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.