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.
Check this out on Chirbit
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