A tale of two tunes

I played a bit with D today. I feel as though I am definitely defining some of my tunes as A tunes and thought I'd play something different if I moved to D. I played the Novia Scotia set, Flett, and the Whaling Song. For some reason I struggle with this on A - the opening triple A with its GDE gracing causes me problems. Generally I found myself playing the usual suspects: My Home Town, Loch Bee, McIntyre's Farewell, Atholl Highlanders and Troy. Oddly enough the first time I tried to play the Highlanders my fingers went straight in to Loch Bee. I thought about playing Magersfontein but my fingers never once started it. Having butted in every where over the last few days it seems to have decided to give itself a rest.

I also played the Barren Rocks. I've been humming this at work, at a slow and stately pace, and it's on my favourite pipe tunes CD (not that they are necessarily my favourites: it's just the sort of album it is and I've forgotten the proper title) also played slow and steady. The fan long ago encouraged me to speed up on it and I often found I was playing too fast so the whole thing gets garbled.

Anyway, I was playing it and feeling glad that I've got it by heart again, because it had been rested for so long that I have been using dots to refresh my memory. It occurred to me, as I sat and played on my little stool, feeling relaxed and happy, that the Rocks started life with the Tree but their fortunes have been very different.

The Rocks is, I think, the only tune from the Green Book that I have stuck with. The two tunes formed my very first set, and the first time I played two tunes through without dots was this very pairing.* For that reason, I suppose, I tried them at my first Foresters session. As I remember it I made a complete hash: I was in a state of terror, everything went black and tunnel like, I was struck deaf, I fudged my way through the Tree - I butchered it, to be precise. Then I thought I'd cut my losses and moved on to the Rocks and mangled that horribly.

Thereafter I think I decided it was best to go through one tune and leave it at that. That one tune - the Tree - long ago became my go to tune. It's the one I've played most times, I guess. Apart from the blip the other day it's the one I play most often, with most ease. I play it at pretty much every session I go to.

But the Rocks, they were somehow cast aside, and although they were on early playlists they fell out of favour, until, as I've said, I had to resort to dots to reinstate them. Still hoping to play the Rocks with Murray, and maybe the Dragon. I feel the Rocks' time has come.

(*Just a year ago! Less than a year ago that I was cock-a-hoop about playing two tunes together without dots. How times have changed!!)