Slow, slow

It's a slow old time of year, Twixtmas, but we're enjoying being lazy, the fan and I, pottering about, doing a bit of this and a bit of that and not very much of anything at all.

We did manage to get to a session. I played four times. I got half way through the first tune (Dargai) when I realised that I had forgotten about stage fright, and didn't actually have any. That didn't stop me from making a pig's ear of Loch Bee, just like last time. I lost the plot during the King, but managed Margersfontein and Flett together, and then Bonnie Galloway, because I couldn't remember how to start the Rowan Tree.

The session leader made a mock presentation to me as "most improved player." I should feel pleased about this, but I've never been one to take compliments well, and feel both that I ought to be most improved, since I started from the lowest point, and also that I need to improve a great deal more. Still, knowing there is more of a journey to go doesn't cancel out the miles travelled already...

At the end of the evening a Northumbrian piper asked if I'd like a closer look at his pipes...and I ended up strapping then on and giving them a go. They are teeny, tiny, with bellows that, like Duckface, weigh next to nothing, the chanter is full of strange lumps and angles and bristles with keys. Would I be tempted, asks the fan? But I haven't even learned to play the pipes I have yet...

I've got some new CDs - two Tannahill Weavers, which I wanted for Iain MacInnes' contribution, and Piob is Fidheall, of which more later, probably.

Negative

The fan has been talking about the uncanny valley today. It's that gap between real and fake that causes gut reaction, that "eew!" moment when you take take a step back, realising that what you thought was real, and in this specific context, human, turned out to be fake, or an android.

It has struck a chord because I'm in the throes of two things which are no longer what I thought they were, and I am having to get to know them all over again. The first is a sock pattern. It's a different construction from anything I've used before, which has been challenging in itself. But the real stinker is nothing to do with construction, but with colour. The first sock has a purple pattern on a cream ground. The knitting chart, so as not to distract those who want, green and red socks, say, or pink and orange (believe me, someone might) is in black and white. So for the whole sock white=cream and black =purple.

The problem is that sock two is like a negative of the first: it has a white pattern on a purple ground, so now white=purple and black=cream. The main pattern, once I got going, isn't a problem, but the increases at the gussets are, and I keep having to stop to think which colour is which.

The fan suddenly spoke up this evening to say he didn't think I was playing Miss G quite right. I pointed out that I was following the dots, which I presented to him. He hummed through the dots and had to admit I was right (it happens from time to time!) He poked about the web and found a different version of Miss G, which is almost the same as mine, but not quite. My eyes are reading one set of dots and my fingers want to play another...And all along, "my" Miss G was an imposter, just like Barbara Wallace and the other girls who visited Dr Wiseman in Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, which is keeping me entertained while I knit, knit, knit my back to front sock in time for Christmas.

Lady Mondegreen

Aha! Listening to Jack Tamson's fabulous Bairns, and what do I find (among some pretty fantastic music), but Lady Mondegreen, aka The Bonnie Earl O Moray.

The best seasonal mondegreen I know is Strawberry Ships, but the one I remember most from childhood is "You eat your small corner". I took Small Corner to be some sort of porridge, heaven only knows why.

Eating an elephant

One of the many fatuous management phrases you come across these days is the one about change management and any hugely big task: how do you eat an elephant? The, not particularly amusing, answer is "a teaspoon at a time". The idea is that any really big job can be tackled if taken in small enough  pieces. Well, learning the pipes is certainly an elephant of a job, and sometimes I do feel as though I am proceeding at a teaspoon-sized rate.

But, really, what kind of an idiot thinks they can get through an entire elephant with a teaspoon? Fair enough if you don't mind which side of the end of the century you're finishing it, but personally I have a limited amount of time. How many five minute practices would it take me to hit the fabled 10,000 hours? I think I've mentioned this before. Even at 20 minutes a day it works out as the rest of  my life, assuming I reach the same old age attained by my great aunts and grandmother, and then some.

And I do wonder if actually there is value, apart from clocking up the hours, in playing for longer. Obviously playing for longer helps build up stamina. Clearly I will never have to play non stop for an hour, but I suppose it's the same as cars being able to go much faster than the legal limit. It means that when you are at the legal limit the car is well within its comfort zone, and if I can play for an hour non-stop, for instance, then 20 minutes or so should be a doddle, as should playing for 5 or 10 minutes at a time in chunks over a longer period.

Stamina aside I wonder if it helps to have time to go over, and over, and over a tune. To play something, or several somethings, else and then play the tune again and again. Does that speed up the learning process or is it better to play something and then leave it? Sometimes when I play in this way I feel I get better each time, but equally often, it seems, I get steadily worse, or improve to a certain point and then lose it totally. I remember from exam revision days we were told that you can only concentrate for 20 minutes at a time and should take a short break after that, and then breaks of increasing length interspersed with shorter periods of work, then begin again after a long break. Sometimes when I repeat a tune endlessly, break with another tune and go back to the first things have got better. And some times they have got worse, often quite a lot worse. I can literally got from almost having a tune and just fiddling about with the finer points of gracing to having not a clue how even to start the tune. (The fan has noted before that I am living proof of the fact that just because you can do a thing once doesn't mean you can do it again...)

Generally speaking I play until something else becomes pressing (dinner in the oven, the phone ringing), or I get tired, or I get really frustrated and fed up with playing . Sometimes I can work through frustration, discomfort, memory blocks and sheer idiocy, and sometimes I can't.

Whether it's a teaspoon, a ladle or a JCB, there is still an awful lot of elephant to be eaten.

(Can you believe - my 400th blog post!! No wonder I don't have enough time to play pipes!!)

Smalls

I always feel that "girdle" is somehow a snigger-inducing word. It reminds me of adverts I used to see in the weekend papers for Miss Mary Girdles and the Playtex 18 hour girdle, featuring larger ladies being reduced to unfeasibly sylphlike proportions thanks to a swathe of heavy duty elastic. Less amusingly it's a symbol of the restrictions of women's lives: I am sure that there is an episode in The Edible Woman where  woman's reluctance to wear a girdle or similar contraption is taken to be pretty much evidence of moral delinquency, if not downright insanity. These days it is more likely to conjure up the lovely, and surely girdle-free Ms Lawson, and her girdlebuster pie.

I was rather bemused, when googling these pieces of underwear to discover that you can still buy such things... The only girdle I have is Miss Girdle, and she's coming on OK. She has speeded up since the last time I recorded, perhaps become more uneven. This is a prime example of slowing up on the tricky bits and racing through the easier bits. She's also almost totally denuded, poor girl, of any but the essential gracenotes, which seems a shame.

I've mentioned before that I've a mind to pair Miss G with Horsburgh. My problem has been that I felt Horsburgh was going to be one of those tunes that somehow I never quite manage to learn. The A part I've had for ages, the B part, I felt, was eluding me. I've pushed the dots away this evening to test things out and I find that I know the whole tune, although there is one bar in the first version of the B part that gives me pause for thought, and I have a slight tendency to repeat the first version of the B part, or to run straight into the second version. But on the whole I *do* know it, and now just need to work as getting it better, with Miss G.

I've still not written about Inner Sound. This is partly down to wondering how useful it is to write about CDs - the fan (not originally, but I've forgotten where he borrowed it from) says that writing about music is like dancing about architecture...and he has a point, although generally language is our main medium for expressing thoughts on all aspects of life, so why not music? Less philosophically the CD is in the car where I have had it on permanent loop for 3 or 4 weeks, and I don't want to bring it in in case I forget to take it back out. Sometimes you are recommended to have two copies of a cookery book or gardening book: one for the kitchen/shed and one for the bedside. Inner Sound is definitely a two-copy CD: one for the car and one for indoors.
 
Check this out on Chirbit

Trough of disillusionment

I am managing to play four days a week. I am managing to play in A each time, and that's fine, but I am always more comfortable, more at home, in D.

Progress with learning new tunes is painfully slow. I seem to have had the same sets of dots on my music stand for months. Maybe it is just that I expect a higher standard from myself these days before I am happy to shift a tune from the learning pile to the learned pile. Maybe I'm not picking tunes that really inspire me. Maybe I don't play enough. Maybe this is just as good as it can get and I've learned all the tunes I can. No. Scrap that. I don't believe that: I have a prodigious memory for trivia. I must be able to collect tunes too, and I certainly hum a lot of tunes.

I need to learn more tunes. I need to work on playing with drones. I need to work at timings and tempo of tunes. I need to play more evenly. I've got too many tunes where I speed up and slow down depending on how well I know bits, or how easy they are to play. I do feel as though I am making little progress, perhaps slipping back. I hope it's just like climbing a long shallow slope after you've clambered up a steep hill: the slope seems easy and flat by comparison, but when you look back you realise that over a distance you've actually made quite a climb.

It occurred to me that although I've been listening to a lot of really good Scottish folk of late I haven't listened to much in the way of pipes, so I've Tryst on the CD player. I'd forgotten how good it is, how much I love the tunes. and the arrangements There are pieces with no pipes, just fiddle perhaps, and other pieces that are just pipes. And I do love pipes.

Five things - GHB folk bands

Everyone knows GHB. Normally just known as “bagpipes” or “pipes” they are a clear part of Scotland’s international brand, along with haggis, whisky, heather, golf at St Andrews and the Glorious Twelfth . The pipes are always played by a man in a kilt. This man, and it is always a man,  is either a “lone piper” or else he’s with a band, marching. Whatever he’s playing, be it a loch-side lament or a rousing march, it will be loud. Pipes are so loud that they aren’t a natural choice for playing in bands alongside other instruments. They also play in an odd key. I suppose that was a driving factor behind the smallpipe revival. Despite their volume there are, and continue to be, folk bands that use GHB as a regular part of their line-up.

The Battlefield Band. This band has been going since 1969 and like grandfather's axe contains none of its original parts. I am not even sure if the line up has always included a piper, but several pipers have passed through during the course of 30 albums.  The albums I have (Ok - so they belong to the fan) generally stick to trad pipe stuff. The current piper, Mike Katz, has a ZZ Top beard, which must once have been wacky but nowadays makes him look like a hipster. He also plays smallpipes, made by the Monkey's maker.

The Tannahill Weavers describe themselves rather immodestly on their website as "Scotland's Finest Traditional Band". A year older than the Battlefield they released their first album in 1976. They once had a certain Mr MacInnes in their line up. I've seen them live once and I (Ok, Ok - the fan) have one of their CDs. 

Deaf Shepherd. Fabulous name for a great band. Once described as one of the most popular bands in Scotland they appear to have vanished leaving only three albums to show they were ever here. Fiddle and songs as well as pipes and I particularly enjoy their rendition of The Corncrake.

Braebach. Not only pipes, but two sets of pipes! The current line up pairs Calum MacCrimmon (who can be heard on the Seudan CD) with James Duncan MacKenzie, who can also be heard on his eponymous CD. They have old pipe tunes, new pipe tunes, some great interpretations of pibroch, prove that the fiddle and the pipes are a match made in heaven, and also throw in some songs of various sorts. Sometimes the pipes are full on, sometimes they are set in the mix with other things, sometimes just passing through a track, but always wonderful.

Ossian. Now, I love Ossian. They are - or were - one of the best Scottish folk bands ever. I love their choice of tunes, their settings, their arrangements. If I could only hear five CDs ever again there would definitely be an Ossian CD (or maybe two or three) on the list. But I don't think of them as being a band with pipes. There are the later CDs where they have the good sense to enlist Mr MacInnes. Before that there was a flirtation with Irish pipes. I do love Irish pipes, but they were not created for playing GHB tunes. When Braebach come out on to stage it's with, as it were, all pipes blazing. They are out and proud as pipers. Ossian are somehow embarrassed, reticent, bashful: their pipes are right down in the mix. You're never going to be blown out of of your seat by full on pipes from Ossian. 

You can find GHB on Light on a Distant Shore (my least favourite Ossian CD), Dove Across the Water (my other least favourite...) and on Borders.

The case of the missing Strathspey

As I ran through my various tunes on the learning pile last week it occurred to me that Horsburgh Castle sounds rather nice when followed by Miss Girdle. Miss G is coming on nicely. Horsburgh is OK. The A part is there, I have a tendency to run straight to the second B part, and there are one or two bars where timing is not quite right. With a bit of work though hopefully I can make a set of them. Horsburgh is a march and Miss G a reel, so I'm two thirds of the way to the classic MSR.

I managed a set at a session this weekend: Magersfontein and Flett. The other intended pairing, Dargai and Bee, I flunked because I was nervous. I sat next to a fiddle player who is in a band and confessed to similar nerves, and I found it comforting to have her there. She pointed out that the expectations are your own rather than anyone else's, which is true, but... The ex-band's fiddle player said he thought I was very confident (which shows how wrong people can be!!)

I thought I'd manage four days of playing last week. I did Thursday, which wasn't on my plan, then flunked Saturday. Still, what with the session and two lots of warming up on Sunday I played a fair bit. Didn't play for long today but put the A chanter on when I put the pipes away.

At some stage I must mention my new favourite CD: Inner Sound from the Whistlebinkies. It's on permanent loop in the car at the moment and I've abandoned the radio for it.

Five things - duos

As Mies van der Rohe once noted, less is more. Sometimes (perhaps more often than we realise) we need very little. Sometimes just two things together is perfect: a glass of port and a slice of Christmas cake, a sofa and a good book, bread and cheese. It's not that the sofa and the book wouldn't benefit from the addition of a cup of tea, or maybe a glass of wine, or that a slick of butter and a pickled onion don't enhance bread and cheese, but in themselves, just as two, these things are good together.

Similarly in music. I am happy to hear the full works, I love an orchestra, but Bach cello suites played by a single cello and nothing else...perfection. I love a full trad band. But sometimes I want simplicity, just two things. These are the CDs I go to.

Doubling. Shouty Records. 2013.
This is a little bit of a cheat because although it's just Anna and Mairearad they manage to pack in a range of instruments. Mairearad plays box, pipes and piano, while Anna provides guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and, according to the CD blurb, percussion and hand clap/thigh slaps. If you see them live Anna also provides the jokes.

Dermot Byrne and Florian Blanke. 2012.
Dermot and Florian play mainly one box and one harp, although a piano, voice, and some guest musicians sneak in from time to time. A mix of French and Irish.

Single Track Road Trip. Living Tradition. 2010.
I saw this pair at Folk at the Oak. Martin plays both guitar and banjo, Carol plays fiddle. It's just the two of them playing pipe tunes and others, new and old, all in the best Scottish tradition, and you can't beat it.

Deadly Buzz. Mick O'Brien and Caoimhin O'Raghallaigh. Irish Music Net. 2011.
Kitty Lie Over. Mick O'Brien and Caoimhin O'Raghallaigh. ACM. 2003.
Irish pipes, this time, with hardanger fiddle. They throw in various pipes, a flute, a standard fiddle. Deadly Buzz is probably my favourite Irish music CD.

Welcome Here Again. Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill.Compass. 2008.
Or possibly this one is my favourite. Traditional jigs and reels taken slow and easy on fiddle accompanied very sensitively indeed by guitar. Despite my usual reservations about backing/rhythm instruments/strummy string things there is no point at all on this CD where I feel that someone ought to ask the guitarist to remove himself from the room.

And, just for the record, there is no way to improve on a glass of port and a slice of Christmas cake, except with another piece of cake and maybe just the teeniest drop more port. Cheers.

These dry bones

(Tate Gallery http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bowler-the-doubt-can-these-dry-bones-live-n03592)

I suddenly felt better today. Not in that still-not-well-but-less-unwell-than-I-was way, but a real feeling well sort of way. I went to work, came home, popped in to the village, cooked dinner, wiped round the kitchen, stacked the dishwasher, wrote a letter...thought about piping. Got my pipes out.

I had a horrible worry that I would have forgotten how to play, forgotten all my tunes. So I decided I'd just try 10 minutes while dinner was in the oven, assuming it would go badly, but at least I'd be back in the saddle.

So I tried and..it was fine! It was good. It felt great to be playing again. I remembered some tunes, I played with dots, I played until I really did need to get dinner out of the oven. The Dragon appeared in its full glory, slow, with a swing, and a flurry of simple grace notes in the second part. Miss Girdle did her thing.

I really have to get back in to a regular habit. Hopeless to say daily during December with Xmas intervening and we'll be away for some of it, staying with folk who really don't care for pipes. Let's go for 4 times a week, starting this week, and taking Monday as the start. So three more times to play between now and Sunday. It's a start.

Once and future...

A couple of Christmases ago someone gave me a nice mug. A mug for pipers! Let's not quibble about the fact that it has been drawn by some one who has clearly never seen a piper - note the bag apparently perching on the shoulder, and the missing drone.  It's my special piper's mug, for pipers (i.e. me).

Sometimes the sight of this mug in the cupboard is a rebuke. "Ha! Call yourself a piper? When did you last have your pipes out?!" Sometimes it's a joyful reminder "I am a piper!". Of late, things being as they have been for far too long at work, it's been a sad reminder of past glories, the good old days, when I was a piper.

Just to add insult to injury I've been sick this past fortnight. I don't think I've ever been so sick in my life. I've had to resort to the doctor, and submit to the taking of pills. I've thought vaguely about music, about blog posts, and I've unravelled a bit of knitting, but mostly I've read light novels and stared into space.

I've only listened to a very little music, mostly restful things: Duncan Chisholm and so on. Yesterday I listened to Doubling, forgetting (!) that there were any pipes on it, and when the pipes came they took me by surprise and made me cry. I'm too exhausted to play, and I can't even pick up my chanter, thanks to the laryngitis. It all seems so sad: this is my month of milestones, of my birthday and Morag's, of my beginnings as a piper. I've not played for so long

So now I am looking anew at my piper's mug. "One day", it seems to say, "you will be a piper again". Let's hope.

Lay odl lay odl lay hee hoo

Except that's Austria, of course, and we've actually been in Switzerland: me, the fan, a mandolin and the Monkey. Flying with instruments was a slightly anxious experience. The actual flying was fine. The anxiety was caused by ground staff who don't know their own airline's rules, and later on just worrying that the Monkey might have found the flight difficult.

We both of us took a while to warm up. I'm playing so little at present. But it was OK. Tunes I played I remembered with few slips. I could be playing better, of course, faster, more fluently, with looser fingers. But our friends were pleased we'd made the effort. After all, it's not every day you get to play with bagpipes up a Swiss hillside.

All sorts of funny tunes...

Hands too cold to play particularly well this evening. Head full of tunes. Flett wasn't among them: I couldn't conjure him from anywhere. Instead I had Miss G, Home Town, Amazing Grace, Irishman's Cudgel, the Dragon...fragments of Murray (remember when!), Highland Cathedral (on my mind because it's a favourite of friends we're visiting soon), Hark the Herald (no idea). Horsburgh a bit hit and miss, Troy crashed out in the B part...

Maybe I should revisit some of those old tunes that never came to anything. But Miss G is about there, although sometimes a little uncertain om the last bar but two.

You hum it...

I was trundling between meetings today, out in the sunshine, humming to myself. I had a listen and realised I was humming Miss Girdle. Not sure whether she's sunk in through sheer persistence or through hearing her played. Either way I was sure the time was right, so once I'd trekked round the local supermarket, mislaid my car in the car park, sat in traffic, had problems parking at home and cooked dinner I hoiked out my pipes. I came in via A, which really wasn't comfortable today, and then straight to D and Miss G, and there she was! Second half of the second art needs work, but the whole of the A part is there.

At least... I *think* it was Miss G I was humming. It may have been the Shetland Fiddler, but as I am playing the two together I can' be sure....

Americana

Monday we dragged ourselves out to see a couple of pipers: Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson, and boy, was it worth the effort. There were some whistles, of course, and some whistles and pipes, but also lots and lots of full on pipes: Irish and Border, one harmonizing around the other, or playing together. There were some Irish tunes that I was surprised to find were playable on Border pipes. Some of it was at a serious speed, and positively rock 'n roll, so it was no surprise to find that Ross was taught by Gordon Duncan.

Some of the songs were...not your usual folk style, let's say. The fan hissed "Gerry Rafferty" in my ear at one stage. Turns out one of the tracks on the album we bought was by him. I really only know Baker Street, and had always - wrongly, it seems - assumed he was American. There's a bluesy feel to that track, I suppose. Ross, with floppy hair and moustache and skimpy army issue shirt looked like a refugee from an early episode of M*A*S*H. So, for me, there was a general transatlantic feel.

But it was great - really invigorating and inspiring. I wish I could say that I came home and fell on my pipes, but the usual problems means I only picked them up this evening and creaked rustily along for a while until my arms started to ache. This really can't go on.

Back in your arms again

This week I've started to hear music in my head again. It's not there all the time, and it's mostly a song, but it's there, and I feel as though I must be defrosting, decompressing, becoming myself again. I was starting to feel like a person who used to play pipes, so it was a relief to be able to muster the energy and find the time tonight.

I began with A: I'm using the old trick of always putting the A chanter on before I put the pipes away. I fell straight into the Rowan Tree without even thinking, then Amazing Grace and  Galloway. Too much bellows action, snatched action at that, but it was OK, it was good.

Back to D I rambled about, my fingers feeling stiff and unpracticed, but the tunes came. Magersfontein, Flett, Dargai, Bee, Home Town, Drops of Brandy. The Dragon still floating about, wanting to be slow and lyrical, I think. The Cabot Trail kept crashing out in the B part. The Whaling Song was OK. Teribus popped up out of nowhere. Braemar stalled on the B part. Not even sure what I else I can play, could play - back in the day, back when I was a piper.

Oh  - but some foot tapping, out of nowhere. Good solid tapping that keeps time. But it only works when I'm sitting down. I can't tap and walk, obviously, but I can't tap and stand either, it seems.

I'll be glad when this rough patch at work is over and I can get back to doing the stuff I love and being myself.

Gone girl

I am still here. Just. A big project at work means I'm getting home late a lot with my mind on other things. Weekends away mean I spend my evenings doing the chores I had no time for at the weekend. I think I'm a tad stressed: all the music has been washed out of my head. I have no tunes. I have no time or energy for piping. I dragged the pipes out this evening. Began on A, moved to D. Remembering bits of Horsbrugh, which is good. Took a while to feel settled in , and by the time I did my arms were tired. Like I say, I'm still here. Just.

Five things - shopping

I'm not much of a one for shopping. From time to time I buy things because I need them, but schlepping round the shops stocking up on pointless tat is not my idea of fun. I have plenty of other ways to fill my time.

I've not spent much time shopping in Scotland, although I have visited the hallowed halls of Jenners simply because it's one of the sights and gets referenced in an Easy Club song, and despite the fact that it is actually a branch of House of Fraser these days. When I do shop I prefer independents to chains. Here are five of my favourites.

House of Bruar. The home of tweed and woolens in lovely colours evoking the Scottish landscape. Best not to think of the associations with "field sports". Just feel the lovely cloth. There is a food hall, too.

The Watermill at Blair Atholl. A real working mill where you can buy bread, flour, muesli or porridge oats...and lunch, too!

Valvona and Crolla. The best Italian deli anywhere, never mind Edinburgh. Best almond croissants and coffee, too. A tiny crammed frontage leads into a counter under goodies hung from the ceiling, there are dried goods, breads, wines and various fruit and veg. Lots of interesting history, and sometimes music, too.

The Old Bookshelf, Edinburgh. Tucked away under an arcade, it's packed with second hand books, mainly children's - but not exclusively. I've bought Angela Thirkells there. Friendly staff. I went in once on a wettish day and remarked that at least it was better than Glasgow, where I had been the day before and where it was distinctly wetter. "Oh aye", came the reply "everything's always worse in Glasgow." They they republish some marvellous books from the past, too in their guise as Greyladies. If you go as far as Bruntisfield Place there are more independent shops, a fabulous cafe, and another good bookshop.

Shilasdair. A small place, barely more than a shed, on the end of Skye. They stock mostly their own yarn in a variety of natural colours, as well as various kits. I wish that I could have a list of five favourite yarn shops in Scotland. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but for a country with a strong tradition of knitting it seems to offer very few good yarn shops.

Fifteen minutes with you

I seem to often read on the session folk saying that they fit music into their lives by playing five minutes a day. They seem to value frequency above length of time spent. I'm never clear whether they are saying they would only do 5 minutes even if they had a spare hour, or that 5 minutes a day keeps the momentum, or that they actually believe you can learn something, improve in 5 minutes.

I'm not clear, either, whether that's an actual or rhetorical 5 minutes. I've given it a go a couple of times. My main problem is that I can't stop after 5 minutes and have gone on for 20 or 30 instead, mostly because time flies, but also because I always just want to go through that tune one more time, or I think of another tune I really want to play, and another one...

 Five minutes are enough to realise that I can still find my fingers for A, that the bag feels huge with A and needs lots of air, that I only can play parts of Horsburgh by heart, that those parts aren't necessarily the same on A as they are on D, that Horsburgh sounds better on A.

I'm also wondering whether hanging on to dots because it's a long tune, or a fast tune is holding me back from getting tunes by heart: Braemar, Troy, Shetland Fiddler all come to mind here.

Five things - Iain Macinnes

I've listened to as many smallpipers as I can find, hoping to hear ideas for new tunes to play, to learn how the pipes can be used, how they can sound, and to inspire me to carry on learning and improving. I also listen for the simple reason that I love the sound of the pipes, and the music they play.

Very early on I identified a favourite piper - Iain MacInnes. Why Iain? I enjoy his selection of tunes: he favours the old pipe tunes, quick steps and so on, and I enjoy hearing those.I also enjoy some of his more unusual choices: a spot of Handel, or some Northumbrian tunes.

I love the choice of instruments to accompany him, especially on his own CDs:  harpsichord isn't a standard pairing with smallpipes, but it's as wonderful as it is unexpected. I love his arrangements, and the CDs are all produced in a way that has the pipes sat with the other instruments, not drowned out by strumming guitars as happens elsewhere. It isn't all smallpipes: Iain himself plays GHB, border pipes and whistle on these CDs. He also uses smallpipes in a variety of keys (A, C and D)

As lists of five things go this is very much a list of four, and two of those may be cheating. Sadly Iain has only put out two CDs of his own. I've also included one made with Smalltalk and one with Ossian, just because they are very much in the same style: serious, low key, well-arranged, beautifully played traditional Scots music. I've excluded Canterach, which has just as much (or little) of Iain as the Smalltalk and Ossian CDs, because the style is very different indeed: more modern with a bit of a rock vibe.

So, just the four. There are other CDs that allow you a passing glimpse of Mr MacInnes, and I will list those in a further post. In the meantime these four are all you need for piping heaven. And Mr MacInnes, if you ever pass by this blog post may I humbly submit that a further CD really wouldn't go amiss. 

1. Sealbh. Greentrax 2009. 11 tracks, 10 of which involve smallpipes. Also GHB and whistles. Tunes encompass quicksteps, Ewan MacColl and Handel.

2. Tryst. Greentrax 1999. 11 tracks, of which 9 have smallpipes. Also GHB and whistles. Good sleeve notes with lots of interesting snippets about tunes.

3. Smalltalk.Greentrax 1994. This CD is by the band Smalltalk, which was Iain with Billy Ross and Stuart Morrison, all formerly of Ossian. 11 tracks.Some of them are songs, but when it's Billy singing you don't mind the break from pipes. Iain also plays whistle. 

4. The Carrying Stream. Greentrax 1997. My favourite Ossian CD. Iain, Billy and Stuart with the addition of William Jackson (harp, piano, whistles, vocals). Iain also plays whistle. As with Smalltalk some tracks are songs.

Almost perfect

I followed a little trail recently when looking for the dots for Horsburgh and ended up with a double CD of Jock Tamson's Bairns and The Lasses Fashion. I've listened to it a lot. It's good to hear new tunes - only Jenny Dang the Weaver and Peter MacKinnon of Skeabost I already knew, and I've not heard Jenny as a song before. The songs are all interesting and nicely arranged.

As well as Ian Hardie  himself the band includes Tony Cuffe of Ossian fame, Rod Paterson of the Easy Club, and others. There is a good selection of instruments (concertina, fiddle, mandolin, whistle) and those instruments that in a group like this ought to be at the back providing backing (guitars, bodhran and so on) are exactly there. And there are also lots of good Scottish tunes.

I like it. I like it a lot. It's damn near perfect. It could just do with...some pipes, especially on the last set: The Hills of Perth and Mrs MacDougall: two fine pipe tunes if ever I heard one.

(A bit of playing with the fan this evening, but I wasn't very comfortable with my pipes. Out of practice already. With the allotment season coming to an end I've no excuse and must play more. The September/October plan has gone by the board: as well as being away in October we don't have a free weekend between now and November. Maybe November, Morag's birthday month, would be a good one to choose.)

Pester power

I'd decided to abandon Horsburgh Castle. It's not the kind of tune I am looking for right now, although it's nice enough. But it won't leave me alone: it's always in my head. I had to give in and play it this evening. Sometimes I choose tunes and sometimes they choose me...

House session the sequel

Is it a house session when you play at home with your other half? While there is a lull in band practice the fan and I thought we'd play a few tunes together. We slung together Magersfontein with Flett. The fan is keen to have the Irishman's Cudgel to end, but it's really not in a fit state to be seen out. Work needed. Then Dargai and Bee, which I already play together, but could I not play faster, he asked. Possibly. Work needed.

The fan insisted I play with drones. I should do this more: I am out of practice (let's not even think about the A chanter at this point). Between drones and the fan pulling out his amp I had half an ear in case our occasional neighbour should hoof it don the stairs to complain about the noise.

The ostensible purpose of this is to allow the fan to work up some basic accompaniment for session, but he keeps thinking about opening bits he could play, then I could follow in. In a session, says I, sceptical.  He mentions friends we might play to. Of course. But I rather think the fan is planning a wildly optimistic future where a less incompetent smallpiper, shorn of all vestiges of stage fright, tours the smallest folk venues in the country... Watch this space!!

House session

We recently, and rather belatedly as he is about to move on, discovered that there is a Scottish fiddle player in the next village. That's Scottish as in he comes from Scotland and Scottish as in it's Scottish tunes he plays. He plays very nicely indeed and knows lots of lovely tunes that remind me how good Scottish music is, and how much more there is to Scottish music than pipes.

We invited him over at the weekend and had a bit of a house session. He kindly played along with a couple of my efforts. I managed to lose the plot during the King and later lost my head entirely and had a couple of unsuccessful goes at Troy. I was obviously not at my best as the fan felt obliged to explain that I've only been playing for three and half years. More like three and three quarters, I think...

Still, I enjoyed it. It felt very different from a pub session - there was tea and cake and scones, for a start. But there was also lots of opportunity to chat about music, to try out tunes, to talk about tunes, to swap the names of good tunes, to get out dots and try something less familiar.

And those tunes: those beautiful Scottish tunes.

Five things

Everyone loves a list, it seems. A while ago I started on creating a list of CDs I love to guide those who are interested in hearing more smallpipes, more pipes or more Scottish music.  My main problem was that many of my CDs would overlap the categories I had in mind: CDs that have some Scottish tunes, or some smallpipes but aren’t normally exclusively pipes or Scottish.  I could have had items appearing under more than one category, which isn’t difficult, but I couldn’t find an elegant way of creating and presenting that variety of categorisation on one blog page. I could, yes I know I could, just have done an alphabetical list, but I'm a librarian, dammit - my professional pride is a stake.

So “Five things” will be a series of snippets, short lists, not exclusively CDs. I may also use it to talk about Scottish music, folk music or Scotland more generally.  It also lets me satisfy my blogging urge when I have nothing much to say in terms of piping. Five is flexible - the list will always be called five things, but sometimes there will be more than five, sometime less.

I'll kick off with five CDs of (mostly) Scottish music, No Ossian, because their CDs will turn up on other lists, and not A Jock Tanson's Bairns (which I am listening to as I type) since I've I've only just discovered them. 

1. Canaich. Counting all three CDs as a single item here. It took me a while to like it - I initially felt it had moments of You and The Night and The Music (in a radio 2 sort of a way) - but now I love it. It really evokes the spirit of the Scottish landscape for me. Mainly fiddle, in contemplative mood, there are also pipes, but sadly they are Irish pipes. It’s a failing, to my mind.

2. Fiddler’s Bid. This opens with the FB Ode to Joy and frankly the entire CD makes me feel that it’s good to be alive. They sound like they are having such fun. Great tunes, not all Scottish.

3. Springwell. For some reason I do very much enjoy pipe tunes played on strings, even banjos (although I profess to dislike banjos) and these are such good tunes. It's great to listen to pipe tunes on other instruments as I get to concentrate on the tune without being distracted by the piping. Mostly Scottish tunes, many pipe tunes.

4. Single Track Road Trip I love Scottish fiddle. I have some difficulty understanding why a man who can play pipes would waste his time on stringed things, but I do love his banjo interpretation of pipe tunes, complete with all the grace notes. All Scottish tunes.

5. Doubling. Despite not being mad about boxes, and despite the paucity of pipes I like this album: lots of Scottish tunes, old and new. 

Introductions

Possibly, I thought, Horsburgh Castle and the Dragon might go well together, Castle first. Dungeons and Dragons (well, all good castles have dungeons) would make a great set name. Both tunes apparently simple, both humable, neither of which can I ever play to my own satisfaction.

I also wondered about whether Miss Girdle might be interested in spending some time with the Glasgow Gaelic Club. See comments above re apparently simple tunes. Set name...oh, how about, Miss Girdle Goes Clubbing!

Sill playing Troy, Braemar and the Highlanders, but again, never to a standard I am happy with. Mostly by heart, but I'm not relaxed with them, not confident, not fast enough and not even enough.

Painfully slow

Still working on the Horsburgh set. Horsbugh Castle itself is OK, and I've been humming it. It's distinctive, but somehow I'm not sure that it's really doing anything for me, somehow. One day I will go through this blog and itemise all the tunes that haven fallen by the wayside...

Dalnahasaig I've still not found, although I've not looked since Friday. It must be out there somewhere. Braes of Mar I need to check for a version in a useful key still. I've found Glenlyon, but I don't recognise it as I play. It's very short. I need to listen to the CD again now I know what I am listening for, but at the moment it's not taking my fancy at all.

Miss Girdle is more complicated than she looks: it's those runs that are slightly different each time. She also needs to be fast. The Blackberry Bush, in the plain or the MacLeod version, just isn't coming together. I need to listen to the CD again: I can't hum it so I suppose it's no surprise I can't play it.

But I missed Glenlyon among other sets of dots. I have too many and need to tidy. Too many that have fallen by the wayside. I went through the dots an set aside the tunes I can play: Flett, Loch Bee, Dargai, Magersfontein, Galloway, King, Whaling Song, Rowan Tree.  Just eight. Eight poxy tunes after nearly four years. How are the mighty fallen...

And then I thought, actually, apart from Whaling Song which insists on turning in to Troy at the moment, these aren't just tunes I can play. These are tunes I can hum to order, play without thinking about, play when I am too tired to think, play at a session without qualms. These are my rock solid, old reliable tunes. Eight of them.

The other thing that is painfully slow is my netbook. It's driving me up the wall.

Buses

You don't get any tunes for ages... I recorded three yesterday while the fan was out.

Still listening a lot to the Horsburgh Castle set. The first half is good, slow and measured. The second half is definitely a session set - the moment it kicks off I think "aha!", break into a smile start tapping my feet. I always said I only play for myself: performance has never been an aim. I pick tunes that I like to hear, that I like to play (not always the same thing). But since I play in sessions and enjoy people playing along with me, it behoves me to find tunes that folk will want to play along with.

Anyway, the first step is always to find dots. The Session listing was useful as it gave dots for three of the six. I didn't print Braes of Mar (although I did listen to the version on Portland where it is listed as Some Say the Devil is Dead) because none of the versions leapt as out being in a useful key.

I found Horsburgh Castle by searching for the composer, Ian Hardie. He, or rather, his estate, since he died in 2012, kindly makes freely available many of his early tunes, and Horsburgh is included in that.

Glenlyon and Dalnahasaig I failed to find, but I got The Blackberry Bush twice as it is on the Session and in Donald MacLeod Book1 (I used the Session version - it looked simpler).

So here are Horsburgh Castle, The Blackberry Bush and Miss Girdle. A bit rough and ready. I played through the Castle a few times before I thought of recording. Girdle I'd done a couple of times. It went OK but I got slowly worse each time I played... The Blackberry timing very poor - triple A's really throw me, timing wise, often because I play them faster than other note combinations, and sometimes I play double A's as triples out of sheer habit.

No drones, under-graced, but a start. Not sure that they make a set themselves, and not sure that the Castle is session material. Still, I've various under-employed and lonely tunes in my repertoire looking for musical love. I shall have to start matchmaking.


Check this out on Chirbit

Check this out on Chirbit

Check this out on Chirbit

I can hear clearly now

One of the things I am definitely learning  to do on my piping journey is to listen better and to understand more what it is I am hearing. I notice this when I go back to CDs I’ve not heard in a while.

Listening to Seudan I think in the beginning the 4th track, which is a long and fast set of 6 tunes, sounded like one enormous splurge of noise. After a while it resolved into some music with a few familiar repeating phrases in it. It also sounded too fast to play. 

Listening now, and bearing in mind I am only doing the distracted listening in the car, I can easily identify 6 different tracks, many of which sound playable. 

This morning I switched to The Royal Scottish Piper's Recital. On this I can hear tunes that sound rather complex, but I can also hear that the complexity comes from the complex grace notes, so I know the basic tune might well be playable. 

I can hear tunes which (and this was car listening so I need to check it out) I think are four parters, and I think that the fourth and maybe the third, parts might be beyond me, but the first two should be doable and should stand as an item on their own.

Also on the CD I can hear tunes I play  - Flett and Loch Bee.  It feels rather odd, and somehow rather exciting, to hear my tunes being played. It makes me feel like a proper piper!

(Bringing the CD box in from the car to get the title I also realise that one of the pipers is Gary West, whose book Voicing Scotland, I've recently read and may review here. All part of my knowledge of the genre that I am slowly building up, things I am discovering, links I am making.)

Wise to it

When I got home today the fan had something to show me. He had been flicking through tune books and had stumbled across The Rock and the Wee Pickle Tow. Predictably it isn't quite like either version I have. More importantly the book (it's Traditional Scottish Fiddle Playing compiled by C Martin) gives a little bit of info about the tune which clears up the mystery of the title. It says: "The 'rock' means the spinning wheel and the 'wee pickle' a small piece of prepared flax". Apparently there were "rocking meets" when spinners gathered to spin - like a sewing bee or a knit and natter.

I like knowing what the title means. It's also always especially nice to find two of my interests intersecting. I've never (successfully) done any spinning, but I potentially have an opportunity to learn, albeit on a spindle, in the next couple of weeks.

I also like it when one small piece of information proves the key to finding more. Once I knew a rock was a spinning wheel it was only a moment or two before I found a Robert Burns poem about spinning that uses the word "rock" in this context.

Then I've immediately found two more sources that identify the rock as a distaff - still for spinning, but definitely not a wheel.

The corner of my ear

I'm a radio fan. More specifically, I am a BBC Radio 4 fan. I've been listening to it certainly since I was a student, and before that I used to listen along with my grandfather when I was small and we were both early risers.

In recent years I've fallen out of love with it somewhat.   I flirted with digital radio, but apart from some extra Archers it mostly seemed to be "comedy" or sci-fi. I enjoyed the reading of Lady In To Fox and I enjoyed The Day of the Triffids. The first time round. 4 Extra seems to be on a permanent short loop of repeats.

My radio salvation was the podcast, so now I only listen to the programmes I want and GQT is always on when I do the ironing, whenever I do the ironing.

I still listen to live radio in the mornings. It's force of habit and a gentle and constant reminder of timing. Weather forecast indicates breakfast time, when the news bulletin ends I need to be in the bathroom, by the time the business news is done I should be grabbing my bag, when I turn the car ignition I should be into the sports news, the review of the papers means turning off the main road, the repeat of the weather forecast as I park means I am running late. On the way home it's either one of the better afternoon programmes, or PM, which I loathe. But it's there as background, and I only catch it out of the corner of my ear, as it were, as the levels of concentration I need for driving ebb and flow through my journey.

It occurs to me that I really wouldn't miss the radio if I just listened to CDs as I drive. I sometimes listen on the way home, when Eddie Mair is particularly trite, sensationalist or intrusive, but I will grit my teeth all the way through John Humphrys being patronising, dismissive and self-important in the morning and never switch off.

I do want to learn more tunes, and in lieu of hearing Scottish tunes at sessions I need to listen to CDs. I'm in search of new ones - but that's probably for another blog post. The problem with CDs in the car is whether I listen closely enough. The road takes my attention, and the drive is that liminal space between the worlds of work and home, a sort of decompression chamber where I think ahead to the world I am about to enter in order to shrug off the world I have just left. When I am not concentrating 100% on driving other things occupy my mind. Music becomes background that I sometimes catch out of the corner of my ear...

I'm hoping that tunes will filter through even though I am not actively listening. I've been replaying tracks 4 and 5 on the Seudan CD. I replay mostly because I keep getting distracted and realising I've not heard half the track, but also because I like the tunes and hope to get them into my brain. This evening have one of the tunes in my head. No idea which tune, or which of those tracks. Nor can I hum it. It's at that delicate stage when it's in my mind's ear, but whenever I try to look (as it were) directly at it, to really hear it, or to vocalise it, it melts into thin air. Still, hopefully it means that background listening will settle some deposits in my brain, and at east help me identify tunes that are resonating with me, so I can bring the CD in from the car and really listen with all my ears.

Fudging it

So, yesterday we went to a session - probably the first we'd been to since May. It's a small session, mainly the fan's band and others, mainly Irish.

I've been playing regularly and yesterday I played an hour before we went - although not right before we went because I didn't want to arrive tired. Still getting back into A. Taking a while and it's still bellows control that's the struggle - stretching my hands out is fine. But then I switched to D and ran through some tunes I felt I was likely to want to play, plus the Dragon, Pickle and Cudgel as they are all knocking around inside my head a lot. (I also thought in passing of Balmacara and its partner - name forgotten - which I played and played, but never got into my head, haven't played for a while, and couldn't hum now to save my life).

At the session we were a small group: the band, minus the fiddle player, another fiddle player who joins us from time to time, and a Scottish fiddle player - Scottish in as much as he comes from Scotland, and he also plays Scottish fiddle. I accordingly opened with My Home Town, having been assured by my pipe maker that if you can play it you can play in any session in Scotland. The ways of Dumfries are clearly not those of Angus as he didn't join it: perhaps he just despises it as too well known a tune. I felt nervous, I suppose because I hadn't played in a session for a while, hadn't used drones since who knows when, and because I knew he would listen differently as a Scottish player. My chanter wasn't set straight and that didn't help. But I managed to get through without the nerves causing problems other than over use of the bellows: a minor felony that bothers no one but me.

Later I went mad and played Dargai (which he seemed to know) and Loch Bee, which I made a bit of a mess of and fudged my way through. More nerves, not helped by someone I know from work popping in for a drink. Maybe I played it to badly for him to join in, maybe he didn't know it. Rowan Tree went well, although I am throwing people at the start of the B part where the fan says my timing is out. Later the fan persuaded me to lay King Of Laiose, which I managed to get through in one piece. I meant to end with the Whaling Song, but having said I'd play it if I didn't accidentally go into Troy the fan played a few bars of Troy, which left me unable to call the Song to mind at all, so I plunged into Flett and played that at speed.

The fan said I did well. He didn't notice the nerves or the fudging. The more I play, and the more tunes I know, the more I notice other people fudging. The trick is to keep going. I used to stop when I made a mistake - sometimes making sounds of frustration and irritation with it. As Jonny once said to me when I crashed out of a tune with a growl "that was good - apart from the roaring". I think I'm over the roaring now - I've learnt to fudge.

I don't mind

It's a refrain in The Big Music: I don't mind. It's been in my head a lot of late - I should reread the book. I don't mind.

This evening I picked up my pipes. A was as before: a little struggle to get my fingers in place. Bag too big, pipes too heavy, everything too loud, bellows just in the way. And I thought - I don't mind, and I carried on for a bit then I switched to D.

D was not right. The bag was uncomfortable on my chest, the strap was in the wrong place, I couldn't get the chanter so that my fingers fell straight on it. But I didn't mind and I played on. After a while I tightened the strap, which made things a little better, although the bellows were uncomfortable on my wrist. But I didn't mind.

I played Highland Cathedral, The Willows, Atholl Highlanders, Braemar, The Lads of Alnwick (we were there last week), Flett, Troy, My Fair Lad, Loch Bee, Dargai, Battle's O'er, Green Hills...not everything went well, but I didn't mind. I just played and played and played until I got too tired to play any more.

This ought to have been the almightiest whinge (seems like I don't whinge much these days) but it isn't because I love my pipes and I loving playing them and if things don't go so well I'm still playing, because I don't mind.

One finger, one thumb

The fan sent me a link. It's nice enough, but, well...it's not smallpipes. These are, however. I think what struck me about this clip is that Gary is much bigger than his pipes. They look quite small. Maybe even more so in this clip. My pipes always feel rather large. I am 5'3" and long legged, so the difference between wearing the strap as high up my chest as it will go and wearing it around my waist is a matter of perhaps 3 inches. I feel I peer round my pipes. I clutch them to me. They take up my whole lap when I sit down.

I also notice that Gary looks as though he's playing a tiny chanter. I am assuming he's playing in A (the fan - who is out at a session - will no doubt enlighten me). D feels about right for my hands whereas A feels big...

Which reminded me that I haven't played A since who knows when. So I did the switch and for the first two seconds I couldn't find the bottom two holes on the chanter and it sounded odd, and then it was all OK and I thought how lovely and mellow and rich A sounds. But although the chanter felt reasonably comfortable the pipes felt huge, the bag felt really full and stiff and seemed to need a lot of effort to keep it going. I stuck to it for a while then flipped to D and immediately everything felt different.

I seem to be struggling to remember tunes at the moment, perhaps because I've got a lot on at work and my head is buzzing with rubbish. Every time I try to play Flett Bonnie Galloway comes out instead. While fiddling about I got half a bar of of a Vicki and Jonny tune (maybe The Willows). I did manage Magersfontein, Amazing Grace, Loch Bee, My Home Town, Cabot Trail, McIntyre's Farewell and The Irishman's Cudgel. Fingers too tense, but I'm tired (see having a lot on at work, qv, ad nauseam).

I thought about playing every day through September, but it's going to be a pig of a month at work. October is no good as we hope to be away for a week of it. The fan suggested I go for 4 weeks instead of a calendar month and cover the end of September and start of October. Not sure that work will let up enough, although I suppose trips to the plot will have dwindled right back by then. Either way I need to play A. And I need more new tunes!!

Propinquity

How does one decide, when compiling a book of tunes, what order to put them in? They generally don't seem to be alphabetical by title or composer. They are often grouped into types of tunes (marches, reels, retreats) but within each group it's difficult to spot any pattern. Maybe it comes down to length of tune and space on the page...

This intrigues me partly, I suppose, because my profession is one in which ordering of items is quite important. But I am also wondering if tunes are grouped together on the page because that it how they are played. Or do they perhaps end up being played in those groups because that's how someone found them on a page? Kevin Macleod, for instance, puts together Oh, But Will You Come to Town, The Battle of the Somme and The Grinder, which appear together on p45 of the Seaforth Highlanders. As he calls the set Seaforth's 9/8 pipe retreat marches it's reasonable to suppose he found them there.

I've been playing The Rock and a Wee Pickle Tow with The Irishman's Cudgel. Sheer luck that I had been looking for both tunes and that they happen to be, in the Thomas Glen collection, on the same page, but it did make me think that perhaps they would sit together as a set. My - now disbanded - Nova Scotia set was two tunes on a page, and now I am looking at putting Magersfontein with either Now the Battle's O'er or The Green Hills of Tyrol, just on the grounds that they are printed together in the Seaforth book. Printed together because they are played together, possibly: going to be played together because they were printed together, definitely. After all, nothing propinks like propinquity.

BTW - played a good hour today. Reasonably relaxed and tried loosening the bellows strap, which feels a little odd and I think will mean my wrist resting on the bellows and the bellows rubbing on my hip bones, but I'll see how it goes. I had to rack my brain for tunes, but they came in the end and I only stopped because my hands were too cold. Am contemplating a pair of fingerless mitts to keep them warm.

MOT

Well, we've been up to Scotland, and mostly avoided midges, and visited the Monkey's maker. He showed me how to add hemp, remove hemp, start from scratch when hemp falls off or pushes too far up the joint. He also showed me several alarming things to do with reeds which involved pliers and made me feel pretty much the same way I feel about steeking: very nervous and slightly sick.

I played a little while I was there so that Ian could judge that everything was working right. The fan noted that I looked nervous. I certainly was. It's not often I play for another piper, someone who can see and hear every fluffed, missed or mangled grace. I feel more worthy than I did of my Monkey, and Ian is such a nice man I am sure nothing like this ever crosses his mind, but I feel that if I was an instrument maker I might feel a little peeved about having my beautiful instrument in the hands of one who doesn't quite deserve it.

The Monkey's joints are all now really air tight, and I felt a difference when I played yesterday. I also loosened off the bellows strap as Ian says if I wear it lower down I'll stop pushing the bellows askew, but that felt very odd indeed, as if the bellows were about to slip off me entirely. I also thought too much about bellows and bag as Ian noted, as the fan has done, that I tend to snatch the bellows a bit and not use their full extent. So all in all it was a bit like getting the car back from an MOT or service. On the plus side everything is clean and shiny and tight and responsive, but then the seat will have been pushed back, the mirrors adjusted and the radio tuned to something awful. It's great to know that everything is in full working order, but it takes a while to get everything feeling familiar again.

Change of fortunes

I am still here....

The pipes one day, plot the next plans went belly-up almost at once. Initially it was in the favour of the pipes, which I played every day for a bit. It was too hot for the plot. Then it got too hot for pipes. And too humid: slightly damp fingers and chanter make it difficult to break the seal when you make the very tiny movements needed for grace notes.

When the Battle is O'er was one I tried forever ago. My teacher, as bored as I was with the Green Book tunes, suggested The Green Hills of Tyrol. I didn't know it. I didn't know A Scottish Soldier. I'd never heard of Andy Stewart. At some stage I discovered that the Hills were often played with the Battle, and I heard them together, on pipes, in Berwick on Tweed. Those were chanter days, long gone.

Recently I've come across this pair played with Magersfontein, and actually they are all one after the other in  my Seaforth Highlanders book. I'm skipping the Hills, but the Battle makes a nice intro for Magersfontein so I am thinking of reinstating it in my repertoire. I've discovered, as I play, that the low G graces on the low A's are really important. They give the tune...oh, depth, or gravitas, or something - just that momentary flipping through the lowest note, the note of gathering (according to The Big Music).

Off to Scotland soon, with my Monkey, and hope to play there, even if only to myself.

Pipes in Clover

When I was (much) younger I went through a phase of reading pony books. The only title I remember is Ponies in Clover. I couldn't tell you anything about the book. My one abiding memory of pony books is the point at which (did it really happen in every pony book?) the plucky girl would notice that one of the horses had colic. It was late at night, grown-ups were absent, but the plucky girl knew what to do. She had to walk that horse. She had to walk and walk with that horse until they were both asleep on their feet, because a horse with colic that lies down dies.

I thought about colicky horses this evening. I had a skimpy lunch (too hot to be bothered), came home, got dinner in the oven, poured an aperitif and began to play. Naturally the aperitif went straight to my head so my fingers and brain disconnected themselves and great waves of sleepiness kept washing over me. I managed a handful of tunes, but then the Cudgel got stuck on a loop of B parts, Athol kept skipping direct from the first to the fourth part, and the Braemar Gathering stalled after two parts. I kept walking about to keep myself going, but decided to give up while I was still playing recognisable strings of notes.

And one in the wash

One of my favourite pastimes is planning. Actually, planning makes it sounds too organised. Speculating? OK - maybe it's just daydreaming. I ponder possibilities of yarn and patterns. I consider fabric. I make lists of books to read. I mark up recipes in my favourite cookery books. I have big plans for the allotment in the autumn which involve moving the strawberry beds, replacing the raspberries with a better variety and finding room for two more redcurrants.

Musically my plans are modest. I intend to avoid distraction by alternating days I play with days going down the plot. In some ways this is pointless. The two activities don't really overlap. Piping needs to be done before dinner. In the current weather work at the plot needs to be done after dinner, when it's cool. But there are so many other things to squeeze into an evening.... So, one day piping, the next day plotting, as it were. (From my childhood - perhaps from books set in even more ancient times - I have the concept of three of everything: one on, one off, and one in the wash...)

My plans go agley so often, but I enjoy them while they last. Everything in my plans is so neat and tidy and organised.

I played yesterday, and enjoyed it very much. Then I got out the silver cloth and gave the Monkey a good clean. Today the plot. Tomorrow I'll be late home after work so maybe have time for neither... So much for plans.

The longest day

Actually, it has been the longest week. An annual event at work has meant I've been working 11 hour days, mostly outside, with the temperatures on the high side for this part of the world. I enjoy it, but I've not had the energy to do anything else.

This weekend we've had a family event, and I've managed some weeding and harvesting at the plot, and that's about it. I've played not one note, but I've thought abut music, about playing. Tunes have gone round my head and I have missed my monkey.

The naming of names

Fiddling (or piping) around this evening, trying out possible sets. I wondered about Magersfontein and Dargai. I think they go nicely but it might just be that my fingers love Dargai and play it - or Loch Bee - with pretty much everything.

I'm better at thinking up the names of sets than actually putting tunes together. I want several Highland Brigade tunes so I can have a set called "Postcards from the Highland Brigade". It's a shame that Braemar and Troy wouldn't suit as I rather fancy them together as "Dearly Beloved".

A kind relative has just rung to point out a programme on BBC2 on pipers in the trenches during World War one, the Great War.

Bridge over troubled water

Life isn't always straightforward, things don't always go as you hope. But there are always pipes.

Got the first part of Braemar by heart. The second and third are there, but I needed a prompt to find them. Getting there.

You hum it....

I sat down today with a tune clear in my mind. It's still there. I am pretty sure it is Castle Dangerous, which I've had nothing whatsoever to do with for months. I vaguely thought it began with a throw on D, so began there and went straight in to My Home Town and then various other of the usual suspects, plus the tunes still being worked on, where I wondered if the Cudgel ought to come before the Pickle or whether they actually didn't belong together at all. But Castle Dangerous, or whatever it is, would not come...

I'm not sure why that tune is in my head. I was expecting any stray tune to be Teribus, having read yesterday about the Common Riding at Howick, where Teribus is apparently their local anthem (but whether they are the same Teribus I know not).

Wondering when I might last have played Castle it occurred to me that it would be useful to tag all my tunes and as I have - as I have so often mentioned - endless spare hours in the day and nothing to fill them with, I think I'll do just that.

Updated to add - scrap that. Turns out there is a limit on total characters for all tags and I've exceeded it with the first half dozen tunes. :-( I guess I could make a post to link to each tune mention....

The best of times, the worst of times

In some ways this was a really bad month to choose to play every day. To add to the expected busy period at work I had some stuff that can crop up at any time and of course would  choose the busy period in which to appear, plus something big and totally unexpected and very time consuming also appeared. This means I've been tired, cross, headachy and stressed out and the last thing I've needed when I got home has been more stuff to do.

It’s also peak allotment season with courgettes needing to be harvested every other day, sweet peas ditto, and things needing to be watered  most days.

On the positive side the piping has proved a huge stress release at the end of the day, providing I've not been too tired. The fan’s workload starts to ease off a little this month so he’s been more able to step in and do some cooking. The plot really only need s attention every other day. And the knitting season is dead on its feet: just one paltry pair of socks started in April and finished this weekend. Normally that’s maybe two weeks’ worth of knitting at most. 

I've started another project, but it will take no time at all to do. This is partly driven by a deadline (it’s for a forthcoming baby and has to be handed over before the mother-to-be leaves work) and partly just by the fun of it: one of my favourite things to knit and takes no time at all.

As ever when I get to the end of a month of intense playing I feel a mix of relief and regret. The relief is that I will have time to do other things, and that I will be able to choose when to play rather than feeling it’s another target for the day. Regret because I will miss playing every day, and because I never do as much, learn as much, improve as much as I hope to during these months. 

There will be others – am penciling in September.

Pleased as Punch

The fan says I'm doing really well, sounding fluent, putting on a spurt of speed. I must be pleased, he says. But I can only think of all the other times when he has said nice things, or I've felt I've improved, and yet here I still am, with a long long list of things I want to do better. Better gracing, better bellows control, better switching between chanters, faster learning of tunes, bigger repertoire. I don't feel very pleased at all, really.

Gather round

Almost the end of my month of playing (as near as dammit) every day. I meant to do a lot of recording, but have failed miserably on that score.

I did manage something today. It's the Braemar Gathering. Not too bad. You can hear where I get those snaps backward and somehow I've lost all the D graces between my low As and Cs, although they came back as I carried on playing. Just the first three parts. Hoping to get these a little tidier before I add in the last part.

Now wondering what I can play it with. Deaf Shepherd put it with Morag MacNeil, Tangusdale, Colin Clark Carruthers (which sounds as though it ought to be a cautionary tale, possibly involving a boy who shunned pipe practice), New Hands and Donella Beaton.



Check this out on Chirbit

Out, damned dots

I meant to entitle this post "damned if you do" but once I thought of this it was too good to resist...

I've been working hard at Braemar. I've really struggled with the repeated FAFs. They go long, short, standard and I kept wanting to play them as short, long, standard. Still, I kept working away and eventually turned them round. And then the fan said it sounded very good except there were some Scotch snaps I  was apparently missing.

Que? Scotch snaps - short, long, standard. Ah yes, I remembered them well... The fan looked at the dots and confirmed I was playing as written i.e. wrong.

So this evening I've been trying to unlearn my careful learning and switch round the long and shorts. I'm getting the hang of the A then D grace on C business, but where the C is the first note of a "snap" (there are two that go CDA) it's adding to the chaos. Almost wish I'd never bothered with the dots at all....

Oh, go on then

I wasn't going to play this evening. It seems that now the pressure is (finally) easing off at work I feel more tired than ever. All I wanted to do this evening was curl up with a book, leaving the allotment unwatered and not even bothering to start a new knitting project to take to my knitting group tomorrow. Well, the plot will have to stay dry tonight, but I've dragged my project out to cast on and I've done some piping.

My hands were cold and my pipes sounded odd to me. The fan says they sounded fine to him. It's like those mysterious days when the car seems to sound growly or rattly for no particular reason. Or the mysterious way in which 19 degrees (the standard temperature in the flat over the year) can seem blissfully cool in summer but unbearably cold in winter.

I worked on the Braemar Gathering, sticking to the first two parts and reading the dots rather than using them as a guide to the shape of things while I play what I think the tune sounds like. I don't know the tune well enough.

(As an aside I was thinking of The Session and the insistence there on the purity - even moral superiority - of playing by ear and thinking of all those great pipe tunes I have the dots for and perhaps will never hear anyone else play in my entire life, let alone hear often enough to learn...)

But, round and round with the A and B, working on timing, trying to throw in D grace wherever low A moves to C. It's a nice movement and ought to be simple enough. I played a few other bits and pieces but nothing sounded right or felt comfortable, and I almost wish I hadn't bothered at all.

Lost and found

The fan is back. I've retrieved the first part of the Cudgel, and the dots.

I lost two more days of my month. On Saturday I kept waiting for phone updates from the fan , stranded in Basel awaiting a replacement plane. On Sunday I was just too darned tired.

Today as I went through dots to find the Pickle, Cudgel, Troy, Whaling and Braemar I came across the Shetland Fiddler, Alick C and the Snuff Wife and wondered about giving them another go, but (wisely, hopefully) I stuck to what I had.

I still don't really have Troy, after all this time. The bits that work well fly from my fingers, but then I stumble over a grace and the edifice crumbles. I had the Whaling Song, but keep conflating the B part with that of the Cabot Trail. The fan tells me this means I don't really know the Whaling Song. I've listened to it again and introduced some snaps which I hope will differentiate it in my mind from the Trail. Braemar  is tricky on timing.

Played for fun this evening: Magersfontein, Bee, Flett and Dargai.