Trick or treat

Just listening to Emma Sweeney. She's playing down our way this coming Monday and we'll be there. Maybe too much American influence for my liking, and I know the fan will spit feathers because she's only 20-something and such a good fiddle player...

I've played a little this evening. Still working on Troy, which is all there, but is in serious need of some polish. Playing around with putting Loch Bee with Flett. I think Flett will need to come first. Still finding it hard to pair tunes up. Magersfontein still trips me up from time to time, but I do like it. The Nova Scotia tunes I played, too, and Galloway. I forget which tunes I know, and have to think about it.

Working hard at the Highland Brigade at Waterloo. It's a rather sombre tune. Still enjoying that C part, and still struggling with the B and D parts with those high As split by two quick notes and a grace. Playing the As, the other two notes, no graces, and as if all four notes had the same time value. I just need to get the fingering right and relaxed and fast. It's a job for the practice chanter, really.

The recording is the Sound of Sleat. Not sure now why I wanted to play it. It's on Seal Song, of course, and in one set on my Grand Concert CD. The timing has taken a bit of work. The opening bars I found difficult, specifically the second bar. The last part is a doddle and I play that faster than anything else. Generally I'm playing too slow. I think I'm there now, timing-wise, but I vaguely wonder why I bothered. It seems a bit dull, somehow.


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Goldilocks

The fan is out this afternoon - the band has a gig. I could have gone to the plot where there are courgettes to clear, but it's snug inside and dark and windy outside and I didn't fancy working on the plot with one eye on the weather. There's supposedly a storm coming...

I got out my music stand, and my pipes, and the recorder...but couldn't find my stool. My stool is a short, four legged reject from our bathroom, and as it happens it is just right for playing pipes on. The height is good, I like being able to face different directions as I play. I have no idea where it has gone. It normally lives in a corner of the bedroom. We have another stool. It's a smart designer stool, and the height is OK, but it fixes you to look in one direction only. Still, it was all I had.

I'm struggling to find the right moment to ditch the dots. It used to take me forever. And now? We'll, I think I've played Loch Bee on four occasions and already I have big chunks of it by heart. It's disconcerting: I can't quite believe I'm ready. And I'm not totally ready, but it does mean that the awkward patch where the dots distract from what I remember and vice versa comes ever earlier. It also comes at different times for different tunes.

I know that it rarely works if I hit record the moment I start playing, but finding the right moment is not easy. If I leave it too late I can end up being too tired. I warmed up with Troy, Harlaw, Highland Brigade, Whisky. In between I played My Home Town, Flett and Whaling. I ran through Loch Bee...and it was poor. My timing seems to have gone to pot and, as I've said, the dots were distracting but I don't know it enough to go dotless yet. I stopped for a mug of tea and listened to the tune a few times over. The version I have here is OK, but not great. Generally good - smooth, rhythmic, musical, reasonably graced, but some bits fluffed.

Harlaw is going to take much more work. I've listened to it with the dots and it's not clear always where the pipes and end the harpsichord begins and I *think* that sometimes the harpsichord is doing the gracing. B and D parts causing most trouble. I feel I need some of the gracing. The drops down to G between two high As dropping to D are going to take some work. It's good, actually: it's a long time since I worked on grace notes.

Highland Brigade at Waterloo I need to listen to. It also needs work on the gracing because it doesn't sound right with the gracing stripped out, and my usual repertoire of simple G,s, Ds, As and strikes won't work either. The C part is the challenge - high A again, this time with low A to E interposed, and before those a drop to low G with a G grace. It must have a name, but I don't know it. To make life easier for myself, and hopefully speed up the learning process, I am going to stick to the first three parts and leave the other three for now.



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And there's more!

Another new tune - The Shores of Loch Bee, aka the Sands of Loch Bee or the Glasgow Police March Past. I wish I'd got the recorder out, because I printed the tune out and played it for the first time this evening at a really good pace, and it sounded great. Slight hesitation  over the timing of the end bar of each part, but other than that really good.

The tune was in my head, which really helped. On the Session, where dots are verboten, there is a saying along the lines of you shouldn't play a tune until you know the tune. Certainly knowing a tune makes it easier for me to play through with the dots. Part of me feels that actually I should just be better at reading dots...

Interestingly, one of the sites offering the dots described Bee as a "difficult" tune. In terms of the notes it's a really basic tune, nicely repetitive in the standard way, and short. I guess it's the gracing that warrants the rating, although apart from a handful of taorluaths there's nothing hugely challenging (says she, cheerfully ignoring 90% of it, as ever!)

The tune felt very familiar, and the fan said he thought he knew it. I reminded him that it opens the final set on Sealbh, and played it to him. Oddly, Iain pays it at a slow and stately pace, where I've been playing it at a lively lick. It sounds so familiar at the faster pace. I wonder if I can have heard it somewhere else?

Normal service

I feel as though I've not been interested in music for weeks, but actually, it was just a few days. Driving home on Friday I heard Last Word. They were noting the death of Charles Craig, distiller, and they chose some music to go with it - Neil Gow's Farewell to Whisky. I was impressed, although I suppose it might have been a lucky Google find rather than anyone with a knowledge of Scottish music.

Anyway, I noted the tune, and that was it. I felt like an ex smoker looking at a cigarette and feeling...nothing. Not a glimmer of desire. But this morning that same tune bubbled up and I've been humming it all day. By the time I got into the car I was picturing my pipes, thinking how nice it would be to hold them. By the time I got home I was desperate to get my hands on those pipes. The Monkey came out and we rolled through a heap of tunes, old and new, and I felt a great relief. It was only a temporary blip, this being able to live without music.

The new tunes are the Farewell to Whisky (nice, lilting tune, going well). The Highland Brigade at Waterloo bits of it going well - sounding like the tune I know. Oddly the march version sounds more familiar than the quickstep. It's long though: seven parts. I love the C part = ABE, ABE - something very satisfying about the finger movements to make those changes.

MacDonald of the Isles' March to Harlaw intermittently sounds familiar.Needs a lot of work - I need to listen to it carefully - but doable,  I think. Struy Lodge I printed because I know the name, but the tune doesn't seem familiar and doesn't grab me at all. One for the reject pile. Oh, and the Sound of Sleat, which is good, especially the last part. I love those AEAEAE bars, and because that bit of the tune feels very familiar I can play at a good speed.

Old tunes played: Flett, Captn and the Trail, Angus wotsit's lament, Bonnie Galloway, the Whaling Song, My Home Town, Magersfontein, Troy.  I think I must have played for quite a while! No ill effects, other than a tired left arm, which is good because it means I was using the bag and not relying on bellows. Back on track, I think.

Intermisson

I feel as though I haven't played for weeks, although I played at the weekend, and I think once or twice the week before. It's not lack of time: I just don't feel very inclined to play. I'm not thinking about my pipes much. I don't have tunes going round in my head. I printed a pile of new tunes a few days back and haven't tried a single one. I don't feel that bothered about listening to music. I don't have potential blog posts bubbling through my mind.

Maybe it's the change of seasons. Maybe I've just overdone the music in the past months and need a sort of break.  A bit of quiet.

More, more, more

I feel in need of new tunes, but am struggling to find any. I need lots, because so often when I think I've found a tune it turns out not to suit me, somehow, and falls by the wayside.

I had a quick squint around Nigel Gatherer's website this evening, but didn't find anything I couldn't live without. Sadly all the Shetland tunes I looked at were for fiddle and not playable on pipes. I've checked Mr MacInnes' various CDs and found dots for Neil Gow's Farewell to Whisky, The Sound of Sleat, MacDonald of the Isles' March to Harlaw and a few others which I may print and try. I also have a birthday forthcoming and am hoping that either the Seaforth Highlanders or some of Donald MacLeod's books might come my way. If those fail to inspire then Braebach have a new album out - and they are coming to our local folk club next month!

The usual session at the weekend. I was too cold. The fan despaired of tuning my pipes - flat, apparently - but the pub was warmer than our flat and once the Monkey and I had warmed up we were fine. I played a few tunes. Someone remarked how relaxed I looked. I think I can relax with the old faithful tunes (it was the Rowan Tree that elicited this particular comment). After the first tune I felt smugly free of stage fright and immediately went into a fit of shivering. I was glad I was sitting down because my lower body shivered so much I think my legs would have given way had I been standing up.

Two of a kind

I lay in bed this morning, feeling lazy in the sunshine, and I thought about a house I used to know in Italy, about my allotment and plans for an asparagus bed, and then about music. I started wondering whether the Dragon might not be a good companion for Brose and Butter.

I didn't get to try my plan out until the evening. I was earlier distracted by breakfast, our weekly trip to the farm shop, a visit to a garden centre, a chat with a neighbour, some gardening, and then a hunt for a good recipe for mincemeat....

In a way the two tunes are similar inasmuch as I can play neither. The Dragon doesn't like to be too slow, but if I play very fast the mice win out over the woodpecker and get confused and over excited and it doesn't turn out quite right. The dots are hopeless and only confuse me, because I keep stopping to wonder what note that is there, and what note did I just play, and oh, I'm not actually on that bar, am I.

Brose is just as bad. Although I've only played it for a few days I'm already past the stage where dots are useful. I think that Brose will come in after the Dragon, but I couldn't get a decent enough run at them to record and see.

I played various other tunes. The playing was comfortable, but somehow my accuracy in remembering tunes was rather poor. In the end I switched from D to A and decided to give Castle Grant a go. I feel that slow tunes sit better on the lower chanter.

Having just switched from D to A the pressure was an issue, as was hitting all the notes, especially low G, cleanly. I am playing slowly - more slowly than Mr McVarish - but that's because that's how I think I'm going to get that dreamy lilting that I feel I hear. I've stripped out almost all of the gracing to the same end: I don't want anything to disturb the flow of the tune.

There are plenty of...pauses while I check what I am doing next. A lot of these are down to me checking the dots against what I think I am playing: that odd no man's land between needing the dots and being able to move on from them. I'm being thrown by reaching that point so much sooner than before.

No drones, and just the once through. The parts are longish and occasionally I'm having to scan the page to find where my repeats start. some straightforward fluffs where I just play the wrong note.

As I've mentioned, I have no idea at all how this sounds compared to the standard pipe version, but as a tune inspired by a fiddle tune it's not bad, it's sort of approaching what I was hoping for. It needs work, but it's going in the right direction.


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Language barriers

Although I read rather a lot I rarely read much that is translated: most of my reading is books written by English speaking authors. The point of translation is to remove a barrier, to allow the speaker of one language to access the literature of another. Certainly without translators I would never have enjoyed the fun, literary mysterys of Artuo Perez-Reverte.

On the other hand, translation can be a barrier, as some of the clunkier attempts of online services for automatically translating websites so neatly demonstrate, or those marvellous handbooks that some with electrical gadgets and are apparently translated into English from Serbian via Chinese by Greek and Dutch working in lose collaboration.

A translator has to strike a balance between being true to the original and producing something that is readable in the new language. Sometimes they take it beyond readable and produce something that reads well in the new language, but perhaps loses some of the subtleties of the original, incorporates its own meanings that weren't really in the original, or overlays the voice of the translator over that of the author. Especially where poetry is concerned such a translator can almost create a new poem that stands alongside the original but is a new and beautiful thing in itself, recreating the spirit rather than the letter of the original.

I once picked up someone else's copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. I was so struck by the beauty of the language that I rushed to get a copy of my own. Alas, I had not stopped to note the name of the translator, and the version I had lacked the poeticism of that borrowed copy, so I didn't enjoy it at all. A new translator can produce a different book, otherwise why ask people to translate Proust when Scott Moncrieff has already done the job? And why does my modern edition of Heidi leave me longing for the Charles Tritten edition I had as a child? (OK, I admit I miss the pictures.)

Music can be translated, too. Of course there is a matter of interpretation by different players, but in a way that's more akin to different people reading a book. The real translation comes when a tune intended for one instrument is played on another. I'm partly thinking about that because I'm listening to Springwell (again!). I listen because I love the tunes - many are pipe tunes, yet there isn't a single note played by pipes on the CD. The tunes are played mainly on stringed instruments and cleverly incorporate notes played as pipe grace notes: I can hear the birls and strikes, reproduced on the mandolin. They are clever imitations of the pipe sound, but they are also good sounds in themselves on the mandolin.

I am still working on the Braes of Castle Grant. As I think I've mentioned before I've heard this on Eclection. It's a pipe tune played on a fiddle. I don't think that Mr McVarish makes an attempt to play in the style of pipes: he translates the pipe tune into a fiddle tune. And very lovely it is to. But now I come along, not having ever knowingly heard the tune played on pipes, so I am trying to play on pipes something that I know as a fiddle tune. Certainly the notes are there for me to play, they are all in my range, I can see where gracing might sit nicely, but in my head all the time I have a lilting, smooth sound as the fiddle slides and glides from note to note. Pipes do not glide; they stomp, they step, they march, they trip; they move move between notes in a manner that is pipish.

I'm therefore translating a pipe tune that has been translated into a fiddle tune back into a pipe tune. Maybe like exchanging currency enough times at enough borders the commission and exchange rates will leave me with nothing of value. I may make a hideous mess of it, or perhaps I will create something new and beautiful, which is neither the original nor Gabe's translation, but something new.

Random notes

Home late and tired from work today, and the fan was due home even later, so I got dinner on and whipped the Monkey out. Back to D - got my thumb angled badly, but otherwise fine. I've discovered that if I'm tired, provided I can push on through the first 30 minutes, I get through the tiredness and can keep going - just over an hour today, pretty much non stop.

I'm wondering about putting Flett with the Whaling Song as a set.

Played Brose again today - first part almost by heart already. Second part taking longer because I'm not totally sure about the timing.

The A part of Castle Grant starting to come by heart. Well - it's all starting to come, but I'm going to concentrate on the A part.

Troy very nearly there - speed is good, but accuracy still patchy.

The Snuff Wife is hopeless: one of those where I can't even start to play something that sounds even faintly recognisable. It's as if I've longed to get a copy of a Tennyson poem, finally have it, but when I read it out slowly I discover it's actually something by John Hegley....

I'm listening to the Pipers' Society Recital again in the car and am being annoyed by the tendency of all the pipers to go into some random notes at the end of each piece. I assume it's to do with having air left in the bag, but it's irritating in the extreme. It destroys the mood of a tune and isn't great to listen to. To go back to poetry it's as if someone read out a poem and then decided to read half a page of the phone book after it.