Shrunk in the wash

I've spent much of today humming the Atholl Highlanders and thinking what a great tune it is, how very uplifting, and how very long it is since I last played it. Came home determined to play it. I had to wait while the fan talked me through the endless steps of getting the big recorder to do its thing. Got out the A chanter...and hopeless, again. Just feeling as though I could only cover the low G by dislocating my little finger, and most of the rest of the bottom hand seemed to involve dislocating my thumb, and then I couldn't find enough air, and...bleurgh. It just felt as though the chanter was suddenly too big for my hands.

I think the trick is to sit and get ready before I play. I'm like a small child rushing out to play with mother calling after me to come back, tie my shoes laces, put on my coat, but I just can't wait to get out and play, and then half a minute later I'm flat on my face, having tripped over those shoe laces. I need to sit, settle the straps to get them comfortable, twist the chanter around until I can get my hands on it comfortably, fill the bag with air so I've got a good starting point, decide on a tune, breathe, and then play.

So, back to this evening. I went back to D. The fan retuned the drones yet again. I'm now at two As an E and a D and the idea is I block off either A or D depending on chanter. Certainly this makes it easier for me to hear the drones: they stop being just a wall of sound. The problem is that when I say "block off" I mean I tap my finger on the end of the drone, but as soon as my pressure levels change, because I stop playing or whatever, the drone kicks back in.

So, cross, with the fan watching, and more than half an eye on the recorder I recorded Whaling, then redid it to get a better copy. I got distracted by several things, including noting the different ways my fingers seem to move on the D chanter, and the lovely grace noting. (Is it wrong to admire your own playing? There's a fable about vanity somewhere, and I can't remember what the creature's comeuppance was. Later, playing the Highlanders, I kept being distracted by how lovely a particular note or grace note sounded.)

So, distractions led to where-am-I? pauses and wrong notes. It's also too fast, I think - it wants to lilt and roll and sway along. My sheet music says 80bpm, not sure how much faster I am.

Also played the King (still with errors) and managed to remember the Highlanders, just needing the dots to remind me about the fourth part. A bit messy, but doesn't need much work to get it right, hopefully.

That was it. Played for 30 minutes at the end, plus fiddling around with tunes while trying chanter, tuning drones, trying recorder and so on. The recorder a lot of effort and eats up heaps of time. I may aim to record say, once a week, record several tunes, and the master them down and all that malarkey during the week in bits and then posting should be quick.

Hmm - clearly trying to keep blogging to a minimum has led to a backlog of things to say, this seems to be a very long post!!


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