Buses

You don't get any tunes for ages... I recorded three yesterday while the fan was out.

Still listening a lot to the Horsburgh Castle set. The first half is good, slow and measured. The second half is definitely a session set - the moment it kicks off I think "aha!", break into a smile start tapping my feet. I always said I only play for myself: performance has never been an aim. I pick tunes that I like to hear, that I like to play (not always the same thing). But since I play in sessions and enjoy people playing along with me, it behoves me to find tunes that folk will want to play along with.

Anyway, the first step is always to find dots. The Session listing was useful as it gave dots for three of the six. I didn't print Braes of Mar (although I did listen to the version on Portland where it is listed as Some Say the Devil is Dead) because none of the versions leapt as out being in a useful key.

I found Horsburgh Castle by searching for the composer, Ian Hardie. He, or rather, his estate, since he died in 2012, kindly makes freely available many of his early tunes, and Horsburgh is included in that.

Glenlyon and Dalnahasaig I failed to find, but I got The Blackberry Bush twice as it is on the Session and in Donald MacLeod Book1 (I used the Session version - it looked simpler).

So here are Horsburgh Castle, The Blackberry Bush and Miss Girdle. A bit rough and ready. I played through the Castle a few times before I thought of recording. Girdle I'd done a couple of times. It went OK but I got slowly worse each time I played... The Blackberry timing very poor - triple A's really throw me, timing wise, often because I play them faster than other note combinations, and sometimes I play double A's as triples out of sheer habit.

No drones, under-graced, but a start. Not sure that they make a set themselves, and not sure that the Castle is session material. Still, I've various under-employed and lonely tunes in my repertoire looking for musical love. I shall have to start matchmaking.


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Check this out on Chirbit