It's funny how I felt that I had put my chanter behind me: after all, once you have pipes, who needs any substitute? Especially with my Monkey and his clever drones' key, it's easy to try out new tunes with minimum fuss. But recently I've been rediscovering my chanter and all its uses and benefits. It's quieter, it's less physical effort (once your lungs are in training: mine were fit to burst this evening), it's possible to play very slowly, to repeat more easily, to stop and think mid note without the accompanying collapse of bag and drones. I'd forgotten how useful it was to play a tune very slowly, putting in every single grace note as written, and when you speed up some of the gracing can be left in, but you can't shoe horn it in at speed when the pipes are in full flood.
So, half an hour with my chanter this evening. I listened to the Loch Alsh set: listened and played, listened and played. I went over Dargai very slowly with full gracing. And that was it: just paying plenty of attention to three tunes, to notes and grace notes and timings, polishing and perfecting the small things, in the way that you only really can with a practice chanter.
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