen to.

Also played the King round and round. Still getting the odd error, but I love it so much: the way it sounds and the way it feels to play. Working a little on the Banks and playing a couple of the old favourites. I haven't played the Eagle's Whistle for a while.

I mention to the fan that I've hardly recorded this month and he tells me that I'll notice the difference when I do. I worry that it will be like the end of a long week of dieting: you get convinced that you must have lost pounds and pounds and at the big reveal you've possibly lost half a pound, which may be down to poor calibration on your scales....

Person from Porlock

Phew. I very nearly broke my pledge this evening. I didn't stagger in from work until nearly 7pm, then there was dinner to cook and eat, and afterwards I felt tired, but I started anyway. Heights (which I listened to a couple of times while I was cooking, which definitely helped the first couple of parts - timing on the last part to work on), the King, the Banks, Galloway. I was just hitting that point where I am relaxed and everything feels good, and then the phone rang...

I went back to the pipes afterwards for five minutes, and the fan decided to join in. I'm almost OK enough to play along with, apparently - just my rubbish timing to contend with. I need to go back to dots to refresh my memory: I think in some cases my "which note next?" pauses have become part of the furniture, which isn't right.

So this was day 25. Only three more days and I'm released from my pledge, but actually, I've been thinking that I enjoy playing every day, even if it's not for long, and it hasn't been that difficult to find the time, so maybe I will try to continue. Maybe I won't play every single day, and perhaps I won't play for very long but I think I'll try it. (Wait until the evenings are light and the allotment calls and I might think differently...!)

Leaps and bounds

Well, the fan says he's noticing the difference from my 24 days of daily playing. He says I'm much faster. I've mentioned before that he's very keen on speed. I'm not so sure, and I'm not the only one. Anyway, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth - the fan says I'm faster and that's good.

He made his comment while I was playing Banks of the Allan. I've not played it much of late - I think I overdid it before and somehow lost interest in it. I got the dots out to refresh myself, and I can remember it, including the gracing, and the speed is OK actually. I should record, really. I know, I know.

Then the Thornton Jig and Heights of Cassino. Work needed on timing mostly. The King, Bonnie Galloway, Teribus. The fan suggested the Fairy Dance (which will have to wait until I have the monkey - surely not long now - because it needs a high B) and the Shetland Fiddler, but the PC threw a wobbly so I couldn't print it.

The shock of the new

Sometimes I am astounded by my own stupidity. I've been trying new tunes. Bits I can play almost immediately because they are tunes I have heard, some parts are straightforward, and I'm actually not bad at sight reading. Other bits are harder because I'm not so sure I remember the tune, or the timing is difficult, or the combination of notes doesn't come easily to my fingers. So I've been playing through once or twice and then thinking - Oh, this is rubbish, I can't play this, and giving up. Well, as they say these days, hello? You can't play these because these are new tunes - tunes you need to learn. Learning as in moving from not being able to play to being able to play, which means practice, and playing over and over, and listening to the tunes on CDs and all that other stuff which I seem to have forgotten about in the endless months of playing the same old stuff over and over.

So I've found cleaner, easier to read versions of some of the tunes I want, courtesy of concertina.net (via the Session) and Nigel Gatherer and this evening I've started to learn the Heights of Cassino and Troy's Wedding. Troy is what the fan terms "a pig", apparently due to a syncopated rhythm.  To my mind the pig in both is those damned A-A-A's. I see them so often in tunes and they can sound great, but they aren't easy to play. First they need to be separate out with a GDE gracing, and then you need to think about timing. Troy is fine as the triplets are all three notes of equal length, but Cassino involves a shorter and a longer note, and the position of these in the triplet moves about. I need to really get the tune in my head and that should help.

I also dug out The Green Hills of Tyrol, just because my fingers were picking it out and I couldn't work out at first what it was. It struck me that the Hills and the Battle are nice simple, easy to play tunes, and it wasn't any problem at all to play them twice over, back to back, and the last time I remember it being a big hassle. It helps that I am stripping out a stack of gracing though. It also occurred to me yesterday as I went to be that although some tunes are taking months to get sorted the much maligned King has actually come quite quickly. I only got the CD for Christmas so can only have started playing it in late December or early January and already (already - ha!- two months later!) have it committed to memory and can play it comfortably.

Galloway set

I'm still trying to play Bonnie Galloway as a set with Teribus. My fingers prefer to follow Galloway with Castle Dangerous, but the fan says the tunes are too alike to work together. Teribus would be fine except, rather like the Rocks, my fingers keep running away and messing it up. This was the best of a bad bunch. Still - I'm getting there - towards my wish to play, by heart, a tune twice through followed by another tune twice through. But how long it takes! I've supposedly known Bonnie Galloway since October and was learning Teribus at the end of November - that's three months ago - still with dots, and thinking about this pairing then, and all this time later I'm still not there. (OK - I've just re-listened to the November Teribus and I'm definitely playing a lot faster and sounding more confident.)

Bonnie Galloway is OK, though. I like the space where there is a G and then a D and then back to a G grace, and I always remember to play that middle D and never accidentally play G, which is good. At the end of the first phrase is F double E, only I often play double F E. Not sure that my speed is consistent enough, either.

Fingers still nicely relaxed - tapping down cleanly for strikes, just stroking the chanter for the high A doubling, barely there for single grace notes. A little tense on my right thumb, but nothing drastic today.


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Enlightenment

My new CD arrived today, thanks to Coda. I've had listen to it, and it's good to hear smallpipes and a different player with different interpretations. Can you hear the "but" coming at the end of that sentence? I think my biggest reservation is the electronic keyboard that accompanies many of the tracks, making the whole thing sound a bit like a midi file. Some of it is swelling electric organ music that I suppose is meant to evoke great emotion, but strikes me as being a bit new age, a bit sentimental. It also means you lose the drones, and what are pipes without drones? The keyboards weren't so noticeable on the clips on the website (unlike the honkey tonk piano which was very much to the fore on the clips of the other CD I looked at and I am sure he's a marvellous piano player but I know I couldn't sit through a CD of that, even to hear some nice pipes.)

I was hoping to hear more traditional tunes to help me find new ones to play, but a lot of this is written by the player himself. As the maker is named on the front of the CD cover and the player only on the back I get the impression that this is perhaps a CD put together by the maker as a sort of advert for his pipes. Perhaps the price of getting a decent piper to play was the keyboards and the self-written tunes.

Where are all the smallpipers? And why aren't they laying down tracks on CD to share with the world?

Game, set...

I didn't have much hope for today's play. I've not had the best of mornings. I drove to a shop that I wanted yesterday and didn't discover, until I got there, that it was early closing day. Back again today I managed to forget one of the items I needed, and I scraped my back bumper in the car park. Not happy.

I've managed an hour's happy play. I felt relaxed, my hands were relaxed, drones out of tune but not impossible. Tunes came easily, although the set of low As in the King tend to buzz where I don't quite get my fingers clean on the chanter. I've recorded my little set - The Rowan Tree and the Barren Rocks of Aden. A couple of small errors in the Tree - I think because I was thinking ahead to the Barren Rocks. I think (I was distracted by the newspaper as I listened to the recording) that I did one repeat too many at the end of the Tree. The Rocks are fastish but far from perfect still. (OK - they're rubbish.)

The I fiddled round with other tunes, Dick Gossip's again, and found the Portree Men (which is aka the Battle of the Braes) and which I rather like, if I can follow the different first and second endings.


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Still haven't found what I'm looking for

I decided to just go through Coel Sean and try random tunes today, but that isn't easy. When it comes to sheet music one unknown pipe tune looks pretty much like another. I need to listen to more pipe music. Flipping about the internet yesterday evening I came across David Barnes. I can't find out much about him, but have ordered his CD from Coda. I hadn't realised they had a website. It's one of the fan's favourite haunts in Edinburgh (it's a nice shop, but my favourite is the other end of the mile.)

Hopefully Mr Barnes will introduce me to some new tunes. I tried listening to some on YouTube, but some of the recordings really weren't helpful, one way and another. While I was looking for versions of the Blue Bonnets (which I rather like) I came across a pipe and drum flashmob in California and was reminded what very good tunes the Green Hills of Tyrol and The Battle's O'er are. Both old chanter favourites, but not tunes I've really played on the pipes.

I also looked at this site and found a tune called In Praise of Morag - also known as Marian's Wailing apparently. Sadly it turns out to be piobaireachd, so not at all what I was looking for.

Anyway, I'm going to give the Blue Bonnets a whirl, maybe also the Black Bear and certainly Dick Gossip's, which is a tune I already know from the band. Will they make it to my playlist? Who knows...

New tunes

Not that I have any new tunes - I just feel in need of some. I like all the tunes I play, but I'm getting tired of always playing them, and so many that I had fixed in my mind seem to be slipping away and I just want to give myself a break from them. I'm not having much luck, however, with finding new tunes that I'm happy with. Lots that I'd like to play are too fast or somehow beyond my level of competence. Others are OK - Flett is OK - but nothing that makes me really want to play them over and over. I feel my tunes are too sedate - I want something livelier, something more like folk music and less like marches, maybe.

Pipes in the morning

The fan persuaded me to play this morning. He's a big fan or morning practice: you're fresher, less tired. It makes sense, but I'm very much a chores first, games after sort of a person, and even when there are no pressing chores habit rather kicks in.

It does seem to make a difference: I'm physically less tired and seem to concentrate on tunes better. I'm a morning person anyway, so it's hardly surprising.

I've forgotten to record again. I play through the Barren Rocks, with dots, slowly. The fan says that's the speed I used to play at. It does seem painfully s-l-o-o-o-w. It doesn't even seem that much more accurate - although the dots are under my nose I'm only reading them when I get stuck, and being so slow spoils the rhythm.

So, the Eagle, the King (coming on well), the Rowan Tree, Barren Rocks, Bonnie Galloway. Also Flett from Flotta, with dots, because I never learned it without, and actually it's a nice little tune, but what could it go with? I try running from Galloway into Teribus, only to realise I am actually playing Castle Dangerous instead, and this realisation, along with catching the chanter on my knee and blocking it brings me to a halt. I need to try both properly - there must be a reason why my brain wanted to slide from Galloway to the Castle.

Also had a brief go at the tune the fan brought me: Kantara to El Arish. The timing is fiddly and it's the sort of tune I need to hear and know before I'll be able to play it properly. I am sure YouTube will have someone somewhere playing it.

.

Concentrate

I've been thinking about concentration and wondering, perhaps rather flippantly, whether this is a gender issue. Perhaps if you're prehistoric man out hunting you need to concentrate on your prey and nothing else. Whereas prehistoric woman needs to have her eyes and ears on many things: do those chickens sounds as though they can see a predator, is the fire still burning, is that pot boiling, is the baby crying, is my mother calling for me to give her a hand, is the meal I am pounding ready yet...?

The fan, who has a tendency towards fatalism, and likes to believe we are "hard-wired" by personal and shared history and our genetic inheritance considers this theory of mine to be self-evident. But I'm not convinced. Surely if I'm hunting I need to keep my eye on the gazelle - I don't want it running off before I've bagged it. On the other hand surely I need to be aware also of the snake I'm about to step on, the marauding neighbours coming over the ridge at me, not to mention the tiger over there to the left who may also have his eye on my gazelle, but may also be wondering how nice a dinner I'd make. Surely total concentration on that gazelle could as easily result in my death as that of the animal?

Whatever the reason, I've struggled today with tunes, nothing other than the Rowan Tree being totally reliable, day in and day out. I'm also finding that I've misremembered tunes, and then learned the mis-remembering, so now need to go back to the dots and readjust. I can still play the King, but it's a struggle - each note is hard fought. And the new tunes go nowhere, don't feel like tunes, don't speak to me, somehow.

The King is Dead...

I *did* play yesterday: very briefly. I'd been in the kitchen again, and then after that there was prosecco and malbec with dinner (the fan and I were celebrating), so I was tired, but I gave it a go, and I managed to get through the King of Laoise! I think that having decided to abandon the King for a while I lost the tune, so the day before I listened to it about three times, and the following day found myself humming it at work.

It's still not perfect - far from it - fluffed notes and poor timing - but I managed to play it over and over. I can't explain why, but as well as being very satisfying to listen to it's also satisfying to play - there are some combinations of finger movements that just feel very good indeed: the strike between the two Es for example, and the CEA that precedes it. While I was playing I noticed that the doubling on high A is improved, simple because somewhere along the line I've stopped tapping my thumb on the hole and now just stroke it down. When I noticed that I also noticed how very loose my fingers were on the chanter, and this seems to help with gracing, too.

On the other hand I am occasionally doing odd things. In the A part, third bar, when I play E my right hand has the middle fingers up as if to play C. I know it's wrong - I can feel the spare fingers sticking up when they should be lying flat, and I think that sometimes confuses me about which note comes next, or which note I am actually trying to play there. I don't seem to be able to shake the habit, and it only happens in this tune at that point.

Bellows still not great...air flow to the drones not even enough, often not strong enough.

Between endless rounds of the King I managed the Rowan Tree twice through, followed by the A part of the Rocks twice through, and then descended into chaos and couldn't recall a single note sequence for the B part. I did the same yesterday evening and today I can't even blame the demon drink. Still - closer than I was.

Concentration is still a problem. I played in the bedroom this afternoon and at different points lost the plot on what I was playing because I was distracted by an apparently mouldy patch behind the central heating pipes, a small ginger bear that sits by the bed, and a bird flying past the window. The recorder being out of batteries again I had it plugged into the laptop for power, and that, of course, makes me start thinking about my blog post, and blogs I read, and wondering what the news is or whether I have any emails. But I'm getting there - I really think I'm getting there.


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If you can't stand the heat

Just dropping in to record almost 30 minutes of playing - began well witth the usual supects, fell foul of the King and the heat from the kitchen: dinner, an orange sponge and a batch of brownies raised the temperature somewhat and once you throw in pipes I about hit melting point.

Seeing ghosts

I worked on the Eagle's Whistle with the fan this evening. Is there a rule about not teaching tunes to one's significant other? I think there should be. I think in the end I got closer to getting the tune right. I love playing it so much - more than any other piece, and I don't know whether it's that gorgeous rocking rhythm that just hypnotises you, or whether it is something to do with it being dotless. It's almost noteless. "You need another B there" says the fan, and I ask where is there a B? Am I playing a B? because it's just a tune, just something I'm playing, and I don't ascribe notes to any of it.

After that I did battle with the King. Very nearly there with the A part. The B part starts well and flounders most on the second half which is my favourite part of the tune and exactly the same as the A part, where I am note perfect. Why? I have no idea. Sometimes I know what I want to hear and my fingers do something different instead, sometimes I just lose the tune. I think it's back to being in that right space between focussing too much and too little on something. Maybe a tune is like a ghost - you need to catch it out of the corner of your eye.

No recording - I should record, I know. Two more days of work and then nine whole days when I'll have time to live and hopefully that will include recording

That's better

A much better day today. I manged to skip out of work - I was going to say "early" but it was actually on time. The fan was on kitchen duty so I sat and played for the best part of an hour. I managed The Rowan Tree, Bonnie Galloway, the Banks of Allen. and My Home Town all twice round with only minor errors.

Then I struggled with the Rocks and dug out the dots, and I discovered that I can play faster than I can read music. My fingers were racing ahead, I was desperately trying to keep up, so that by the time my fingers hit a patch they weren't sure of and were asking which note came next my poor brain would come panting behind like a small child on a long journey - "where are we now?"

I played the Eagle a few times, fought the blasted King and so very nearly nailed it, the A part in particular is almost there. Then I gave the Dragon a whirl before going back to the King and the Rocks. As I was about to give up the fan came to talk me through the B part of the Eagle, which I'm not getting quite right and need to listen to again.

I can't define quite how playing the Eagle is different from playing all the tunes I've learnt from dots - there's a different quality to my remembering of it, somehow, and I feel I can really just drop into the music and listen to it as I play.

Apparently I was spotted at the Foresters at the weekend by someone who mentioned it to someone at work, but who that first someone was I don't know. The person I spoke to said she didn't know that I played. "Oh", said I airily, "I've not been playing long - only about 18 months - I'm just a beginner". Quoth she: "that's not what I heard", which seems like a little compliment from that unknown person.

Multitasking

Multitasking. Men are supposedly no good at it, women supposedly shine. Multitasking is also generally considered to be A Good Thing. Quite how this then sits with having a short attention  span, which sometimes surely amounts to the same thing, being A Bad Thing, I know not. If I sit on the sofa (as I might well do) listening to music, knitting, reading a cookery book, and mentally going through my kitchen cupboards to check baking supplies, is that multitasking or the result of a short attention span or information overload? Do I do any of those things properly?

In some ways I think I do. The cookery book  I've looked at many times before and I don’t need to really take any of it in or read it in any way attentively or critically. Hopefully some of the recipes will be in my shorter term memory when I need to bake cakes on Thursday and ideas of what to bake will come to the fore. Some of the thoughts on cupboard stocks did later motivate a proper check of cupboards, and items being added to my shopping list. The knitting was fine – it’s still at the knit 2 purl 2 stage with no thinking required at all. Knitting in this way is often a secondary or additional activity. 

What about the listening to music? I was intending to say how hopeless this is – how the music becomes background wallpaper and I don’t take it in other than to become aware of it mid-tune – or, more often, as a tune ends – suddenly recognising that it’s one I particularly like and particularly wanted to hear (I do the same with the weather forecast: I switch off at the moment John Humphrys says “and now here is Philip Avery with the weather” and switch on again with the magic words “And that’s your forecast”). I was going to say that you need to listen to music as a single activity to really listen, really hear. And yet, I woke up this morning with several tunes on the CD going round my head, fully recognisable and accurate. So somehow they did sink in, despite (or because of?) my mind being elsewhere.

But when I am playing multitasking, or letting my mind wander, does not help. The point at which I lose track of what comes next, how many times I've played the B part, or even whether I'm on the B part or the A part, is the point at which I realise I am thinking about dinner or work or knitting or something I need to mention to the fan or that pile of ironing I forgot to do (again). I'm so used to doing one (or two, or three) things and thinking about something different. I need to learn that with music, with playing music, it’s different. I need to stop multitasking and concentrate on what I am doing.

Then I play this evening and feel that just pumping the bellows, keeping up even pressure on the bag and playing a tune correctly is more multitasking than I'm up to. Started and finished with the Eagle's Whistle, which I love to play and which does feel very different from tunes I learnt from dots. Worked on Delvinside and the Dragon, but not with any great result. Struggled to play through half a dozen of the usual suspects, got cross and gave up. 

Before and after

I've been admiring quicksteps, particularly the set on Sealbh that has The Hills of Perth, The Braes of Busby, The 42nd Highlanders and Delvinside. The latter caught my ear first. I feel it might go nicely with the Dragon. I also like Hills and the 42nd. Sadly I've not been able to find dots for the Hills. The 42nd seem to have been a well-travelled bunch and spent a good deal of time saying farewell to various places. I did find a plain farewell (i.e. not a farewell to anywhere in particular) but I don't think it's the same tune.

Delvinside isn't easy. There are March and Strathspey versions and I've picked a march as hopefully being nearer to the quickstep, and am listening to Mr McInnes to pick up the timing from him. Not totally sure that the last few bars are the same as my dots, but it's difficult to tell because of the speed. He sounds, somehow, as though he's playing slowly: I think it's because he plays calmly and with precision. But it is a fast tune and one where the grace notes,especially in the opening bars of the B part, really give it some shape.

So what I've done here is two recordings. The first is me literally having printed the dots off and playing it through from sight. No drones as as the speed I'm going they waver and bleat and distract me. I've played for just over an hour, on and off, this evening. Not all of it at this: The Rowan Tree, My Home Town, The Eagles' Whistle (working on some embellishments and variations and just getting the B part right). I've focussed on the A part. Still no drones and limited gracing as I was concentrating on timing and speed. I have improved from the first read through, but the recording doesn't sounds as good as I though my playing did and I swear the best version was where I apparently didn't hit the record button firmly enough, but at least that was for the "after" which could be repeated, whereas hopefully I won't be repeating the "before"!!

The "before" version...


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And the "after".


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Compliments for Morag

I've cheated a bit today as my playing amounted to three tunes at the Forester's Arms. I began with the Eagle's Whistle in the hope that some people might join in. The fan did, and I was able to focus on his fingers. Went three times round, still need work on the B part.

Later I tried the good old Rowan Tree - just the once round as it went so well I didn't want to push my luck. Someone asked what manner of beast Morag was, and said she sounded lovely. I think people played around me, but all I could hear was my own drones, which sounded lovely and mellow. Odd, the acoustics of playing with other people in pubs.

At one stage Rusty Gully was played and I got itchy thinking that it's a tune I could play if I knew it as Mr McInnes plays it - but I don't even know what key it was in.

Later still I played My Home Town. The fan asked what I was going to play. I said I was starting with a D throw and therefore couldn't be sure whether I'd get Home Town or Teribus. He played along.

Tunes went well, mostly, lots of friendly and generous applause, my hands shook like billyo. And on the way out someone said how nice it was that I'd brought my lovely pipes. They mean you, Morag - yes they do.

Back to Basics

I really couldn't face Morag this evening: I feel we should give each other a little space. I couldn't renege on my pledge to practise every day though, so out came the chanter. I also dragged out the Green Book and ran through the grace notes in the first few chapters, and the tunes, which are dull and dreary in the extreme. Who picks these for beginners? They really don't inspire in any way.

I also got out The Piper's Helper - one of my books of exercises - and ran through various scales, doublings, grips and tourluaths. It felt rather nice, really, comfortable and familiar, like finding an old jumper you've not worn for ages.  I think I half hoped that I'd feel I'd come on in such leaps and bounds since the days of the Green Book that I'd be cheered, but I can't say I was bowled over by the difference. I dimly remember barely getting a scale out on the chanter before practically passing out through lack of oxygen, but beyond that I don't really remember how easy or hard it was and what my playing sounded like, so it's difficult to compare my playing then and now. I managed to play for half an hour or more before hitting that point when my mouth goes and I simply can't blow any more.

We may go to a sesion tomorrow, the fan and I. I've been asked to take Morag. We'll have to see how it goes.

Downhill all the way

I seem to be getting worse - every day and in every way, in fact. I struggle to play a whole tune through (although I manage some quite fast it's all very much on the Eric Morecambe principle.) I'm thinking of naming my drones Whinge, Whine and Waver - I can hardly bear to hear them. Still putting too much pressure through on the bellows, not enough on the bag. Failure to remember tunes (I think because the drones or the bad pressure distract me from the tune).

Have decided to avoid the King - possibly to bury him under a car park for a few centuries - in the hope that by the time I dig him out again he's full rehabilitated.

The tune is Bonnie Galloway. Have I got a previous version? I should check. Wavery drones, mistakes, blah - at least the gracing sounds OK, although as it's minimal and simple you'd hope so, really.

Still - chin up - after all, tomorrow is another day.


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Lamentable Dragon

I decided not to cook and practise: it only ends in tears. I end up doing both things badly, having my mind fully on neither, and feeling rushed to get as much pipe playing as I can between checking pans, setting the table and so on. On the other hand I worry that if I leave it until after dinner I'll be too tired or feel it's eating into knitting time or something. I need, as modern parlance has it, to chillax about the whole "when to play" thing.

I played after dinner, but it didn't go well. The more I play the King the more hideously it falls apart. I can do less and less from memory and even struggle with the dots. It's a mystery and would probably be fascinating if it weren't so incredibly annoying. I'm also annoyed with the pressure. The fan said yesterday's recording sounded wavery on the drones. I think the drones were actually kicking in and out as I played, but it was mostly due to relying on the bellows for pressure: it can't be done evenly - that's what the bag is for.

Still relying on the bellows this evening, snatching at them in such a way that smacks them against my hip bone (ouch) and also involves pulling my neck muscles (no, I don't know how I manage that, either). All this distracted me from playing and although I enjoyed it and the half hour sped by I had problems with all the tunes I tried.

The recording is a lamentable attempt at The Boy's Lament for his Dragon. I've not dared to listen, but from the playing I would say the drones/pressure issue is horribly apparent. I'm having problems reading the first and second endings, because they are literally on top of each other and difficult to pick apart. I'm being thrown by grips. The grip on low A after the high A I've practised very slowly, which is fine. My fingers can go very fast at it but I think they are actually playing high A - low A - G - flip off the D finger...and then straight to A missing out that second G. I also had a panic not being sure that the grip was the same on the B as it is on the A. I'm ignoring the tourluaths entirely.

I did say I wouldn't necessarily blog every day, but whenever I play I want to moan talk about it. I'm also hopeful that there will be signs of improvement and that recordings will demonstrate that. At the moment I think I'm probably just flogging a dead dragon...


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Day five

It's day five of February and my attempt to play for half an hour a day. I was tempted not to. Tired and cross and late home again. But it's band night which means it was before dinner or lose my chance, and the fan is cooking, which frees up sometime. So I approached Morag in "let's get this over and done with" frame of mind, but as I played things improved and I felt less tired and less cross and began to enjoy playing. I did only do the 30 minutes but the first 20 I spent with an eye on the clock and the last 10 ran by.

Ran through various tunes. Drones slightly irritating, too much right elbow action, connector tube problems, but it was OK. Chunks of the King fell into place...others vanished from my brain. The fan helpfully notes that I am living proof that just because you can do a thing once doesn't mean you can do it twice.

Talking of doing things twice, the recording is The Eagle's Whistle for the umpteenth time. I need to go back and do a compare and contrast job. Just to recap, this is dotless because I learned this from the fan and the CD versions, not from dots. Still lacking in gracenotes. It's great to play - very soothing and somewhat hypnotic. It seems possible to go round and round in gentle circles with no end.


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Instead of a rant

I wanted to rant. About work, which takes up the best part of 11 hours a day and then gets into my head for the rest of the day and pushes the music out. About pressure - still wrong (drones OK though). About the blasted King, more specifically my inability to learn it. About the fact that I thought I hit record before playing the whistle twice through, but clearly didn't as it's not on the recorder.

Instead of which I am posting the third in my series of rambles on the subject of "why I listen to so much traditional music these days."

I've always had a very strong emotional, sometimes, even physical, reaction to music, and indeed, to sound in general. Very low rumbly sounds (a lorry engine left running in the street) make me feel anxious . Very high pitched sounds can make me feel pain. I get very uncomfortable listening to music that doesn't suit my mood and earphones piping music direct into my head is horribly intrusive. Music often makes me cry – and that’s everything from basic pop songs (the potency of cheap music) to grand opera (I can cry through the whole of La Traviata). Some music creates pictures in my  mind – so the second movement of Beethoven’s fourth is a lady in a blue silk dress against a hedge of dark green yews. Perhaps to protect myself against this onslaught of pictures, emotion and physical reaction I often listen to music only as a background – I turn it on and immediately tune out (I also manage this very successfully, and annoyingly, with the weather forecast most mornings). I can use music to block out other unwanted sounds, which is why I used to revise to music: I wasn't listening to it, I was using it to create a barrier against other noise, and the barrier itself I can somehow totally ignore.

The point is that music is, for me, a mystical, physical, spiritual sort of a thing. I've therefore always shied away from any form of musical theory, which I fear might spoil my enjoyment. Just as someone who has just fallen head over heels in love doesn't want to hear that actually it’s all just pheromones, hormones, serotonin and a genetic imperative to reproduce I don’t want to hear that it’s all down to minor keys or harmonic thirds.

Being a player of music – more seriously than the dabbling I've done in the past – has changed my relationship to it. I've needed to listen to it more attentively in order to remember tunes to play them, or even identify tunes I want to play. Reading music has helped me see the patterns that are there, which makes it easier to hear those patterns, because it sets up certain expectations. You know that a phrase is likely to be followed by something different, but we’ll then return to the first phrase, with a variation on the end. Careful listening allows me to pick out individual instruments, gracenotes, arrangements, and all of this adds to my enjoyment. I think I've mentioned here before that it’s a little like close reading in literature. I can read a well-written book over and over again because there are always so many layers I can be looking at: I don’t need to discard it the moment I know the plot – whodunit or whether the boy got the girl – because there is always so much more for me. Some books, and presumably some music, resist this repeated reading or listening, because there simply isn't enough material to work with.

So on the whole I think that playing an instrument has increased the ways in which I can interact with music, and therefore I can get more out of it. This has happened to traditional music because that’s what I play. I've actually not listened to much outside traditional music for a while, so it would be interesting to see if the effects covered any other genres. On the down side I can honestly say that I'm not moved to tears by any of the traditional music I've listened to since I began to play. Perhaps that’s the choice of tunes I've made, but  perhaps, after all, knowing how the illusion is created spoils it for us.

Too many notes

I've just scraped half an hour this afternoon, despite the fan being out. It's still feeling very tense, very had work on my elbows and shoulder; the drones still sound wavery. Still, I am enjoying it, and will have a cup of tea and probably go back to it.

Some good things to note. One is that I find that if I get stopped mid tune (because the connector flips out or a drone peg falls out) I can pick the tune up where I was interrupted - I don't keep having to take everything from the top anymore. Even trying to play along to the Eagle on my chanter the other evening I could pick it up and carry on - fall in step with the CD. It's like that moment when you stop having to do skipping on a long rope from a standing start and learn how to step into an already turning rope and just carry on.

The other good thing is that instead of relying entirely on memory for playing dotless - trying to remember finger patterns or sneakily visualising the dots (I still feel bad about this) - I've been trying to hum the tune and work out how it must go. I think I've already been doing this with the tunes I do supposedly know - when I get stuck I work through them, but I think I've only just noticed that.

I've not played the King for a few days. Tried it today and whole chunks are coming together, finally, although there are two bars in the middle of the A part which I'm really struggling with. The Eagle is coming along, but still just bare bones. I need to listen very carefully, and probably to the Ian McInnes whistle version as well as the Sea Stallions to get a feel for possible gracing.

Starting on some new tunes. The Boy's Lament for His Dragon (also known as The 72nd's Farewell to Aberdeen), and the Thornton Jig, otherwise just The Thornton. I was reminded of the Thornton yesterday evening. I had a tune in my head and hummed it to the fan , asking him to name it. We decided it was Coilsfield House, which has too many notes for me to play, sadly. It's also sad because half way through humming the Dragon I sometimes find that I've wandered into Coilsfield by accident. The fan says this can be a sign that two tunes would work together. We arrived at the Thornton because Coilsfield made the fan think about the Heilandmen, which is followed on the album by The Thornton. We've always been fond of word association games, and we seemed to have sipped into musical association.

Anyway - time for that cup of tea, and maybe a spot more piping. No recording as the fan took the recorder out to a rehearsal with him.

Something is rotten

OK - not actually rotten, but indefinably not quite right. Specifically my drones feel all wrong - as though they're not getting enough air through. Too much pressure in the system and not enough outlet. I don't know if that's down to having the drones blocked yesterday (when I dither over notes when trying to pick my way through a tune they wheeze and wail and put me off, so I shut them up) or the dehumidifier we've just bought to deal with the condensation (unwanted side effect of living in a Victorian property...although I think it's generally the damp atmosphere that the UK generally labours under). I've had this problem before, so it's probably just me, and I am sure it will go again.

I did try the Eagle again, and it's OK. The first half of the B parts - the higher section - feels too short. It all needs embellishment. I'm also struggling to do the second half of the B parts, which is ridiculous as they are the same as the second half of the A parts. But I am enjoying picking out a tune, not having to shed dots, but pulling the tune out of the air without dots. I want to do it with more tunes. I listened to Ossian recently and wondered about trying to pick out The New House in St Peter's.

Have also played Leaving Barra, Bonnie Galloway, My Home Town, Teribus and The Rowan Tree, which is my go to tune - the one I can most comfortably and reliably play, replacing My Home Town, which sometimes trips me up (why?) I can sit and play for quite a while and not have to get any dots out at all. I did need dots for Barra - I should play it more and shift it on to my dotless list.

Bare bones

Well, here we are in February, and not before time. January is my least favourite month and seems to last at least twice as long as any other. I'm starting as I mean to go on with February. I promised half an hour a day. I've managed an hour this evening - it helps that it's Friday and I managed to leave work on time and I got organised and went to Waitrose yesterday.

I started on the Eagle, fiddled around with the second part, but with limited success. Eventually got the fan to talk me through it, and I've sort of got it - well, the bare bones, anyhow. Recorded, for posterity. Not sure how playing both parts has taken me longer than playing just the first part the other day. A lot of hesitation and error in this, I guess.

Ran through some other tunes, too. Tried to record the Rocks at speed, but my fingers ran away with themselves and the tune went everywhere.

I've been tapping my fingers a lot - just to loosen them, or sometimes it just seems to go with tunes in my head. It's alarming other people - they think I'm drumming my fingers in boredom or frustration, so I've had to come clean and tell them it's sort of finger exercises for musicians. They clearly think I'm mad.


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