Bleurgh

We were away for the weekend so my evenings have been spent catching up on household tasks (washing, baking) and tending the allotment, so today is the first I've played in a few days. Post title sums it up: nothing was comfortable, really struggled with the A, only cleanly covering that bottom G if I took things very slowly. Drones odd, pressure all to pot. I dragged Morag out. She felt floppy and sounded very quiet. Despite the drones being practically immovable with their extra twist of hemp all three had managed to fall badly out of tune.

Tunes were OK, though: My Home Town, Battle (which I mysteriously couldn't remember last time, but seem to have sorted now) and Troy's Wedding, first two parts only.

Some thoughts on D

I'm a bit under par at present: just a cold, but the kind of thing that makes you feel tired and floppy. Not what you want for playing pipes. I am relying over much on the bellows because of this, but having fun anyway. I've really enjoyed playing this evening.

I started with the A chanter. After my recent musings on possible new tunes one has chosen me: Alick C MacGregor has been rattling around my head all day. I wasn't even sure what it was to begin with; I just knew it was highland pipes and possibly Seudan. Had a run through the dots, and it's OK: needs to be fiendishly fast to sound its best, but I actually think it's going to be doable (at a more sedate pace).

Moved on to the D. I'm finding that I don't actually need finger tips on the bottom hand. Perhaps because my hands are small flat fingers still work. I'm finding the fingering very comfortable. The only problem is that where my hands are right at the top of the chanter the key feels more intrusive than it does on the A chanter, and the velvet bag cover tends to droop into the way: I need to tuck it back. The other issue is my right wrist sitting up against my bellows. I need to fiddle around and adjust things to stop that. Also having problems getting the straps right this evening, but still I am really enjoying the D. It feels easier to grace well, to play fast: perhaps it's just suiting my small hands. I played various things, noodled a bit, messed up the Battle, dredged up bits of Troy's Wedding that I didn't think I knew. It was good - felt really good.

Then I went back to the A. Bad move. Couldn't get my fingers to readjust at all.

Here is the first recording of the Monkey in D. Not too messy on the start, but struggling to keep up enough pressure on the bag in places, hence the squeaky notes. Also garbling a pair of notes on the B part. A tad too fast, maybe - a little rushed. I wish I had better recording kit to do the Monkey justice (the tinny soundcard on my netbook doesn't help).

Check this out on Chirbit

New tunes

The Monkey was much admired by the band yesterday, but other than a quick tune to show him off I didn't play at all. This evening I've been playing around with the D chanter. The odd thing is that the D feels very comfortable and natural, but going back to the A is proving difficult. Since when was it such a stretch to cover that bottom G? The D isn't without problems: twice I've missed out a finger hole between my D and E fingers. I'm not sure whether to play the D only until I adjust to to flip between the two each time I play. Either way I must get round to getting a recording of the D in action.

I'm still thinking about my June challenge and whether I should perfect (maybe "improve" would be more realistic) old tunes or start on some new ones. I think I'd like to get three or four new ones into the repertoire; the problem,as ever, is finding some. I've been playing The Willows and Ye Banks and Braes for the sake of the high B, but neither tune really grabs me. I've managed to find dots for the South Georgia Whaling Song, which I like a lot and think I will stick with. I've tried Alick Cameron, Champion Piper again this evening. It's fiendish. I'm half inclined not to bother on the grounds that it's clearly a tune for a more competent piper, but on the other hand I'm more likely to stick with a tune I love and I suppose that if I only ever potter on the nursery slopes I'm never going to be the greatest ski-er, as it were. Another in the same category is Troy's Wedding. I started on it a while back and didn't get very far. I can play it at a reasonable pace, but when we were in Edzell Ian played it at a fair old lick and that's when it sounds best. Maybe I could work on getting speed up on that. That would be three - the Wedding has four parts so lots to learn.

June, I should say, is a good month for my challenge as it's Scotland in Colchester month, so plenty of pipes to get me in the mood.

The Monkey's debut

I didn't think I felt like going out yesterday, but I got the Monkey out and the few tunes I tried went well, so I tried the D chanter and got along with that very well. Decided to be brave and take the Monkey to the session. We played the Rowan Tree (A), My Home Town (D), and Flett from Flotta (back to A). All reasonably OK, then I failed to even start the King and made a muddled hash of the Rocks. The two chanters are amazingly easy to flip between: they slide off and on very easily, with a nice cap to cover whichever is "spare".

New shoes

New pipes are like new shoes. You wear your comfortable old shoes to the shoe shop. You try on tightly snug new shoes. They feel very odd indeed, but you know eventually they will be comfortable. You buy your new shoes, and slip your old dependables back on, but they suddenly feel odd, too: loose and sloppy and not at all right.

I tried the Monkey yesterday, without drones and doing lots of practice at keeping the bag going and not touching the bellows. I can get the whole of the A part of the Rocks out in this way. Then it all felt too much so I swapped to Morag, hoping to feel that old comfort that comes from familiarity, and she felt very strange indeed. The oddest thing is that the Monkey, other than his slim and elegant drones, actually feels bigger and heavier than Morag. Bellows felt loose, straps felt loose, and there's no way I could get the Rocks played without more air from the bellows. I quickly gave up. I feel as though I now have two sets of pipes to get to know, and today I've decided to stick to household chores and knitting instead.

Repeat

A repeat of yesterday in more ways than one. Again not feeling quite comfortable. I'd fiddled with straps and where I have the bag exactly, and where the drones sit. My arms feel terribly tired for no apparent reason, and I've been tense playing: neck, shoulder and thumb all now ache. Too much bellows action, which I think does prove that the problem is me and not the pipes (poor maligned Morag!)

I tried standing to play, but that made me feel more tired. I suppose starting a new tune isn't helping because it's something else to concentrate on. Same tune as yesterday, I think better today: I've added more gracing, I've paused awhile on that top B instead of doing a hit and run. I've managed a cleaner finish, but starting is a mess: the drones seem to come in at different times, and then the chanter. Still mucking up the second ending of the A part. I think I also once knocked a finger on the key, which then threw me for the next note.

I did also play Galloway, trying to run through without and then with drones, but need to get faster and cleaner at hitting the switch.


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Down to earth

Struggling a little this evening, failing to feel comfortable. I'm not sure why: I'm not particularly tired. Struggling to get a clean start: everything seems to start from a squeak or a growl before it settles in. In some ways it's helpful, though, because it explodes that little myth I've been hanging on to that somehow Morag was holding me back, when actually Morag is a perfectly decent set of pipes and my faults and failings are mine alone.

Speaking of faults and failings... I've tried The Willows this evening as Vicki covered it on her podcast. She does some sneaky gracing which she doesn't mention at all, but on the plus side she explained how you might play the tune without G sharp and high B. High B I have! I keep making a pig's ear of the second A part ending - I just keep forgetting to skip to the next bars, or I hang aroung at the end of one bar pondering. A couple of times I've forgotten to play AA as instructed and have played AG instead, because that's what the dots say (and serve me right for an over reliance on the dots). Triplets not good. Oh, and ending on B feels all wrong, as does ending without running in to the The Three Ashes, which Vicki and Johnny normally put with the Willows. I find Johnny's tunes catch me out because they often do unexpected things, and I keep playing the expected note, only to find it's the wrong one.

On the positive side I hit that high B each time, without any squawking, albeit in a sort of hurried way, they way you yell "look! Look!" 2 seconds before whatever you're doing ends in disaster...

And as we're on the subject of disaster, I see that the error message that flashed up on the recorder meant that it ate the last bit of the tune. Botheration.


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Getting to know you

I've had the Monkey out again this evening. I'm staring to get used to him. Sometimes when I start up I get a sound something between a fan belt going and gears being crunched: there just seems to be one point at which the pressure is balancing out that does it. The fan got his tuner out and retuned the drones to A and E. I still can't hear the drones singly, but as a set they are fab - the bass drones really resonate, and the full set sounds something like a church organ, somehow.

I've fiddled around with the usual tunes, but also with Ye Banks and Braes (which I used to play on my recorder a million years ago) and The Willows, both being tunes that involve a high B. Playing it took some getting used to. For some reason I kept wanting to hit it with my thumb instead of my little finger, but I'm getting the hang of it, mostly through playing some bits of scales to include it.When I'm not playing it I already find I'm not too aware of it: when I first picked up the Monkey the key felt as thought it was all over the place and getting under my fingers' feet, as it were.

One thing I can't seem to manage is my usual style of ending. Still, this was only the third time I've played the Monkey and it will take us a while to get to know each other.

Bonus tracks tonight because I didn't think I'd recorded at all the first time round so did a second tune. First up is Flett, and the second is Bonnie Galloway. If I hadn't just wanted to get a tune recorded I would have thought to try my drones' switch and play first time round without. Another time, certainly.

Oh - and another random person at work asking if that was me they saw in a pub with a set of pipes. I suppose there is no reason why everyone shouldn't know: I think most people know I knit and have an allotment, but I feel a little shy about it. I am still only a beginner, not a real musician or a real piper yet.

Anyway - enough chat. Here's some music!


Check this out on Chirbit


Check this out on Chirbit

Monkey

I've often thought about this blog post, and what I might say here, but in the end I've decided to leave it to the Monkey to speak.

The tune is My Home Town. I'm adjusting to to the new pipes, I'm very tired, but I'm happy: very happy.

 
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Bukra wba'do

Tomorrow I go to fetch the monkey - my Monkey -  and the blog title that I picked when I moved my blog back in November will finally reflect the reality. The next time I post here there will be three of us: Morag, the Monkey and me. It is only tomorrow only, and the day after.

Doing the maths

I'm not keen on numbers. I have some knitting which is very close to being finished, but which will sit in my my project bag until I get desperate for it, because it requires some simple counting and calculation. Somehow whenever I think of it I find a million other things I'd rather be doing: cleaning the loo, sweeping the fluff from under the sofas...

In a slack period at work today it occurred to me that with a little simple maths I could work out how long I've spent playing pipes, and therefore how far off those fabled 10,000 hours I am. I have 182 posts on this blog. Not every one is tied to a time when I've played, but that's balanced by those times I've played and not blogged. I thought I could take an average of 20 minutes playing time per session. When I first began I couldn't play for long without exhausting myself. Sometimes I do just grab 10 minutes, and sometimes I have my pipes out for an hour or more, but that will include a lot of updating the blog, recording, hunting for tunes, making tea, and won't represent solid playing time. So 20 minutes x 182 blog posts is 3640 minutes, which is (drum roll....fade out) Yes, that's right, a poxy 60 hours. 60 hours over 18 months. I've probably spent more time cleaning my teeth.

Initially I found this very depressing: here am I, hoping to play well, therefore hoping to hit 10,000 hours playing time, and after a year and a half I've still only managed 60 hours. At that rate it's going to take me 250 years to get to 10,000, and even looking at the most optimistic lifespan predictions I may as well give up here and now.

However: I thought again. I've got all this way: memorising tunes, playing recognisable, tuneful tunes that people are happy to listen to and join in with, and I've done all this in just 60 hours. That's only the equivalent of a week and half at work. Think how much further I could get in the next 60 hours! So, it's the same old refrain here: I must practise more.

I played this evening after a trip to the allotment. My hands were too cold, and even when they warmed up they weren't supple enough. Ran through several tunes, but my hands got tighter so I gave up, having added less than 15 minutes to my total playing time...

Throwing down the gauntlet

Yesterday the fan and the fiddle player spent some time talking and drinking red wine, while I sat with my knitting, and after a while we decided to play a few tunes. I played the Tree - somewhat faster than my recent effort, which is really too slow, and the King. I got the King wrong pretty much every time (I blame the wine) but each time I quickly worked out where the fiddle player was and picked up the tune accordingly, which I was very pleased about. The fan says my timing was still not quite right. "But I was waiting for you", I said, so he pointed out that as my accompanist he was waiting for me...

I've been thinking of setting myself another challenge and playing every day for a month again. When I have the Monkey it will surely be no hardship to play every day, and the knitting season is all but done (bar a pair of Christmas mittens - for Christmas gone - that I've only just got hold of the yarn for), and the allotment is so far behind it will be weeks, it feels, before there is anything serious to be done there. If I choose May, and wait until I have the Monkey that will already be a week gone, and then we're away for a week, too. So perhaps I should leave it until June.

If I do challenge myself to another month of playing every day (and I do think February helped) then I need to decide whether to stick to my play list and try to get everything note perfect every time, or whether I should pick say three or four new tunes and set myself to get each one roughly dotless by the end of the month.