Busking it

I didn't do too badly today. Perhaps it was the practice before hand. Perhaps it was the session being small (the band, the fiddle player's Americana partner, a friend, plus 2). Maybe it was having my back to the wall or space around me (it can be very cramped some times). I am wary of picking one of these, fetishising it as a must-have, an "I can't play unless..."

Still, not too badly, as I said. I just let my fingers play what tune they would. We started with Bonnie Galloway. I got a little distracted because I could here the band's (Irish) piper playing a whistle and the notes caught my attention. Managed to pull my chanter adrift (still haven't been brave enough to have a go at hemping and I really must). Slightly distracted, too, by not-quite-in-tune drones.

I played Flett and that went well, but I couldn't bring Bee to mind and judged it safer to stop with Flett. Later on I gave Magersfontein its first outing. On one repeat I lost the plot totally and ended up making up notes until I got back to firm ground.

As we began to pack up I played Home Town. As I started my drones sounded ragged, the pipes thin, and I had a moment of wondering what on earth I was doing, then the fiddler pitched in and suddenly I could hear real smallpipes - just like on CD! - and just played happily.

Much more relaxed today, definitely. No mad pumping, no shaking hands or weak knees, no pounding heart. I just sat, played, listened, as I do when I'm playing alone at home. Someone said to the drummer that he looked to be in a trance when he was playing: the drummer calls it Zen. Whether you call it Zen or the zone or even a state of flow I was almost there, today, almost in that space.

When you change with every new day

I'm blowing hot and cold at the moment (which sounds as though it ought to be a pun, but isn't). I'm working on getting back to drones, playing a few tunes with them each time I practise. It's easier, of course, with D, and I am playing a lot of D at present - initially just because it was easier: I didn't feel musically keen on D. I started to wonder if I'd made the right decision to have D. Too high, to light, to thin, just too D.

But now, at the moment, I love D. D is the best. D is all I want to play.

I've also moved from thinking that I know no tunes at all to feeling that actually I have quite a repertoire. I can play for over an hour at a time. That will partly be stuff I'm still working with dots for, but also a goodly wodge of tunes I know. It makes it easier to play for longer, knowing that I am never having to stop and wonder what I could play next. Some days I stop playing, because I'm tired or there are other things that need to be done,  and then think of a whole heap of tunes I wish I had played and didn't have time for.

Yesterday I got out the Seaforth Highlanders and played through The Glasgow Gaelic Club,  Fingal's Weeping, All the Blue Bonnets, Murray's Welcome, The Highland Lassie Going to the Fair, The Portree Men, Captain Grant and The Barren Rocks of Aden. Oh, and then Dargai and the new tunes I've been given. 

After that I moved on to tunes I know. But I like the tunes in the book. I need to improve them, get them by heart, find suitable pairings. I still struggle with creating sets. I'm waiting for the fan to comment on the Whaling/Flett/Bee combo, and actually feeling that the Bee isn't right on the end there.

Today another of the new tunes, tunes I know, all with drones (except when I lost the plot with Whaling again), all in D, just loosening up ready for the session later on.

Tunes for us

I've played a few times over the last few days, partly because I’ve had some days off, but mostly because we’ve been given some tunes of our very own! The fiddler in the fan’s band sent a tune for us (the plural covers me and my pipes, BTW) out of the blue.  We tried it out – it’s in D – and it went OK, but there were a few notes out of range. We mentioned this, rather shyly, and back came another tune!

The odd thing is that I learned the reading of dots for pipes in A, and all my music is set for A. As with a whistle if I change to D I play the same fingering, it’s just that different notes come out. So when the tune sent was in D, even though I was fully intending to play it on the D chanter, I had to transpose it to A so that I knew which notes to play, or at least, which fingers to put where. Although my handwriting is, I think, reasonably clear, my writing of notes is so scruffy that I can’t read my own score so I was thankful for one of the fan’s bits of kit that allows me to type music.

The other interesting thing is how differently a non-piper thinks, in terms of dots. I expect this happens with any instrument, so admire anyone who writes for a whole orchestra. Some of the note sequences sound rather odd to my ear. Some of the sequences put together notes that really aren’t easy to play one after another, partly because my fingers have an expectation of certain note patterns. A tremolo was called for on a high G, which must be one of the hardest notes to add an interesting grace to. But it’s nice to think differently about the pipes and what they can play and how they can sound, especially as I am aware that I very much play them as miniature GHB.

Speaking of which, the recording is of two standard pipe tunes and a Scottish song: The Georgia Whaling Song, Flett from Flotta and the Shores of Loch Bee. I am hoping these work as a set. I think I've got the wrong number of repeats in Whaling. All tunes have the odd garbled moment where I miss a note in my rush. I race too fast into Bee, and then have a sort of a pause while I listen and wonder if I really am playing Bee or just Flett again, only faster. Drones a little wavery, perhaps: that's what comes of using bellows rather than bag. Otherwise, I think it sounds OK. 

Check this out on Chirbit

Taking stock

A few days off work. I do a bit of this, a bit of that, not much of anything: unwinding, mostly. From time to time the fan mentions that I haven't played for while. I hum music, I have it in my head, I listen to music, I think about playing, but he's right: I don't actually play much. I worry that this means despite everything I am not really a musician, a music-lover, a piper: I'm just someone who happens to play pipes once in a while.

But there are other things I love and don't do all the time. I've only managed one trip to the allotment. I've finished knitting a lovely shawl but have done nothing at all about blocking it. I've just pulled out my needle point project to work on after this. I've literally not touched it since before Christmas. I don't feel these gaps make me any less of a gardener, a knitter or a needlewoman, so why should I play every day to consider myself a piper?

I suppose I am still feeling at a bit of an impasse. It has been a mistake to take on such a large number of new tunes. Many have fallen by the wayside, others I peg away at but don't seem to improve on. Tunes I knew have got muddled with others. I suppose I've learned one or two: Bee is the most successful. Some I've consolidated. Both Magersfontein and the King more reliable than they were.

Demonstrating the Monkey to family at the weekend I thought I'd be clever, pick my tunes ahead of time, hum them, remember them. I was going for the Galloway/Flett/Bee set but struggled to remember how Galloway began, thought I moved on to Flett and realised I was only playing Galloway again, only faster. Couldn't remember how Bee went at all. Stage fright again, I suppose.

I keep meaning not to fling right into tunes, but to play a run up and down first to make sure everything is comfortable. I thought that mentally running through tunes ahead of time would help, but the fan says this is the Wrong Thing to Do. In the end I ended up with the Rowan Tree, which I don't seem to play much at present.

Anyway, I played this afternoon, in D. I played McIntyre's Farewell, Cabot Trail, Home Town, King, Glomach, Balmacara, Braemar, Dargai, Magersfontein. It went OK. If this is a plateau it's a pleasant one. I'd be happy to rest here awhile.

Chalk and cheese

I hoped this evening to play some of Balmacara or Glomach. Because I hear them together and play them together I tend to forget which is which. I think it's primarily Glomach that goes round in my head. I managed a couple of bars, but that was it, annoyingly enough.

One tune I did manage to drag from the archive was Amazing Grace. I've not played this in ages and never seriously worked at it. It seems too lightweight, somehow. The key is control: I held notes well and remembered grace notes, which were cleanly executed, especially the thumb notes, which I feel I'm playing well.

I dug it out because I was talking last week to someone who has recently taken up a musical instrument. I think she's playing in the Irish idiom, but she's looking to me as her inspiration. This has nothing to do with my musical ability and everything to do with my age: we're both *ahem* mature learners.

Anyway, she's been playing a few weeks, feels shy about even playing in front of her husband, would like to play at sessions, would like to play better. So I said, I know what, let's play a tune together sometime; you and me. It'll be great.

Then we had to think of a tune. Amazing Grace won out because it's in a reasonable key, known to both of us, simple enough to play. But I haven't played it for a while, hence dusting it off this evening. It's a lovely tune. It sounds perfect on pipes. It will be nice to play it with someone else.

Oh - and the other instrument? It's a harp. Of course it is.

Blast from the past

It has only just occurred to me that I still have old clips on my web cam of me playing short items on my chanter, and that Chirbit supports wmv files. I found someone online - through The Session, I think, who said he'd comment on my technique, and I made a few short video clips for him. All I remember him saying was that I wasn't ready to play Scotland the Brave and should try Scots Wha Hae instead.

I loathe Scots Wha Hae. It's enough to put anyone off for life. I have a history of loathing the tunes in beginners' books and racing to the back of the books to find something I know and like and actually want to play. It may not be the official way to learn, but I think it challenges and stretches and makes you a better player and keeps you interested.

Anyway, the point of this is to demonstrate progress. The clip is March 2011, just over three years ago. It was before I even had Morag, before I had ever held a set of pipes, before I really started to become a piper. My playing is reasonably even, but s-l-o-w. The grace notes are all there - every one as laid out in the dots in The Piper's Delight - and clunky beyond belief. It's like looking at childhood photos and thinking, can that really be me?


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Fast and furious

A bit of multi-tasking this evening, piping and recording in the gaps between getting some washing done and dinner cooked. Have I ever mentioned that I don't have enough hours in the day?

I've been feeling bad about not recording. It was the whole point of having a blog and foisting myself on the internet, otherwise I could have bought myself a nice notebook to scribble away in. I whipped out the recorder this evening, and immediately hit a hitch: the plug was missing. Again. The fan kindly searched while I played with an eye on the clock. Then I had to set up the machine, then I played, suffering from red-button-itis (i.e. badly), then I hit the wrong button when mastering the track down just as the oven timer started beeping at me...

The fan managed to retrieve the error, and I sat down to blog and then my sister rang with an urgent query about the correct wording for a wedding invitation, and now the evening's almost over and I need to get this typed before I run out of time. Have I ever mentioned my problem about the number of hours in a day....

The (mangled), droneless tunes are Troy's Wedding and the Atholl Highlanders. I can, and do, play both better than this, but I was in a hurry. Lots of mistakes and hesitations in both. Lots of my fingers running away with the tune and getting confused. I had dots to hand as I see no reason to stress myself out with being dotless and recording now that I have nothing to prove in that area.

Utterly no gracing in either other than what is utterly necessary to divide two notes the same. This is partly due to having non-piping versions of the dots, and partly just the speed. Speed is one thing they do have, I think.

For comparison, there is an older version of the Highlanders (on my previous blog, which does seem to have been reinstated), which I describe as "reasonably fast" and now seems laughably slow. That's from August 2012. A more recent recording of Troy - September last year.

One good thing I did notice, not today so much, but this week: fingers going like the clappers, elbows and mind calm and relaxed in the background. That has to be a good sign.

PS - wrote this on Monday and had problems uploading the tune. Thursday today - more cooking, washing and piping - same tunes, no recording, so played much better, of course...!


Check this out on Chirbit

Blur

I'm trying to play at least one tune with drones to keep my hand in, get back to my comfort zone. Fiddling round with tunes, but one keeps blurring into the next. The Whaling Song keeps blurring in to Cabot Trail. Troy's Wedding morphed in to the Atholl Highlanders. Neither Balmacara nor Braemar Gathering would come to mind, or fingers, at all. Trying to play a set of three: Whaling, Flett and Bee, if I'm on D, or Galloway, Flett and Bee if I'm on A. Going to sound OK, I think.