Size matters

I sat on the sofa the other evening working on my latest knitting project which calls for me to switch back and forth between needle sizes. It's not a huge jump, only 2mm difference, but each time it takes me a moment or two and maybe a few stitches to get the tension sorted and get back into my rhythm.

Yes, that's right, after well over 30 years of knitting it still takes me a moment or two to adjust between needle sizes. This is pattern is unusual in switching between needles. Normally you might start with a smaller set and move on to a slightly larger set. More often I'll move between say, the cardigan I have stuck in my work bag (4.5mm needles) and a pair of socks (2.75mm) and when I make the switch it always feels odd, as if my hands are the wrong size, but after a moment or two everything feels comfortable again.

Which is all by way of saying that really it's not surprising that it takes me, after less than 6 months of having combination pipes, a tune or two to adjust to a change of chanter size. Today I moved up to A. The Rowan Tree went well. I got stuck on the King, and after going round a bit moved on to Galloway and the Farewell, both of which were fine, so I think in the end it was the King that was more of a problem than the actual chanter.

Today's play means that, apart from the day when I was in Glasgow, I have played every day this month, plus a bit, as I played for 8 out of 9 days running up to the month. And I do feel as though I've improved again, and I don't much feel like I need a break from it.

I've been humming the Somme recently (I've been listening to Mr MacLeod) and I should try to revive that. I was having problems with the transition from the B part back to the A, so haven't played it much. I am working on Brose and Butter. Troy's Wedding is close. I've been listening to The Big Spree and Tryst lately, and both feature The Snuff Wife. I rather fancy giving that one a try.

Miss Muggins' Jilly

Have I really not blogged since last Sunday? It's been a busy week... Despite my silence here I have actually been playing every day, except, as I rather expected, yesterday. Glasgow and back in a day was very straightforward, and rather tiring.

Glasgow was as good as I remembered from last time, even on a flying visit on a grey, dull day. It was busy, somehow lively and laid back at once, with lots of people about, but everyone seemingly relaxed and unhurried. Sauchiehall Street, seen from the restaurant in John Lewis, was a treetop walk leading down to twin towers at the end. Admittedly it's not so picturesque when you walk it. There were lots of buskers out, mostly with guitars and amps. Some rock, some blues, all sorts. There was even, on Sauchiehall, a man with a fiddle playing a traditional Scottish tune. He stopped as we reached him, and I didn't feel I could wait for him to strike up again. Not a single piper, however - very different from my last visit.

I had a conversation at cross purposes with a colleague in the taxi from the airport. I was explaining that I'd first come to Glasgow in search of the piping, and she was wondering why I was so interested in plumbing supplies...

So, arrived back not too late, but tired, and I did think of having one tune on the chanter, just not to break the promised that I haven't ever quite made this month. Useful as it has been to push myself to play every day, it's artificial and really 5 minutes tired play doesn't count as useful practice. I'm finally feeling that I play because I enjoy it, not because I feel I must practice (not that I don't need to practice more!)

I've started on a new tune today. Listening to Breabach in the car has reminded me what a fun tune Brose and Butter is. I know it also from Tryst, where it sits with My Home Town. It's also on Ossian's eponymous album, where it appears as a song. It's ridiculously simple, fun to play, and because I already know it  I am picking bits up already and hope to go dotless sooner rather than later.

The tune goes by several other, perhaps more, interesting names: Peacock Follow the Hen, Yellow Stockings, Mad Moll and Cuddle Me Cuddy are all listed on The Session as variants. But the dots I printed give it as Uilleam's Callum's Morag, which is presumably a way of identifying a small child through identifying her father and grandfather, in the days when Morag was a tad more popular than it is now.

Wedding jitters

I'm in a fractious mood at present. It's partly the time of year: the usual feeling that summer has gone, that I've somehow wasted it; the realisation that it will be months before the light evenings return; a nostalgia for (mythical) summers passed. There are also various potential changes ahead that are both exciting and disconcerting.

I've hoped that piping would help me snap out of this mood, and it has improved things a little, but not given me the real lift that I needed. I'm still trying to flip between A and D, between drones on and off drones. Today I stuck with D and only used drones for some tunes.

I haven't blogged every day but I have still played every day so far and am inclined now to push through to the end, except it may be taken out of my hands because I have to go to Glasgow on Thursday, where I will be tantalisingly close to the National Piping Centre, and I'm expecting to get back very late and very tired. We'll see.

Back to today, and Troy's Wedding, still droneless as I am still learning it. I was pleased to find I could play the bulk of it dotless, other than the 8 first bars of the D part which I mysteriously missed out altogether. It went so well I thought I'd record...this is about the fourth take when I knew each take was just going to get worse as I got steadily crosser with my inability to play.

First off, it's not as fast as I thought I was going, although in my defence, I did start slow in the hope of mucking up less than on previous attempts. My G finger got over exited and inserted a number of superfluous G doublings. My F finger got slightly sticky and mucked up some notes. The bag cloth wasn't pulled back properly and kept obscuring the thumb hole, making gracing on high A difficult. I pick my way through bits I pretty much almost know and then make a hash of the following bars which I definitely know. Comparison recording here from 2 months ago. More work needed.



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Auld acquaintance

I started with the chanter this evening, trying the Congress Reel that the fan has printed out for me, then A, with and without drones, then D, mostly without drones because they were out of tune.

I decided to go through my collection of dots for tunes I supposedly know. Very rusty with some. Some I felt I really should dust off and play more (Teribus, Barren Rocks),some I had forgotten how much I liked (Highlanders) and some I actually wondered why I had ever bothered (Waterloo, Banks, Castle). Hopefully I'll always know these tunes, but I feel I've moved on from some of them, our paths don't cross like they used to, we'll go our separate ways.

Mixing it up

I played in A this evening, with and without drones and with some or all drones. It's surely not that long since I last played A, but drones took some getting used to again. I actually made the finger adjustment quickly, and I think it would have been quicker only I was fresh form the allotment (as it were) and my hands were cold and damp.

I played the Farewell, mostly, then swapped to D, with drones, for the Farewell, without drones to work through Magersfontein which I love but which is unreliable, to say the least. Then Troy. A, B and C reasonably - A and B at a good speed. C still proving much harder and then I fiddled about and managed the second half of the D part. The last four bars are the same as the last four of the repeat of the B, and the rest I had got by dint of repeating two bars over and over yesterday. The remaining two are one of the repeated endings. There really are only four bars left to get, which I have been repeating over and over, mostly on my chanter. I'm enjoying having my chanter back.

I also tried to pick up The New House in St Peter's, without a huge amount of success - I perhaps got the first few bars. The fan suggests putting the CD in the car and setting it on repeat as I travel to work and back.

The long engagement

I was idly reading some old blog posts earlier and I note that I have been working on Troy's Wedding since March. Yes, really - March - over six months ago. And I can't have started then because I'm already talking about being able to pick out a few notes. So why is it that all this time later I still only have the A and B, the C sometimes, and bits of the D? I think I'm probably faster at playing it with dots, but it's not a spectacular speed. It's not what you'd call serious progress.

The fan says its not an easy tune to learn, but six whole months, when I can can polish off a short Breton tune in a matter of days? Even taking into account the higher complexity of longer tunes it's utterly infuriating and frustrating that I can't pick this up. I will. I will persevere. I'll get this darned reluctant tune to the altar, one of these days.

Distracted

I have, at long last, got round to making a header for the blog. It's not quite what I had envisaged because it's the wrong shape, really, but otherwise I'm quite pleased with it. The picture shows the lovely Morag on the left, with her boxwood mounts and handy pegs for blocking off drones. On the right is the, frankly bling-ier Monkey, with his lovely hand engraved silver mounts, his D chanter, on which you can see the E key. You can also just about see the very handy drones switch down on the stock. A handsome pair, I think you'll agree.

The rest of the picture includes some of my favourite CDs, some music, and some hints of my various distractions - a cookery book, a baking book and utensils, general reading, and some allotment bits and a small knitting project I've just begun on.

 Looking at my labels word cloud I see that more posts are tagged with "distractions" than anything else, so I thought they deserved a post of their own. (I'm also surprised, and glad, to see that I've tagged more posts as "progress" than "whinge".)

Distractions are anything that stop me playing pipes, so are basically also known as "life". My biggest, and least welcome, distraction, is work. It's a double edged sword. If I didn't have to work I would have more time to do all the things I want to do. If I didn't go to work I wouldn't have the money for pipes, seeds, plants, yarn, fabric...

Outside work I have a home to run. This involves cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing and so on. None of which gets done particularly well or particularly often (with the exception of cooking), but there's still rather a lot of it.

I also have not really essential household chores that I choose to do, and love. This covers making all my own bread, baking cakes and biscuits, making chutney and jam.

The allotment is seasonal and there are several months in the year when I don't visit at all, but it still takes up lots of thinking time. The plot exists in its own time zone. I can't think why else it is that when I pop down for 20 minutes I get back to find I've been gone for well over an hour...

Knitting is a constant for me. I always have something on the go, even if it is only a pair of socks. Sewing - dressmaking, quilting and needlepoint - I do on more of a faddy basis as and when the urge takes me. I've done a lot of needlepoint over the last month

I follow tennis intermittently. Well, I say tennis, it's really Andy Murray. I do also listen to The Archers, although generally only in the winter and usually while  am cooking, so it doesn't eat up any extra time in itself.

Oh, and I read. A lot. All sort of books, many of them, at the moment, recommendations from The Captive Reader. I also follow blogs that cover knitting, and quilting, and piping... Not to mention keeping this blog up to date.

Throw in a few crosswords, some sessions, a rather limited social life, time with the fan and a paltry seven hours sleep a night and it's a wonder I ever find time to play pipes at all.

Moving on

Yesterday I did another pre-session warm up. Monkey in A with drones. Not going well. All the usual complaints. The session went sedately round with each taking their turn, and I skipped my first turn. Second time round I played Flett - in D. It was OK. Some nerves: I've played in the venue before, and I knew some of the people. I guess having another piper there makes me more nervous: she's going to spot every last mistake. But I played on through my mistakes, fudged over them, finished in one piece.

A bit later on I tried the Whaling Song. I did it because I was asked to play - Vicki had not long played a corker of a set including Troy's Wedding and I was feeling musically humbled (not to say depressed). It went down well, though, and I reduced my fluff rate, other than spectacularly missing out an entire B part repeat...

I was going to call it quits then, because it was late, but as people started to drift away I thought I'd have one last go with the Rowan Tree, quietly, on my own, with no one noticing. The fan joined in on bouzouki, as he always does, but I also had some percussion, a nyckelharpa, a flute, a fiddle and piano accordion pitching in. And it was great! Everything went well, I could hear the music clearly, I was able to look around at people, I kept my nerve, it sounded good, and I really enjoyed it.

Glitch over, I think. Let's move on.

Droning on

I decided to have a bit of a play before the session today, mostly to help me acclimatise to drones. I stuck with D, to make life easier. It felt strange, the drones sounded so loud and I struggled to play any tune without errors. I kept wanting just to flip them off so I could concentrate on getting the tunes right. I persevered, but I didn't have any of that comfort and confidence that I've had before. I'm not sure how or when or why I lost that. Was it because I stopped playing so much over July and August, or is it because I've not given myself a break from it for a while?

The session was very small today, and I felt a bit exposed, perhaps, and a bit out of of practice at playing in public. I also worried that I wouldn't feel comfortable with my drones, and I know I ended up relying too much on the bellows. I also worried that my tunes would let me down, and even resorted to dots, as several other had, there were very few people there, and  I really wanted to play my Nova Scotia set.

As it happened I played, I felt a little nervous, and then I heard my drones, and it was like the moment at an uncomfortable party when you spot a friendly face in the crowd and suddenly realise it's going to be OK. I was comforted by their presence.

I didn't play my best. I wasn't fluent enough. My timing wasn't consistent. I was very thin on gracing. My fingers weren't light enough on the chanter. The fan says I really need sets - a single tune ends with an anticlimax. But I'm still not finding tunes that work together and at a session I'm afraid of fluffing and the more tunes I play the greater the scope for fouling things up. Nor do I want to outstay my welcome, musically speaking. The fan will play three tunes in a set, but he plays a lot faster than me. I don't want to feel I'm putting people through 6 or 7 minutes of musical purgatory.

I must get back to those previous levels of comfort. I must become more consistent. I need to know my tunes even better: I need to know that they won't let me down, that I will always get every last note right. I need sets. I need to get better at moving between A and D.

Most of all I think I have to relax and stop fretting. I just need to play and enjoy.

The long and short of it

The problem with long tunes is not just the length: they are also more varied than short tunes. So, to take a few random examples, a short tune might have 16 bars (eight each in the A and B parts) of which nine are unique. That would be Cabot, for example. The Captain has ten unique bars. Flett and Dragon have, I think (the layout of my copies is poor) 12 unique bars. Magersfontein actually only has one repeated bar. But when I say "unique" there might only be a variant of one note.

Then there are the long tunes. Troy has 44 bars, if you count the second time round variations as new bars, which they are. Twenty five of those little blighters are unique. Castle Grant also has around 44 (some of this depends on whether or not you count the lead in notes in bars on their own). I can't face counting unique bars, but there will be many. Longer tunes also have more of those almost repeated bars, and they might have several variants of the almost repetition, so you then have to remember which you need each time. Throw in the fact that you stop repeating straight A parts and B parts but instead have second endings on some parts and the level of complexity ratchets up a notch or two.

I wish there was something in between, but I suppose if I persevere then eventually I will start to learn long tunes by heart.

I've been humming tunes a lot, including, rather oddly, Banks, which I've not played in ages.

While I'm on a run of things I've not done in ages I have actually recorded. I've also gone back to drones. It's too long since I played with them. A mix of worrying abut annoying new neighbours upstairs and learning tunes. The neighbours are away for some weeks and the chanter is back in action for learning on, so I must get back to them. It took the fan ages to tune them up and then they sounded too loud, too droney, and the D (I thought I'd treat myself and play the D today) sounded squeaky, harsh, unfamiliar.

I felt a little short of air, drones wavering. I had half an eye on dots, but the drones distracted me. Still, I think I carry on smoothly after each mistake. It seems a little fast and I think the slower tunes are perhaps better on the A. Oh, and although the fan's fancy new software allowed me to snip off the mangled start I moved straight from mangling into the tune proper so it starts rather abruptly. Still, here it is, MacIntyre's Farewell by Barry W Shears.


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Not inhaling

I've sort of, kind of, maybe, played yesterday and today. Today I've had the chanter out. My lungs feel fit to burst. By fidgeting around with chanter in the middle of my mouth, our to the left, out to the right, blowing my cheeks out, keeping them flat, I've managed not to lose my lip too soon.

Yesterday I didn't have time to get the pipes out before the band arrived, then they decided to sit around having a long discussion about chord sequences (yawn) and I didn't like to play in case I disturbed them. So I blew very gently in the chanter, enough to hear notes, but not enough to bother the band. Almost practising, but somehow not quite.

I can still play MacIntyre and even bits of Castle Grant are coming, which is very exciting. I've been humming that all day. Like other longer (more than two parts) tunes I've worked on it is difficult to follow as a sequence, so I get various bits that repeat and repeat, but I'm not sure how they go together. I also find that the way longer tunes are laid out on the page it's harder to spot when the end of this part is identical to the end of that part and so on. I guess the answer is that I should hear those, but when variations can be quite subtle I don't yet find it easy.

I'm feeling that I'm more able to recognise quickly a a tune in my head. I can deliberately hum a tune. I can stop a tune in my head and move on to another. I really feel that I am more in control of my musical memory.

Still moving in the right direction and feeling a the moment as though I am putting on a real spurt of growth.

Having such a good time

I started off with the usual drill this evening. Tired, headachey, disinclined to do much. After dinner I thought I might mess about with my newly invigorated chanter for a bit. That was fun, except I very quickly lost my lip. This is the trumpet name for it: I don't know what you call it on a practice chanter. It's not exactly lip, more the muscles along the lower jaw, but once they're gone that's the fun over for the evening, like it or not.

I thought I'd drag out my pipes, just for five minutes, because I felt I was very close to playing MacIntyre's Farewell by heart and I wanted to try it.

The pipes felt a little odd as I strapped myself in. I did have a close look at the bellows trying to pinpoint what what was odd, but I couldn't see anything. It wasn't until I was ready to go with my hands on the chanter that I realised I had Morag instead of the Monkey. She felt like an old friend and, apart from her usual bad habits (needing ridiculous amounts of air, flipping out the connector tubes at inconvenient moments), we got on well. She has a softer, less vibrant sound than the Monkey, a little quieter too, I think.

And I did it! I played Farewell by heart, not just once, but round and round. There are perhaps three places where I sometimes have to backtrack to get the right note, or pause to find it, but find it I do, every time. Admittedly it's just two parts, and on closer inspection only has seven unique bars, but nevertheless, I have learned it from a total standing start (because it's not even one I'd ever heard before) in seven days. Serious progress: a real milestone.

Happy? You betcha!

PHOP

Knitters have a concept called PHOP, or pennies per hours of pleasure. The idea is that you take a pattern from a charity website and the amount you give reflects the hours of pleasure you anticipate getting from that pattern. Patterns give pleasure in various layers. First there is the pleasure of imagining the lovely finished article in various different yarns, browsing yarn stores and eventually buying the yarn, then there are the various hours spent knitting your item, and finally the pleasure of wearing it, or giving it away. Patterns are always money well spent.

It's not unlike the concept of cost per wear for clothes, where you divide the cost of an article of clothing by the number of times you wear it to get the actual cost. So £250 pounds worth of lovely linen jacket that you wear all summer long for five years in a row (yes, writing from experience here) is actually better value than £80 of jacket that you wear twice and then leave to gather dust in the wardrobe.

Why am I talking about clothes and knitting? I was thinking about the large amounts of money I spent on my Monkey. I already had a set of pipes, so I didn't exactly need another. I also paid for extra keys, which I haven't yet used, and silver engraved mounts, which make precisely no difference at all to the way it plays or sounds. It was a large outlay. But when you think how often I've played those pipes since May, of the absolute pleasure I've had from playing those pipes, well they start to look like a real bargain.

The pipes had this usual uplifting effect this evening. Picking out a bit of a tune and wondering what it was I discovered it was part of the Shetland Fiddler, which I've abandoned of late, Clearly it would like to come back.

I was going to add to the hours of pleasure for this blog post by attaching a recording. I recorded McIntyre's Farewell. It's lovely and I'm so pleased with how it's going. I playing it smoothly and fluently, glossing over the minor errors, not pausing between repeats or sections. I'm already humming it, already picking out bars, and I only first played it through a week ago. It went so well I thought I'd do Castle Grant while I was at it, as that's also just early read through stage, but sounding good.

Then as I went to master the first tune I got a "card full" message. Duly deleted two tunes I'd left on, tried again, same problem. Now I know why the fan was keen for me to get a second sound card. He didn't mean that I was filling it up - he meant that he had.

Commitment issues

There are people, apparently, who are happy to hang out with someone and sleep with them, but just don't want to be introduced to family or friends or be referred to as that person's significant other, or have that person call them, ever. I'm starting to feel like just such a cad. I've played every day so far this month, but I just can't bring myself to say that I am going to continue for the rest of the month.

I think it's partly that I played for 8 days out of 9 before the month began, so am actually looking at more than a month in total of playing every day. I'm also feeling low in energy and enthusiasm generally, and although playing actually gives me a boost it's finding the mental energy to pick up my pipes to get that boost that's proving a bit of a barrier. Which all comes down to the fact that I don't like to fail - I don't want to say I'll play every day this month in case I can't actually manage it.

Playing today not as good as previous the two days, but going well, nevertheless. I made it to Nicholson's today to get a new reed for my practice chanter. They didn't have the Seaforth Highlanders in stock, but were happy to order it in for me. Did I play with a band, they asked. No, I said, I'm a smallpiper. It felt a bit reckless, somehow, to tell a piper that I am a piper, rather than say that I am learning the pipes. I'm a smallpiper, I said. Sounds like commitment to me.

A recipe for happiness

Take one long and tedious week, stuffed with boredom and frustration. Sprinkle liberally with end of week lethargy and garnish with the sort of headache that comes with crunching noises in your neck. Add one small black velvet Monkey in D and a collection of tunes, new and old. Apply for one hour.

It works a treat. The only reason I'm not bouncing off the walls in total ecstasy is that when I played Troy fast and furious the recorder wasn't on, and when the recorder was on my playing wan't fast and furious. We all have our off moments.

The fan says I'm almost up to full playing speed and asked how it felt. It feels slightly scary, as if I'm not quite in control or very close to skidding out of control. I'm also finding that although the very small finger movements needed on the D means I can go fast it also means that it takes very little to mess those movements up. If my hands get too warm and slightly damp it means when I lift my finger just the smallest amount it isn't enough to sound the note change.

McIntyre's Farewell is coming on nicely - it really is a lovely tune. Maybe I'll record that this weekend.

Just one more

Still not decided about playing every day. For various reasons my enthusiasm levels in general are not what they usually are, and I get home in the evenings not feeling inclined to do anything much, but once I drag the Monkey out and get going it feels good and I keep thinking I'll play just one more tune.

I played in A and D today. The D felt impossibly small at first, but I adjust to it so much faster than to A. I managed a real speed on Troy. Fiddled around with The Braes of Castle Grant (which I know from Gabe McVarish's playing), and MacIntyre's Farewell, by Barry Shears. I wish I could find recordings of Barry's' tunes as I'm not totally confident about getting the timings right. However, this is a nice tune, I'm enjoying playing it.

Still having problems with My Home Town morphing into Lochanside if I don't stay alert when I'm playing. Playing the King a lot, too.

The fan says I was sounding very fluent this evening, and I was certainly enjoying it. I may even play again tomorrow.

Marching on

I've still not decided one way or the other whether to play every day this month, but I got the Monkey out today, just in case. It was a bit of a rush. It's been warm today, and is supposed to be warmer still for the next two days, so I really wanted to get down to the plot and do some watering, but the evenings are drawing in and the jobs that need daylight need doing sooner rather than later. I got dinner on the go, rushed out, rushed back, got dinner in the oven and then, because I clearly don't have enough distractions and because there was room to push my stress levels higher, I reorganised a kitchen drawer. It's possibly a girl thing, and possibly it's just me...

When I got the Monkey out the stress and rush melted away, and I just wish I'd had longer to play. I picked my way through some tunes in Barry's book. Pretty much everything I play at the moment is a march. They tend to be reasonably straightforward and not too fast, so good for a beginner. Flicking through the book I stuck to trying out marches. These are Nova Scotian marches, however, not Scottish ones, and the difference is clear. The timings are odd, they do unexpected things, there are notes in odd places. Some of them, as far as I could get an approximation of them, sounded good, though. I need to see if I can hear them anywhere to help me with the timings, because these are good tunes, and ones I'd like to play.

Thunderbolt City

The fan said today that I am doing better than he expected. It's not that he thought I wasn't capable, just that he doubted my ability to stick at it, given how many other instruments I've tried.

There are people who marry the first person they meet, and are happy 50, 60 or 70 years later. Many of us are less lucky and have to hunt around, which might entail everything from one night stands and disastrous dates to moving in, to give it a go... As I've mentioned before I played recorder at school - I think many people of my generation did. Before that, at my first primary school, I remember playing triangle for Away in a Manger and I have a tiny scrap of a memory that involves a concertina, but I can't have been older than four at the time. There was the violin, played to please my father. There was the trumpet, which was hopefully close enough to the baritone my sister played to be equally fun without being close enough to annoy her. That went well, and in the end it was a maths O level that came between us because I couldn't do both, and maths seemed more pressing at the time.

There was a guitar - Stairway to Heaven - taught by someone else's boyfriend... There were penny whistles, because Dad thought they'd be fun; there were ocarinas because they came in pretty colours. There was even a mouth organ, but I have no idea where it came from, and we never really worked out how to play it properly. The mandolin, of course, the mandola and bouzouki (too big).

Even when I started with my pipes they were a poor substitute. I'd fallen in love with those big, hunky GHB. I had romantic visions of me on a loch side with my pipes and the music. I wasn't prepared for the harsh reality of marching bands, uniforms, and kissing goodbye to my weekends.

And then, after a while, I stopped pining for those big, chunky, hunky GHB and fell in love with my little Monkey. Why would we not be together forever?

I'm pondering whether or not I feel I want to play every day in September. I've played today, just in case, but also because its the last of my 9 days of holiday. To mark the occasion I've also recorded! This is Cabot and Captain, again, this time with the Whaling Song. I start way too slow, partly because if I am too fast I go into Captain instead of the trail. I then fumble because I realise I have the dots, and worry they will distract me. I speed up. I make a few fluffs. I go through each tune twice.  I fluff in Whaling where there are what the fan calls snaps - at least, if they aren't there Id like them to be, but somehow they make me forget the next note. Whaling is too fast - you cold never sing at this speed. Tempo is something I must get fixed. No drones - and how thin the pipes sound without them. A bit lost. Which makes sense really, because pipes and drones belong together.


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