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.