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.