Five things - shopping

I'm not much of a one for shopping. From time to time I buy things because I need them, but schlepping round the shops stocking up on pointless tat is not my idea of fun. I have plenty of other ways to fill my time.

I've not spent much time shopping in Scotland, although I have visited the hallowed halls of Jenners simply because it's one of the sights and gets referenced in an Easy Club song, and despite the fact that it is actually a branch of House of Fraser these days. When I do shop I prefer independents to chains. Here are five of my favourites.

House of Bruar. The home of tweed and woolens in lovely colours evoking the Scottish landscape. Best not to think of the associations with "field sports". Just feel the lovely cloth. There is a food hall, too.

The Watermill at Blair Atholl. A real working mill where you can buy bread, flour, muesli or porridge oats...and lunch, too!

Valvona and Crolla. The best Italian deli anywhere, never mind Edinburgh. Best almond croissants and coffee, too. A tiny crammed frontage leads into a counter under goodies hung from the ceiling, there are dried goods, breads, wines and various fruit and veg. Lots of interesting history, and sometimes music, too.

The Old Bookshelf, Edinburgh. Tucked away under an arcade, it's packed with second hand books, mainly children's - but not exclusively. I've bought Angela Thirkells there. Friendly staff. I went in once on a wettish day and remarked that at least it was better than Glasgow, where I had been the day before and where it was distinctly wetter. "Oh aye", came the reply "everything's always worse in Glasgow." They they republish some marvellous books from the past, too in their guise as Greyladies. If you go as far as Bruntisfield Place there are more independent shops, a fabulous cafe, and another good bookshop.

Shilasdair. A small place, barely more than a shed, on the end of Skye. They stock mostly their own yarn in a variety of natural colours, as well as various kits. I wish that I could have a list of five favourite yarn shops in Scotland. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but for a country with a strong tradition of knitting it seems to offer very few good yarn shops.

Fifteen minutes with you

I seem to often read on the session folk saying that they fit music into their lives by playing five minutes a day. They seem to value frequency above length of time spent. I'm never clear whether they are saying they would only do 5 minutes even if they had a spare hour, or that 5 minutes a day keeps the momentum, or that they actually believe you can learn something, improve in 5 minutes.

I'm not clear, either, whether that's an actual or rhetorical 5 minutes. I've given it a go a couple of times. My main problem is that I can't stop after 5 minutes and have gone on for 20 or 30 instead, mostly because time flies, but also because I always just want to go through that tune one more time, or I think of another tune I really want to play, and another one...

 Five minutes are enough to realise that I can still find my fingers for A, that the bag feels huge with A and needs lots of air, that I only can play parts of Horsburgh by heart, that those parts aren't necessarily the same on A as they are on D, that Horsburgh sounds better on A.

I'm also wondering whether hanging on to dots because it's a long tune, or a fast tune is holding me back from getting tunes by heart: Braemar, Troy, Shetland Fiddler all come to mind here.

Five things - Iain Macinnes

I've listened to as many smallpipers as I can find, hoping to hear ideas for new tunes to play, to learn how the pipes can be used, how they can sound, and to inspire me to carry on learning and improving. I also listen for the simple reason that I love the sound of the pipes, and the music they play.

Very early on I identified a favourite piper - Iain MacInnes. Why Iain? I enjoy his selection of tunes: he favours the old pipe tunes, quick steps and so on, and I enjoy hearing those.I also enjoy some of his more unusual choices: a spot of Handel, or some Northumbrian tunes.

I love the choice of instruments to accompany him, especially on his own CDs:  harpsichord isn't a standard pairing with smallpipes, but it's as wonderful as it is unexpected. I love his arrangements, and the CDs are all produced in a way that has the pipes sat with the other instruments, not drowned out by strumming guitars as happens elsewhere. It isn't all smallpipes: Iain himself plays GHB, border pipes and whistle on these CDs. He also uses smallpipes in a variety of keys (A, C and D)

As lists of five things go this is very much a list of four, and two of those may be cheating. Sadly Iain has only put out two CDs of his own. I've also included one made with Smalltalk and one with Ossian, just because they are very much in the same style: serious, low key, well-arranged, beautifully played traditional Scots music. I've excluded Canterach, which has just as much (or little) of Iain as the Smalltalk and Ossian CDs, because the style is very different indeed: more modern with a bit of a rock vibe.

So, just the four. There are other CDs that allow you a passing glimpse of Mr MacInnes, and I will list those in a further post. In the meantime these four are all you need for piping heaven. And Mr MacInnes, if you ever pass by this blog post may I humbly submit that a further CD really wouldn't go amiss. 

1. Sealbh. Greentrax 2009. 11 tracks, 10 of which involve smallpipes. Also GHB and whistles. Tunes encompass quicksteps, Ewan MacColl and Handel.

2. Tryst. Greentrax 1999. 11 tracks, of which 9 have smallpipes. Also GHB and whistles. Good sleeve notes with lots of interesting snippets about tunes.

3. Smalltalk.Greentrax 1994. This CD is by the band Smalltalk, which was Iain with Billy Ross and Stuart Morrison, all formerly of Ossian. 11 tracks.Some of them are songs, but when it's Billy singing you don't mind the break from pipes. Iain also plays whistle. 

4. The Carrying Stream. Greentrax 1997. My favourite Ossian CD. Iain, Billy and Stuart with the addition of William Jackson (harp, piano, whistles, vocals). Iain also plays whistle. As with Smalltalk some tracks are songs.

Almost perfect

I followed a little trail recently when looking for the dots for Horsburgh and ended up with a double CD of Jock Tamson's Bairns and The Lasses Fashion. I've listened to it a lot. It's good to hear new tunes - only Jenny Dang the Weaver and Peter MacKinnon of Skeabost I already knew, and I've not heard Jenny as a song before. The songs are all interesting and nicely arranged.

As well as Ian Hardie  himself the band includes Tony Cuffe of Ossian fame, Rod Paterson of the Easy Club, and others. There is a good selection of instruments (concertina, fiddle, mandolin, whistle) and those instruments that in a group like this ought to be at the back providing backing (guitars, bodhran and so on) are exactly there. And there are also lots of good Scottish tunes.

I like it. I like it a lot. It's damn near perfect. It could just do with...some pipes, especially on the last set: The Hills of Perth and Mrs MacDougall: two fine pipe tunes if ever I heard one.

(A bit of playing with the fan this evening, but I wasn't very comfortable with my pipes. Out of practice already. With the allotment season coming to an end I've no excuse and must play more. The September/October plan has gone by the board: as well as being away in October we don't have a free weekend between now and November. Maybe November, Morag's birthday month, would be a good one to choose.)

Pester power

I'd decided to abandon Horsburgh Castle. It's not the kind of tune I am looking for right now, although it's nice enough. But it won't leave me alone: it's always in my head. I had to give in and play it this evening. Sometimes I choose tunes and sometimes they choose me...

House session the sequel

Is it a house session when you play at home with your other half? While there is a lull in band practice the fan and I thought we'd play a few tunes together. We slung together Magersfontein with Flett. The fan is keen to have the Irishman's Cudgel to end, but it's really not in a fit state to be seen out. Work needed. Then Dargai and Bee, which I already play together, but could I not play faster, he asked. Possibly. Work needed.

The fan insisted I play with drones. I should do this more: I am out of practice (let's not even think about the A chanter at this point). Between drones and the fan pulling out his amp I had half an ear in case our occasional neighbour should hoof it don the stairs to complain about the noise.

The ostensible purpose of this is to allow the fan to work up some basic accompaniment for session, but he keeps thinking about opening bits he could play, then I could follow in. In a session, says I, sceptical.  He mentions friends we might play to. Of course. But I rather think the fan is planning a wildly optimistic future where a less incompetent smallpiper, shorn of all vestiges of stage fright, tours the smallest folk venues in the country... Watch this space!!

House session

We recently, and rather belatedly as he is about to move on, discovered that there is a Scottish fiddle player in the next village. That's Scottish as in he comes from Scotland and Scottish as in it's Scottish tunes he plays. He plays very nicely indeed and knows lots of lovely tunes that remind me how good Scottish music is, and how much more there is to Scottish music than pipes.

We invited him over at the weekend and had a bit of a house session. He kindly played along with a couple of my efforts. I managed to lose the plot during the King and later lost my head entirely and had a couple of unsuccessful goes at Troy. I was obviously not at my best as the fan felt obliged to explain that I've only been playing for three and half years. More like three and three quarters, I think...

Still, I enjoyed it. It felt very different from a pub session - there was tea and cake and scones, for a start. But there was also lots of opportunity to chat about music, to try out tunes, to talk about tunes, to swap the names of good tunes, to get out dots and try something less familiar.

And those tunes: those beautiful Scottish tunes.

Five things

Everyone loves a list, it seems. A while ago I started on creating a list of CDs I love to guide those who are interested in hearing more smallpipes, more pipes or more Scottish music.  My main problem was that many of my CDs would overlap the categories I had in mind: CDs that have some Scottish tunes, or some smallpipes but aren’t normally exclusively pipes or Scottish.  I could have had items appearing under more than one category, which isn’t difficult, but I couldn’t find an elegant way of creating and presenting that variety of categorisation on one blog page. I could, yes I know I could, just have done an alphabetical list, but I'm a librarian, dammit - my professional pride is a stake.

So “Five things” will be a series of snippets, short lists, not exclusively CDs. I may also use it to talk about Scottish music, folk music or Scotland more generally.  It also lets me satisfy my blogging urge when I have nothing much to say in terms of piping. Five is flexible - the list will always be called five things, but sometimes there will be more than five, sometime less.

I'll kick off with five CDs of (mostly) Scottish music, No Ossian, because their CDs will turn up on other lists, and not A Jock Tanson's Bairns (which I am listening to as I type) since I've I've only just discovered them. 

1. Canaich. Counting all three CDs as a single item here. It took me a while to like it - I initially felt it had moments of You and The Night and The Music (in a radio 2 sort of a way) - but now I love it. It really evokes the spirit of the Scottish landscape for me. Mainly fiddle, in contemplative mood, there are also pipes, but sadly they are Irish pipes. It’s a failing, to my mind.

2. Fiddler’s Bid. This opens with the FB Ode to Joy and frankly the entire CD makes me feel that it’s good to be alive. They sound like they are having such fun. Great tunes, not all Scottish.

3. Springwell. For some reason I do very much enjoy pipe tunes played on strings, even banjos (although I profess to dislike banjos) and these are such good tunes. It's great to listen to pipe tunes on other instruments as I get to concentrate on the tune without being distracted by the piping. Mostly Scottish tunes, many pipe tunes.

4. Single Track Road Trip I love Scottish fiddle. I have some difficulty understanding why a man who can play pipes would waste his time on stringed things, but I do love his banjo interpretation of pipe tunes, complete with all the grace notes. All Scottish tunes.

5. Doubling. Despite not being mad about boxes, and despite the paucity of pipes I like this album: lots of Scottish tunes, old and new. 

Introductions

Possibly, I thought, Horsburgh Castle and the Dragon might go well together, Castle first. Dungeons and Dragons (well, all good castles have dungeons) would make a great set name. Both tunes apparently simple, both humable, neither of which can I ever play to my own satisfaction.

I also wondered about whether Miss Girdle might be interested in spending some time with the Glasgow Gaelic Club. See comments above re apparently simple tunes. Set name...oh, how about, Miss Girdle Goes Clubbing!

Sill playing Troy, Braemar and the Highlanders, but again, never to a standard I am happy with. Mostly by heart, but I'm not relaxed with them, not confident, not fast enough and not even enough.

Painfully slow

Still working on the Horsburgh set. Horsbugh Castle itself is OK, and I've been humming it. It's distinctive, but somehow I'm not sure that it's really doing anything for me, somehow. One day I will go through this blog and itemise all the tunes that haven fallen by the wayside...

Dalnahasaig I've still not found, although I've not looked since Friday. It must be out there somewhere. Braes of Mar I need to check for a version in a useful key still. I've found Glenlyon, but I don't recognise it as I play. It's very short. I need to listen to the CD again now I know what I am listening for, but at the moment it's not taking my fancy at all.

Miss Girdle is more complicated than she looks: it's those runs that are slightly different each time. She also needs to be fast. The Blackberry Bush, in the plain or the MacLeod version, just isn't coming together. I need to listen to the CD again: I can't hum it so I suppose it's no surprise I can't play it.

But I missed Glenlyon among other sets of dots. I have too many and need to tidy. Too many that have fallen by the wayside. I went through the dots an set aside the tunes I can play: Flett, Loch Bee, Dargai, Magersfontein, Galloway, King, Whaling Song, Rowan Tree.  Just eight. Eight poxy tunes after nearly four years. How are the mighty fallen...

And then I thought, actually, apart from Whaling Song which insists on turning in to Troy at the moment, these aren't just tunes I can play. These are tunes I can hum to order, play without thinking about, play when I am too tired to think, play at a session without qualms. These are my rock solid, old reliable tunes. Eight of them.

The other thing that is painfully slow is my netbook. It's driving me up the wall.