Saturday 31 August 2013

It's a getting closer

I did play yesterday. I felt it went rather well. Feeling comfortable with my pipes (no drones. I know, I know...) Some of my clunky doublings are turning into the merest flutter of finger on chanter. Some of my single graces are barely a breaking of the seal between finger and chanter before closing it up again. They sound good. Oddly this is some gracings and doublings on some tunes: same doubling, different tune and the result may be different.

Still playing about with Trail, Captain and Whaling. I am sure the three will work together, but I need to try different combinations. I probably need to record variations, so I can sit and listen and see which works best.

Still pegging away at Troy. A part is fine, except for the ending. There are several variations of this ending through the tune and I keep picking the wrong one. I had GDE on AAA sussed at one stage, only whenever I play it, it sounds good, but seems to be saying "that's not right", and I have lapsed back into the bad habit of playing GDG. Even without catching what my fingers are doing I can hear that's it's wrong. The second AAA in that part I am mysteriously playing three Gs on. I don't know why.

The B is OK, mostly. The C is coming, but its that pesky run up with high As interspersed because it is two high A's, one, two, one, one, two, instead of a steady one, two, one throughout. I also, and I think it's because I am concentrating on the number or As, keep playing the run up as A, B, C, D, F, E, so the last two notes are backwards.

And the D part...bits, slowly, maybe. But my speed is coming along, too. In fact, I played for a while and then treated myself and switched to D and ran through the tune at a fair old lick.

I think I'm really starting to get the hang of this piping business.

Thursday 29 August 2013

Lost in translation

Yesterday evening I listened to St Kilda Wedding, mostly because I'd been humming The Braes o' Strathblane for a day or two. I'd forgotten that there are some good pipe tunes on the album, and I'd forgotten because they are not played on pipes. They are played on whistles (which is fair enough, I suppose - pipers seem to play whistles from time to time), fiddle, and Irish pipes. The tunes sound faintly familiar and feel oddly wrong played on Uillean pipes. It's like being abroad and catching a programme you know that has been dubbed. Characters you know as American or Cockney or northern are suddenly spouting in French or German or Italian. It's all the familiar faces, but the voices are all wrong. As well as the language they never seem to try to match the tone or timbre of the original actors' voices.

There was a time when I wondered why a band keen on exploring Scottish music would play Irish pipes. I suppose the answer is that St Kilda was recorded in 1978 before smallpipes were revived or reinvented. Although I do wonder why they couldn't have made a go of it with GHB. By the time we reach 1997 and the Carrying Stream (one of my all time favourite albums) we have smallpipes played by Iain MacInnes and made by Ian Kinnear, the Monkey's maker.

I didn't play yesterday. Today I had two minor breakthroughs. The first was finally cracking Trail and Captn, dotless. I tried them with the Whaling Song - the three seem to go quite nicely together. The second was a small patch where I felt as comfortable with the A as I do with D, felt the bellows and bag pliant and soft, tucked close to me and breathing with me. I had it...and then it went. It's like cats. D is the one that will snuggle and cuddle and purr into your face, A will momentarily rest on you under duress, but then with a switch of the tail is out of your arms and gone.

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Times tables

I've been thinking about how many times to play a tune. The session standard hereabouts seems to be three times. I think the point is that it gives fellow sessioneers one time to listen, once to try, and the third time to play along. Then you move on to the next tune in the set.

I suppose different tunes in a set is to do with the link between music and dance. Trad music tunes are short, even played three times round they might be all done and dusted  in 3 minutes, which isn't much of a dance. Presumably playing different tunes rather than the same one over and over keeps things interesting for the musicians, and listeners. I suppose, not being much of a dancer, that the dancers' main interest is the tempo remaining the same.

In Highland pipe band piping the tradition is a little different. There is MSR and medleys, but each tune is played only once or twice through. I guess much here is to do with the fact that it's a performance, and you need to be playing with great accuracy, so the fewer times you play something the less chance there is of making a mistake. Pipes are also very physical, and if you're marching as well...you don't want half the band passed out on the floor before you reach the end of the set.

And what is the tradition for small pipers playing folk music? I've still yet to attend our local Scottish session, but I do know that even in Scotland most of the sessions are Irish, and that most of the pipes will be Irish, too. Perhaps small pipers need to fall in with whatever happens at local sessions, or perhaps, because our repertoire is strange and people don't seem inclined to join in much, we just need to chose our own methods, create our own traditions.

Not going too badly today. Still working on the Captain and the Trail. Home kept morphing into Locahanside and I ended up getting the dots out. Still not feeling totally comfortable with A, with bag and bellows, but getting there.

Monday 26 August 2013

Little and large

I decided this morning to cut loose from the dots with the Trail and the Captn. I'd been idly thinking that I didn't really know those tunes, but then managed to call them into mind so that they went round in my head. I didn't do too badly - bits and bobs, with bits missing and bits misplaced.

This afternoon I've played Trail over and over. Often I find in a tune that there is one note, a repeating note, that I get wrong every time, and I just need to name that note, and then I can remember it. It's a B in the Dragon, a D in Galloway, and a C in the Trail.

But I'm still not comfortable with A. As I've mentioned before it feels like a different instrument, bigger, more robust. I need more air in the bag, more bellows action. I struggle to hold the chanter in a comfortable spot. And this afternoon I just seemed to have too much chest, and it all seemed to be in the way. Still, I persevered. I will be as comfortable with A as I am with D. It's just going to take time.

I wish I knew, though, how people flip between similar instruments of different size; different sized whistles, say, or mandolin and bouzouki, as the fan does. Maybe having a different repertoire for each helps split them in your mind.

I need to think what the call this switching and adjustment; I need a blog label for it, because this isn't the first time I've written about it and it certainly won't be the last.

Sunday 25 August 2013

How can you have any pudding?

When I was at primary school there was a rule that you couldn't go up and queue for pudding until you'd finished your main course. I don't think we had to clear our plates entirely, and it may have been the vegetables that we were really to eat as I distinctly remember pushing green vegetables of some sort under a scoop of that awful, almost slimy (but containing mysterious crystalline lumps) mashed potato, which also had to be bashed about to look eaten.

It was the same at home. A request for pudding, even a piece of fruit, would be met with the standard "finish what's on your plate first". My parents, and presumably those who made the rules at school, grew up in wartime and knew the value of food.

I suppose I inherited the waste not want not approach to life. I go to the farm shop each week and I calculate roughly what meals I'll cook in the week and I buy just what I need to make those. Food waste makes me miserable, although knowing it can feed the worms, which in turn feed my allotment, helps.

The point it that I don't like to start one thing until I've finished another. I do this a little with knitting. I won't cast on a proper big project (although I have my eye on one) until I've finished the long abandoned cardigan. Socks, baby items and mittens don't count as actual projects in this world view...

I have some unfinished tunes. Troy is close, but not there yet. The Fiddler and Alick languish, to be honest, barely touched on the side of my musical plate. But I can see other tunes that make my mouth water. I've been listening to Springwell again: I rather like pipe tunes played on strings. I want to play Balmacara,Oh! But will you come to town and, my current favourite, Heroes of St Valery. I can't find Heroes or Will You. Balmacara is by Donald McLeod and according to a Canadian site is in volume 5 of his books. The listing for the same title on Footstompin doesn't include it. So I think I need to look at the books in the flesh. I wonder if Nicholson's open on bank holidays...  

Saturday 24 August 2013

A you're adorable

I've gone back to A today, after a brief farewell fling with D. I've got 9 whole days without work and I'm hoping to get to know the A again over that time.

It took about a tune and half to remember where my fingers went. My bottom hand isn't sitting totally clean on the holes, especially that low G. My right thumb got a bit tense - sometimes I worry that I will snap the chanter in half - but I made a conscious effort to relax my hands and slid my thumb down the chanter and inch or two, which helped.

I'm finding that if things aren't quite comfortable I am actually able to make some adjustments while I am playing. One thing that has to be right before I play is the bellows - I can't get away with a loose strap with A as I don't get enough air through. It is the air pressure that's the challenge. Bag and bellows seem to be rubbing the insides of my arms raw. My shoulders feel tense. I'm hunching a little, and also pressing the bellows down on my hip bones.

But I'll get there, back into the swing of A. And its worth it - that big, deep, rich sound, full and rounded. Adorable.

Wednesday 21 August 2013

Play list update for August

Finally I feel it's time to add some titles to my play list. I'm a little worried because several tunes seem to be falling off the bottom. I'm not sure if that's because actually I didn't really like them as much as I like the new tunes, or whether it's just what I happen to feel like playing at the moment - Bonnie Galloway, for instance has usurped The Rowan Tree as my go to tune for when I have no brain or just want to feel totally relaxed when playing. My worry is that I will only ever be able to remember a dozen tunes and the more I cram in one end the more they will fall out the other...

Tunes I can play without dots
  • The Atholl Highlanders (rare) 
  • Banks of Allen (very rare)
  • Battle of the Somme
  • Battle of Waterloo (rare)
  • Bonnie Galloway (my current go to tune)
  • The Boy's Lament for His Dragon (with a tendency to go to fast and garble it)
  • The Barren Rocks of Aden (same problem as the Dragon)
  • Castle Dangerous
  • Eagle's Whistle (very rare)
  • Flett from Flotta (I play this a lot)
  • The Highland Brigade at Magersfontein
  • The March of the King of Laoise (Still lets me down from time to time...)
  • My Home Town
  • The Rowan Tree
  • South Georgia Whaling Song
  • Teribus (the mice currently love this)

Tunes almost there
  • Capt Angus L MacDonald
  • Leaving Barra (ha, ha, ha)
  • Lochanside (remember this? It seems to go well with the Highland Brigade...)
  • Over the Cabot Trail
  • Troy's Wedding (A and B I have, C is nearly there, D part needs some work)

Tunes I am actively learning
  • Alick C McGregor
  • The Shetland Fiddler

I'm surprised to see that, checking over the tunes I've recorded, the only tunes on my play list  haven't done are Atholl (which I recorded about a million times on the previous blog and lost), Castle Dangerous. Shetland Fiddler and Leaving Barra (which is odd - I could have sworn I had done that one).

I feel I need some more new tunes to learn....

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Folk in the 80s

I've been listening to Canterach again. It's a bit like the shepherd pipes CD in that the music is good, the tunes and the musicians are good, but there is a lot of percussion, bass lines, and general background stuff that I could live without.

It reminds me a little of the Mozart in the 70s LP my parents had. In many ways it was dire, but the beauty of Mozart shone through, and when I got to hear proper Mozart, as it were, it felt familiar and was easy to get to know and like. I suppose the same goes for the snippets of "proper" poetry that were in the books of verse for children I had when I was small. It meant that when I came across a full poem by Tennyson or Longfellow or Shelley I wasn't thrown by the patterns and rhythms - they felt vague familiar and sometimes I'd find a couplet or a verse that I really did know from my reading. So hopefully Canterach made it easier for some people to move from a rock/pop version of Scottish traditional music to the real thing. It all sounds rather 80s - I'm amazed it's dated 2001...

Nothing can spoil the beauty of the Highland Brigade at Magersfontein, my favourite track. Nor does anything spoil the beauty of James Duncan Mackenzie's playing and his choice of tunes on his eponymous CD. I really love the Heights of Dargai, and long to play it but the dots don't seem to match up at all. I could understand it if the tune was a Reel by Anon, but as it's a named tune by a known composer it's all rather odd.

Monday 19 August 2013

Cabot trail

A long weekend, and what with various social activities, a spot of gardening and the usual chores, I somehow haven't played as much as I'd envisaged. I'm also being distracted by my current reading. However, I did manage to play on Friday and I actually recorded.

This is my first try at Nova Scotian music. It's a pair of tunes that happened to be on the one page of my book. I muddle the start because the only difference between the opening bars of the two tunes is the timing.

The tunes are Over the Cabot Trail, by Donald A Beaton, and Capt Angus L MacDonald, by PM Fraser Holmes. The Cabot Trail is interesting for its very limited gracing, and what little there is is very simple, with only the odd doubling or grip. I fluff the end of the A part of Angus each time, for no particular reason.

This is the Monkey in D, with no drones. See endless comments on previous posts about lack of drones... This morning I started humming one of these tunes (although I'm not sure which). They are lovely tunes, but very clearly not Scottish tunes, which perhaps makes it harder to remember: they aren't quite following the expected patterns.



Check this out on Chirbit

Thursday 15 August 2013

Close, but no cigar

Yesterday I was persuaded by the fan to accompany him to one of his favourite sessions, at the Nightingale. It's a bit of a way to go for a spot of music, but the music is very good, the natives are friendly and welcoming and the Guinness is decent. An all round very nice pub.

I played Tree, Galloway and Whaling, but was beset again by stage fright, making my hands shake, which means I miss, garble or mangle notes. Still, I managed to keep going to the end each time. I tried thinking about how nice everyone in the pub was, I tried thinking about the tunes, I tried thinking about my breathing, I tried listening intently to my pipes. This is a bad move: stage fright seems to affect my hearing and the drones sounded odd and the chanter reed squeaky, and I know they weren't because the fan would have said. The more I listened the more I heard wobbles caused by shaking hands, which made me feel worse.

I tried looking at the fan and I also tried some staring into the middle distance and closing my eyes in a Kathryn Tickell sort of way. I drank more Guinness. That seemed to help a bit. I'd like to say it got better with each tune, but it doesn't, because knowing I've got stage fright makes me nervous that I'll really make a hash of things.

I was assured that no-one but me spotted that I was a nervous wreck. Considering I can do public speaking without batting an eyelid - I've spoken off the cuff to a conference in the past - it's irritating, to say the least, to get so nervous about playing a few tunes with a few folk. Am hoping I'll grow out of it.

The Kathryn Tickell-ishness must have showed, as I was asked on the way out if I was playing "those Northumbrian small pipes".  Well, they're certainly small pipes...

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Catch

The thing with tunes is that no matter how much I like them and how often I listen to them the process of them working their way into my personal internal playlist is often painfully slow. I’ve known Troy’s Wedding forever (it’s on Borders), and I’ve been playing it for a couple of months at least, but only occasionally do I find that it’s in my head: normally I have to think hard to conjure it up.

The Heights of Dargai is something else, though. As far as I know I first came across it when I was looking to tunes to play with Somme and Magersfontein. I probably listened to the midi, which is always only a general suggestion of a tune and not a real tune, to my mind, and I may have found a YouTube clip, but that’s it. It can’t even have appealed to me that much, because I haven’t printed myself a copy of the dots and I don’t recall having tried to play it.

When JDM’s CD arrived I recognised the name, and the moment it came on I was humming along as if to a tune I know really well. I’ve been humming it ever since. So it’s all the odder when it looks as though it isn’t even the Heights of Dargai I looked at before. Is this some major change in my brain that it has developed an ability to remember a tune I’ve only heard once or twice, or do I actually know it from somewhere else, or is this simply the catchiest tune in the world?

(I wrote this post this morning...this evening I couldn't hum a note of the blasted tune if my life depended on it....)

Counting the hours

I've done some adding up. I'm not sure that I've always reported on the blog what I've noted in my diary, but since the end of June I've added another 16 and a half hours, giving a grand total of 94 and a half. So five and a half hours more and I will have played for 1% of that 10,000. Time to stop counting.

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Clock watching

I've been making a note of when I play and how long for. But it's odd, because other than at work, where lunchtime and home time are the two highlights of my day, I'm not a clock watcher. Generally I start something I fancy doing (visiting the plot, reading a book, doing some knitting) and I stop when I've had enough, or something aches, or I remember something pressing I ought to be doing.

I sometimes wish I'd had more time to do something, or very rarely feel I ought to have done more (when I've left the allotment still looking weedy and untidy, or I am knitting for a baby that's likely to arrive before the knitting is done) but generally I just do as much as I want. Why not with pipes?

I think it's to do with the mythical 10,000 hours for mastery, and then my recent discovery that I'd put on a spurt and leapt from 60 hours to nearly 80.

I felt then I'd like to make it to 100, which would feel like a bit of a milestone. I'll have a tot up, but really, I must stop clock watching and just play.

For the record, just 20 minutes today as I was on kitchen duty. I played A - I must play more often. I must also get back to drones. I had them off while I was learning tunes, but am just sticking to playing without, which isn't good.

Saturday 10 August 2013

Milestones

I've been rather bad on this blog at noting milestones. Maybe I've been too busy rushing ahead to the glorious future, in which I am a real piper, to notice the road along the way. I did. of course, note the arrival of the Monkey, but I still don't know when Morag's birthday is. I've even passed 100 blog post, 200 blog posts, over 2000 pageviews (hello world!) without marking those milestones in any way.

I'm atoning slightly today. I've added "milestones" as a post label, noting my first session, first tune by heart etc. I'm also going to say that it's about three years since I first bought my practice chanter. I say "about" because it was August, and we were in Edinburgh, but I don't know the exact dates. I'm not sure how or why I ended up in the shop or why I let the fan persuade me into buying a goose. I ended up using just the chanter from it, later upgrading my chanter when I felt this was something I would stick at. When did I reach that milestone? Who knows...

Thursday 8 August 2013

Digestif

It's not generally a good move to play after dinner. It's even worse when dinner includes wine, which it tends to, when the fan is on holiday. Yesterday I struggled on through 30 minutes of failing to recall new tunes. Today I gave up after 10 minutes.

It's not just the recall, it's the lack of comfort: bellows that seem to fail to create enough air, and that hit the nerve in my wrist to make my fingers numb; bellows strap that acts as a tourniquet on my upper arm; bag that crushes my chest and deflates the moment I add pressure. It's not the pipes, it's me.

It's partly having to go to the plot and spend time there before dinner, on days when I'm not actually doing the cooking, so I don't have time and am hot and tired. Partly, maybe, it's work being so bad at the moment it colours my mood for everything else.  I want to play, but I'm not in the right frame of mind, especially not after dinner.

Tuesday 6 August 2013

Raising the bar

Back from our holiday. I spent the whole time humming Magersfontein, and thought a lot about my pipes. I was worried that I would have forgotten how to play, but I slipped right back into it, all my tunes and everything. Yesterday I played for an hour and 40 minutes, broken into three sessions so I didn't tire my arms, but actually it was all very comfortable.

It occurs to me that I'm being harsh on myself in not updating my play list. There was a time where if I could rush through a tune, A and B parts once only, without having to check the dots, even if I had to adjust mistakes or have big pauses to think in, then I considered it learnt and added it to the list. Now I feel I must be able to play the entire tune through three times over without hesitation, deviation or repetition every single time I try to play it, before I consider it learnt. I suppose the better you get at something the higher your expectations are.

I'm enjoying reading the Barry Shears book and learning lots about Scotland, Canada, emigration, piping families and so on. Am slightly frustrated that he doesn't pick up on the pictures. There are lots of them and they show pipers (nearly all men) holding pipes in so many different ways. Bag under the left arm  or the right arm; left or right hand uppermost  on the chanter; chanter way off to the side, slap in front, held very high or very low. Presumably it was the formality of piping bands that called for everyone to hold pipes the same way. I wonder if different ways of holding affected the sound.

There is also just one very short section on female pipers, mostly briefly biographies of two particular women, but no indication of what the men, or indeed, other women thought about this. Was it accepted or frowned upon? Were there many women pipers? Were there many women musicians? Lots of unanswered questions.

Hopefully back soon with more recordings. I've got several long weekends coming up, so plenty of time to play, record and blog!