The more I look the more I see...

I have the world's worst memory. The fan can list the names of every child who was in his class at primary school, I struggle to name more than four people who taught me. I do remember my art teacher (name long forgotten) giving me one piece of advice, which was to draw what I saw, not what I thought I saw.

Drawing is about looking, and music is about listening, but somehow it's not until you become a musician that you really understand what it means to listen. It's more than not blocking your ears to sound: it's active, not passive. I think it is also selective. I am sure I listen better to other pipers and to Scottish music than to other musicians, instruments, genres: it's a matter of knowing what I am listening to, what I am looking for, of understanding what I am hearing.

Traditional music, like any other sphere of interest, grows the more you know about it. The more you look the more you see connections and patterns. Acknowledgements lists on sleeves notes that once were apparently full of random names become clearer the more of them I read. Ian Green is the guiding star behind Greentrax that releases many fine CDs of traditional music. My own pipe maker, Ian Kinnear, is mentioned on the sleeve notes for The Carrying Stream.  Various people pop up in different places, different bands at different times.

Tunes gather their own listening history. I probably heard The Kathryn Tickell Band CD some years ago. The tunes would have meant nothing to me. I dug it out of the cupboard this evening in a search for something different, and immediately found the same old. The second track opens with Out On the Ocean, which I am sure is one the fan is currently playing (unless I am confusing it with The Rolling Waves). Track 3 is Peacock Followed the Hen, which is one of the alternative names for Brose and Butter, although this is longer and has more parts than Brose, which I know from Tryst and Ossian. Track 6 includes All Night I Lay With Jockey, which I could have sworn was on Tryst or Sealbh, but perhaps I am confusing it with another lowland or border tune... And track 10 opens with a "Highland pipe lament" called Dargai - I'm not sure if it's the Heights thereof, or not: too slow and too much like a Northumbrian tune.

Hearing a tune in different places, played in different ways by different people on different instruments adds to my enjoyment and understanding of the tune, as well as giving me the confidence to play tunes in the way I want to play them.