Fudging it

So, yesterday we went to a session - probably the first we'd been to since May. It's a small session, mainly the fan's band and others, mainly Irish.

I've been playing regularly and yesterday I played an hour before we went - although not right before we went because I didn't want to arrive tired. Still getting back into A. Taking a while and it's still bellows control that's the struggle - stretching my hands out is fine. But then I switched to D and ran through some tunes I felt I was likely to want to play, plus the Dragon, Pickle and Cudgel as they are all knocking around inside my head a lot. (I also thought in passing of Balmacara and its partner - name forgotten - which I played and played, but never got into my head, haven't played for a while, and couldn't hum now to save my life).

At the session we were a small group: the band, minus the fiddle player, another fiddle player who joins us from time to time, and a Scottish fiddle player - Scottish in as much as he comes from Scotland, and he also plays Scottish fiddle. I accordingly opened with My Home Town, having been assured by my pipe maker that if you can play it you can play in any session in Scotland. The ways of Dumfries are clearly not those of Angus as he didn't join it: perhaps he just despises it as too well known a tune. I felt nervous, I suppose because I hadn't played in a session for a while, hadn't used drones since who knows when, and because I knew he would listen differently as a Scottish player. My chanter wasn't set straight and that didn't help. But I managed to get through without the nerves causing problems other than over use of the bellows: a minor felony that bothers no one but me.

Later I went mad and played Dargai (which he seemed to know) and Loch Bee, which I made a bit of a mess of and fudged my way through. More nerves, not helped by someone I know from work popping in for a drink. Maybe I played it to badly for him to join in, maybe he didn't know it. Rowan Tree went well, although I am throwing people at the start of the B part where the fan says my timing is out. Later the fan persuaded me to lay King Of Laiose, which I managed to get through in one piece. I meant to end with the Whaling Song, but having said I'd play it if I didn't accidentally go into Troy the fan played a few bars of Troy, which left me unable to call the Song to mind at all, so I plunged into Flett and played that at speed.

The fan said I did well. He didn't notice the nerves or the fudging. The more I play, and the more tunes I know, the more I notice other people fudging. The trick is to keep going. I used to stop when I made a mistake - sometimes making sounds of frustration and irritation with it. As Jonny once said to me when I crashed out of a tune with a growl "that was good - apart from the roaring". I think I'm over the roaring now - I've learnt to fudge.