Wednesday 26 March 2014

Worst dreams

Sometimes when I dream I dream of every day things, of my life, but everything is just a little bit worse in dreamland. So in my dream I will be at my allotment worrying about weeds. So far, so much like the waking world. Except that in my dream the plot is two, three, four times the size of its daytime equivalent and the small scattering of weeds becomes a jungle.

I've been worrying about piping in much the same way, daydreaming. On the plus side I've been thinking music, humming tunes, mainly McIntyre's Farewell, and that's good. But I imagine myself playing and I criticise that playing, and come up with a plan. I must stop flapping and twitching and hunching around my bellows. I must play notes cleanly. I must relax my hands on my chanter. I mustn't race. I mustn't let the chanter slip when I take my thumb off to play a high A.

I come home and I pick up my pipes and I notice that I don't twitch, notes are clean, fingers are soft and relaxed, I play at an even pace, the chanter doesn't slip. I wasn't comfortable with bellows at the weekend and one drone seems inconsistent - kicks out - which I think may be a loose joint (I've got beeswax on order from our local hardware shop to go with my hemp), and may be lack of use. I played with drones on Monday and felt panicked, as though I couldn't do it, had slipped back and lost all my learning. But actually, today, flipping them on and off for one tune or another, it was fine, it was good.

I may not yet be a dream piper, but it's far from the nightmare I sometimes envisage.

Monday 24 March 2014

Back in the saddle

I went, I played. It was a good session - around a dozen folk, nice mix of instruments, good tunes: all very Irish, all very fast. I didn't belong. I started with Galloway, fluffed so badly l laughed it off with a "actually, let's not play that tune" and went into Flett. It was OK, I think. I think, because I don't remember, because the stage fright kicked in, hands trembling, so I can't get right thumb or left pinkie properly placed, my hands are tense, all I can hear is my heart pounding fit to bust. I feel as though I must look as though I am on the point of collapse, but the fan says I just look as though I am concentrating hard. I am concentrating on getting through.

The next time I tried the set we'd worked on. Scrambled through Farewell, but I think I only managed twice through the jig before giving up. I held it together, but with much fudging. I know these tunes so well, and yet... The bellows didn't help. I panic that I will run out of air and I pump and pump. I also (and this maybe related to the previous remark) get hotter and hotter.

Final tune was the King during which I flipped my chanter out. Entirely my own fault: I was hanging on to it for grim death. There was a pause. "Carry on!" I commanded of the fiddler, and he did, and somehow I managed to step back into the circle and play on. More fudging, but I got through to the end.

But still, I am back in the saddle. I need to control the stage fright. I need to control my nerves, my hands. I need to be in control, back in the saddle with my hands on the reins.

Sunday 23 March 2014

Preparations

Yesterday I sat down with the fan so he could work on some accompaniments for my tunes. This isn't really in the spirit of sessions where normally everyone plays the tune together, but he seems to think it's allowable for me...

We worked at McIntyre's Farewell and put it with the Trail. Now that the Trail is getting faster this gives a nice change of tempo. All the gracing I've been working on vanished in a puff of smoke. However, we're off to new session at the usual venue this afternoon and I'd rather get notes and the switch between tunes right and to hell with the grace notes. I've been working on it again this morning, grace notes and all, on my chanter.

The fan says the set sounds good. Two or three more of those, he says, and I'd be OK for a short slot at our local open mike venue. Absolutely not, say I: you'd need to take me in wearing blinkers, or the hoods they put on the heads of the condemned as they lead them to the gallows. As it is I'm nervous about playing this afternoon. Hence the chanter practice. Hence sitting here wearing mittens to keep my hands warm, fretting.

Monday 17 March 2014

That's better

Bad day at work (don't ask) and as I drove home, muttering and cursing and developing a hideous headache, I started to think about my pipes. I got in, rushed straight back out for some milk and a newspaper, came back, flung off my coat and fell on my pipes like an addict. I only got about 15 minutes play (in A) before the fan came home. As I started cooking I felt an urge to play more, so while I was waiting for pans to boil, and later on for things to bake, I played another 30 minutes or so. After dinner it occurred to me that I really rather fancied playing my pipes, so I did, in D, for almost an hour.

I've played various tunes from dots books. I've noticed that while I am still having to work at getting the gracing in to the Cabot Trail (which is coming up to jig speed now) Balmacara and Glomach both seem to have a healthy smattering of gracings. Now the Trail is faster it can't go before the Captn so I need new partners for them. Suggestions on a postcard, please.

I've found new dots for the Highlanders (the Green Book only gives two parts) and have been practising the 4th part, and in fact all of it, over and over, getting bits right, getting it faster, the timings better. Sorting Troy. Getting there - must be better than I was, surely.

Having a go at The Snuff Wife, which works best in the parts where I can clearly hear the tune. I love the third part, those lovely falling ECA's lifting to E again. Being a non-piping version of dots I've been left to work out my own graces. I've been making life difficult. In the fourth part I was trying to tap down my G finger to split the two high G's with an F, but with then moving back to F anyway as the next note it was a nightmare differentiating between notes and graces and avoiding crossing notes. Finally worked out that bouncing my thumb off the chanter to give me a tiny high A grace is easier and sounds cleaner.

Similarly in the 2nd part there is tricky enough DGD, only the front of that is actually two D's. I've been striking down to low G between the two, and again having problems with crossing notes and with making one G a grace and the second a note. Turns out the easy way is a plain G grace between those two D's.

Of course, now I'm not certain whether to be cross that I can't play the original graces, cross that it took me so long to work out a better set of graces, or pleased that I worked it out myself. It's sounding better, and that's the main thing.

Sunday 16 March 2014

Give me a break

A whole week since I lasted posted, since I last played. It's not a bad thing: I think a break from time to time helps my mind mull over what it has learned, helps keep me fresh. Partly I've lacked time this week, partly I've continued to feel a bit bruised from my...well, I was going to say beating or humiliation, but I guess those are too strong..disappointment, let's say, of last week.

It began badly today, felt a little rusty, I suppose. I persevered, switched to D, got some dots out, started to enjoy myself. But definitely feeling, at present, that progress is painfully slow, that I am probably going backwards, that I have little to show for all these hours of play. Wish I could get back to feeling the love. I think I need to go easy on myself.

Saturday 8 March 2014

In disgrace

Oh the shame! We went to the usual session today. We've missed the last two, but it's the same session we've been going to for over a year. It was mostly the same people: a good third of the session was the band, who had played elsewhere earlier in the day. I may have been tempted to play something new - the Bee or Magersfontein perhaps - but I played safe and stuck to tunes I can play in my sleep: My Home Town, Bonnie Galloway and Flett.

Reader, I fluffed all three. Home Town wasn't too dire and I held it together despite playing some utterly random notes in the middle. I had totally lost the bottom G - couldn't feel it with my finger at all - and having sat down and started in a hurry the bag was sitting wrongly under my arm. After a while I tried the second tune and again just fluffed whole bars, but managed to keep it going. Later I switched to D. Much fiddling with drones, but I totally lost it and had to abandon. It's a while since that has happened.

I wish I knew what makes me fluff so badly. I was nervous the moment I started: hands shaking and I got hotter and hotter, and yet, as I said, it was a session I know well with people I know well.

It may have been that I didn't initially get a seat and when I did there was a bit of a clamour for a tune, making me the focus of attention and also making me play before I was in the right frame of mind, perhaps. Once I fluff I get tense and worry about fluffing again.

It might have been that I really don't play enough with drones and am out of practice. I'm hardly out of practice with piping: I've played most days for two months. It may have been the appearance of another, much more competent, piper. Or perhaps the Monkey was distracted by France pipping Scotland to the post on the screen in the corner.

I don't know why it happens, but it's certainly shaming when it does.

Wednesday 5 March 2014

Rumours

I've not played for a few days. No particular reason, other than the usual limit to hours in the day and wanting to do other things more than I wanted to pipe.

Fiddling around with various tune pairings. Still having problems with associating tunes with their names, so the Professor decides to play tune A, the mice begin on tune B, but in the style of tune A, thanks to the "help" of the old prof. This generally means playing tunes faster or slower than I would normally. I do this a lot with McIntyre's Farewell. Now McIntyre could just be taking his leave after a visit, but somehow I have always assumed that this is his final farewell, and he has shuffled off this mortal coil. I therefore pay the tune lament-wise, slow and stately. But when I think I'm playing the Trail I play it good and fast, because the Trail is a jig.

I've always played the Trail then the Captain, because that's the order they appear in, in the book. But as the Trail speeds up  they work less well together in that order: fast to slow doesn't work for me. (Does it ever? I can't think of an example). So I wonder about playing Captain and the Farewell slowly together, but can't decide which would go first, and somehow ending one tune I can't recall the other. I have the same problem trying to put the Trail with Flett: I simply can't remember how the next tune goes. I even though about the Trail and Loch Bee but the moment it occurred to me every note of Bee was apparerently erased from my musical memory... Maybe this means these tunes don't want to belong together.

Then I play some tunes slower on A than I do on D and I wonder if some tunes might take different partners on A and D: I still like the thought of Flett and the Whaling Song, but only if played fast, and the Whale still doesn't feel right on A.

There's a session this weekend and I feel I should get some pairings sorted.

P.S. The mysterious tune that keeps morphing in to the Heights of Cassino turns out to be Balmacara (or possible the Falls because I'm still not sure which is which).