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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