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.



Check this out on Chirbit