It's a slow old time of year, Twixtmas, but we're enjoying being lazy, the fan and I, pottering about, doing a bit of this and a bit of that and not very much of anything at all.
We did manage to get to a session. I played four times. I got half way through the first tune (Dargai) when I realised that I had forgotten about stage fright, and didn't actually have any. That didn't stop me from making a pig's ear of Loch Bee, just like last time. I lost the plot during the King, but managed Margersfontein and Flett together, and then Bonnie Galloway, because I couldn't remember how to start the Rowan Tree.
The session leader made a mock presentation to me as "most improved player." I should feel pleased about this, but I've never been one to take compliments well, and feel both that I ought to be most improved, since I started from the lowest point, and also that I need to improve a great deal more. Still, knowing there is more of a journey to go doesn't cancel out the miles travelled already...
At the end of the evening a Northumbrian piper asked if I'd like a closer look at his pipes...and I ended up strapping then on and giving them a go. They are teeny, tiny, with bellows that, like Duckface, weigh next to nothing, the chanter is full of strange lumps and angles and bristles with keys. Would I be tempted, asks the fan? But I haven't even learned to play the pipes I have yet...
I've got some new CDs - two Tannahill Weavers, which I wanted for Iain MacInnes' contribution, and Piob is Fidheall, of which more later, probably.
Ramblings of an easily distracted learner piper
Tuesday 30 December 2014
Tuesday 23 December 2014
Negative
The fan has been talking about the uncanny valley today. It's that gap between real and fake that causes gut reaction, that "eew!" moment when you take take a step back, realising that what you thought was real, and in this specific context, human, turned out to be fake, or an android.
It has struck a chord because I'm in the throes of two things which are no longer what I thought they were, and I am having to get to know them all over again. The first is a sock pattern. It's a different construction from anything I've used before, which has been challenging in itself. But the real stinker is nothing to do with construction, but with colour. The first sock has a purple pattern on a cream ground. The knitting chart, so as not to distract those who want, green and red socks, say, or pink and orange (believe me, someone might) is in black and white. So for the whole sock white=cream and black =purple.
The problem is that sock two is like a negative of the first: it has a white pattern on a purple ground, so now white=purple and black=cream. The main pattern, once I got going, isn't a problem, but the increases at the gussets are, and I keep having to stop to think which colour is which.
The fan suddenly spoke up this evening to say he didn't think I was playing Miss G quite right. I pointed out that I was following the dots, which I presented to him. He hummed through the dots and had to admit I was right (it happens from time to time!) He poked about the web and found a different version of Miss G, which is almost the same as mine, but not quite. My eyes are reading one set of dots and my fingers want to play another...And all along, "my" Miss G was an imposter, just like Barbara Wallace and the other girls who visited Dr Wiseman in Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, which is keeping me entertained while I knit, knit, knit my back to front sock in time for Christmas.
It has struck a chord because I'm in the throes of two things which are no longer what I thought they were, and I am having to get to know them all over again. The first is a sock pattern. It's a different construction from anything I've used before, which has been challenging in itself. But the real stinker is nothing to do with construction, but with colour. The first sock has a purple pattern on a cream ground. The knitting chart, so as not to distract those who want, green and red socks, say, or pink and orange (believe me, someone might) is in black and white. So for the whole sock white=cream and black =purple.
The problem is that sock two is like a negative of the first: it has a white pattern on a purple ground, so now white=purple and black=cream. The main pattern, once I got going, isn't a problem, but the increases at the gussets are, and I keep having to stop to think which colour is which.
The fan suddenly spoke up this evening to say he didn't think I was playing Miss G quite right. I pointed out that I was following the dots, which I presented to him. He hummed through the dots and had to admit I was right (it happens from time to time!) He poked about the web and found a different version of Miss G, which is almost the same as mine, but not quite. My eyes are reading one set of dots and my fingers want to play another...And all along, "my" Miss G was an imposter, just like Barbara Wallace and the other girls who visited Dr Wiseman in Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, which is keeping me entertained while I knit, knit, knit my back to front sock in time for Christmas.
Monday 15 December 2014
Lady Mondegreen
Aha! Listening to Jack Tamson's fabulous Bairns, and what do I find (among some pretty fantastic music), but Lady Mondegreen, aka The Bonnie Earl O Moray.
The best seasonal mondegreen I know is Strawberry Ships, but the one I remember most from childhood is "You eat your small corner". I took Small Corner to be some sort of porridge, heaven only knows why.
The best seasonal mondegreen I know is Strawberry Ships, but the one I remember most from childhood is "You eat your small corner". I took Small Corner to be some sort of porridge, heaven only knows why.
Thursday 11 December 2014
Eating an elephant
One of the many fatuous management phrases you come across these days is the one about change management and any hugely big task: how do you eat an elephant? The, not particularly amusing, answer is "a teaspoon at a time". The idea is that any really big job can be tackled if taken in small enough pieces. Well, learning the pipes is certainly an elephant of a job, and sometimes I do feel as though I am proceeding at a teaspoon-sized rate.
But, really, what kind of an idiot thinks they can get through an entire elephant with a teaspoon? Fair enough if you don't mind which side of the end of the century you're finishing it, but personally I have a limited amount of time. How many five minute practices would it take me to hit the fabled 10,000 hours? I think I've mentioned this before. Even at 20 minutes a day it works out as the rest of my life, assuming I reach the same old age attained by my great aunts and grandmother, and then some.
And I do wonder if actually there is value, apart from clocking up the hours, in playing for longer. Obviously playing for longer helps build up stamina. Clearly I will never have to play non stop for an hour, but I suppose it's the same as cars being able to go much faster than the legal limit. It means that when you are at the legal limit the car is well within its comfort zone, and if I can play for an hour non-stop, for instance, then 20 minutes or so should be a doddle, as should playing for 5 or 10 minutes at a time in chunks over a longer period.
Stamina aside I wonder if it helps to have time to go over, and over, and over a tune. To play something, or several somethings, else and then play the tune again and again. Does that speed up the learning process or is it better to play something and then leave it? Sometimes when I play in this way I feel I get better each time, but equally often, it seems, I get steadily worse, or improve to a certain point and then lose it totally. I remember from exam revision days we were told that you can only concentrate for 20 minutes at a time and should take a short break after that, and then breaks of increasing length interspersed with shorter periods of work, then begin again after a long break. Sometimes when I repeat a tune endlessly, break with another tune and go back to the first things have got better. And some times they have got worse, often quite a lot worse. I can literally got from almost having a tune and just fiddling about with the finer points of gracing to having not a clue how even to start the tune. (The fan has noted before that I am living proof of the fact that just because you can do a thing once doesn't mean you can do it again...)
Generally speaking I play until something else becomes pressing (dinner in the oven, the phone ringing), or I get tired, or I get really frustrated and fed up with playing . Sometimes I can work through frustration, discomfort, memory blocks and sheer idiocy, and sometimes I can't.
Whether it's a teaspoon, a ladle or a JCB, there is still an awful lot of elephant to be eaten.
(Can you believe - my 400th blog post!! No wonder I don't have enough time to play pipes!!)
But, really, what kind of an idiot thinks they can get through an entire elephant with a teaspoon? Fair enough if you don't mind which side of the end of the century you're finishing it, but personally I have a limited amount of time. How many five minute practices would it take me to hit the fabled 10,000 hours? I think I've mentioned this before. Even at 20 minutes a day it works out as the rest of my life, assuming I reach the same old age attained by my great aunts and grandmother, and then some.
And I do wonder if actually there is value, apart from clocking up the hours, in playing for longer. Obviously playing for longer helps build up stamina. Clearly I will never have to play non stop for an hour, but I suppose it's the same as cars being able to go much faster than the legal limit. It means that when you are at the legal limit the car is well within its comfort zone, and if I can play for an hour non-stop, for instance, then 20 minutes or so should be a doddle, as should playing for 5 or 10 minutes at a time in chunks over a longer period.
Stamina aside I wonder if it helps to have time to go over, and over, and over a tune. To play something, or several somethings, else and then play the tune again and again. Does that speed up the learning process or is it better to play something and then leave it? Sometimes when I play in this way I feel I get better each time, but equally often, it seems, I get steadily worse, or improve to a certain point and then lose it totally. I remember from exam revision days we were told that you can only concentrate for 20 minutes at a time and should take a short break after that, and then breaks of increasing length interspersed with shorter periods of work, then begin again after a long break. Sometimes when I repeat a tune endlessly, break with another tune and go back to the first things have got better. And some times they have got worse, often quite a lot worse. I can literally got from almost having a tune and just fiddling about with the finer points of gracing to having not a clue how even to start the tune. (The fan has noted before that I am living proof of the fact that just because you can do a thing once doesn't mean you can do it again...)
Generally speaking I play until something else becomes pressing (dinner in the oven, the phone ringing), or I get tired, or I get really frustrated and fed up with playing . Sometimes I can work through frustration, discomfort, memory blocks and sheer idiocy, and sometimes I can't.
Whether it's a teaspoon, a ladle or a JCB, there is still an awful lot of elephant to be eaten.
(Can you believe - my 400th blog post!! No wonder I don't have enough time to play pipes!!)
Monday 8 December 2014
Smalls
I always feel that "girdle" is somehow a snigger-inducing word. It reminds me of adverts I used to see in the weekend papers for Miss Mary Girdles and the Playtex 18 hour girdle, featuring larger ladies being reduced to unfeasibly sylphlike proportions thanks to a swathe of heavy duty elastic. Less amusingly it's a symbol of the restrictions of women's lives: I am sure that there is an episode in The Edible Woman where woman's reluctance to wear a girdle or similar contraption is taken to be pretty much evidence of moral delinquency, if not downright insanity. These days it is more likely to conjure up the lovely, and surely girdle-free Ms Lawson, and her girdlebuster pie.
I was rather bemused, when googling these pieces of underwear to discover that you can still buy such things... The only girdle I have is Miss Girdle, and she's coming on OK. She has speeded up since the last time I recorded, perhaps become more uneven. This is a prime example of slowing up on the tricky bits and racing through the easier bits. She's also almost totally denuded, poor girl, of any but the essential gracenotes, which seems a shame.
I've mentioned before that I've a mind to pair Miss G with Horsburgh. My problem has been that I felt Horsburgh was going to be one of those tunes that somehow I never quite manage to learn. The A part I've had for ages, the B part, I felt, was eluding me. I've pushed the dots away this evening to test things out and I find that I know the whole tune, although there is one bar in the first version of the B part that gives me pause for thought, and I have a slight tendency to repeat the first version of the B part, or to run straight into the second version. But on the whole I *do* know it, and now just need to work as getting it better, with Miss G.
I've still not written about Inner Sound. This is partly down to wondering how useful it is to write about CDs - the fan (not originally, but I've forgotten where he borrowed it from) says that writing about music is like dancing about architecture...and he has a point, although generally language is our main medium for expressing thoughts on all aspects of life, so why not music? Less philosophically the CD is in the car where I have had it on permanent loop for 3 or 4 weeks, and I don't want to bring it in in case I forget to take it back out. Sometimes you are recommended to have two copies of a cookery book or gardening book: one for the kitchen/shed and one for the bedside. Inner Sound is definitely a two-copy CD: one for the car and one for indoors.
Check this out on Chirbit
I was rather bemused, when googling these pieces of underwear to discover that you can still buy such things... The only girdle I have is Miss Girdle, and she's coming on OK. She has speeded up since the last time I recorded, perhaps become more uneven. This is a prime example of slowing up on the tricky bits and racing through the easier bits. She's also almost totally denuded, poor girl, of any but the essential gracenotes, which seems a shame.
I've mentioned before that I've a mind to pair Miss G with Horsburgh. My problem has been that I felt Horsburgh was going to be one of those tunes that somehow I never quite manage to learn. The A part I've had for ages, the B part, I felt, was eluding me. I've pushed the dots away this evening to test things out and I find that I know the whole tune, although there is one bar in the first version of the B part that gives me pause for thought, and I have a slight tendency to repeat the first version of the B part, or to run straight into the second version. But on the whole I *do* know it, and now just need to work as getting it better, with Miss G.
I've still not written about Inner Sound. This is partly down to wondering how useful it is to write about CDs - the fan (not originally, but I've forgotten where he borrowed it from) says that writing about music is like dancing about architecture...and he has a point, although generally language is our main medium for expressing thoughts on all aspects of life, so why not music? Less philosophically the CD is in the car where I have had it on permanent loop for 3 or 4 weeks, and I don't want to bring it in in case I forget to take it back out. Sometimes you are recommended to have two copies of a cookery book or gardening book: one for the kitchen/shed and one for the bedside. Inner Sound is definitely a two-copy CD: one for the car and one for indoors.
Check this out on Chirbit
Friday 5 December 2014
Trough of disillusionment
I am managing to play four days a week. I am managing to play in A each time, and that's fine, but I am always more comfortable, more at home, in D.
Progress with learning new tunes is painfully slow. I seem to have had the same sets of dots on my music stand for months. Maybe it is just that I expect a higher standard from myself these days before I am happy to shift a tune from the learning pile to the learned pile. Maybe I'm not picking tunes that really inspire me. Maybe I don't play enough. Maybe this is just as good as it can get and I've learned all the tunes I can. No. Scrap that. I don't believe that: I have a prodigious memory for trivia. I must be able to collect tunes too, and I certainly hum a lot of tunes.
I need to learn more tunes. I need to work on playing with drones. I need to work at timings and tempo of tunes. I need to play more evenly. I've got too many tunes where I speed up and slow down depending on how well I know bits, or how easy they are to play. I do feel as though I am making little progress, perhaps slipping back. I hope it's just like climbing a long shallow slope after you've clambered up a steep hill: the slope seems easy and flat by comparison, but when you look back you realise that over a distance you've actually made quite a climb.
It occurred to me that although I've been listening to a lot of really good Scottish folk of late I haven't listened to much in the way of pipes, so I've Tryst on the CD player. I'd forgotten how good it is, how much I love the tunes. and the arrangements There are pieces with no pipes, just fiddle perhaps, and other pieces that are just pipes. And I do love pipes.
Progress with learning new tunes is painfully slow. I seem to have had the same sets of dots on my music stand for months. Maybe it is just that I expect a higher standard from myself these days before I am happy to shift a tune from the learning pile to the learned pile. Maybe I'm not picking tunes that really inspire me. Maybe I don't play enough. Maybe this is just as good as it can get and I've learned all the tunes I can. No. Scrap that. I don't believe that: I have a prodigious memory for trivia. I must be able to collect tunes too, and I certainly hum a lot of tunes.
I need to learn more tunes. I need to work on playing with drones. I need to work at timings and tempo of tunes. I need to play more evenly. I've got too many tunes where I speed up and slow down depending on how well I know bits, or how easy they are to play. I do feel as though I am making little progress, perhaps slipping back. I hope it's just like climbing a long shallow slope after you've clambered up a steep hill: the slope seems easy and flat by comparison, but when you look back you realise that over a distance you've actually made quite a climb.
It occurred to me that although I've been listening to a lot of really good Scottish folk of late I haven't listened to much in the way of pipes, so I've Tryst on the CD player. I'd forgotten how good it is, how much I love the tunes. and the arrangements There are pieces with no pipes, just fiddle perhaps, and other pieces that are just pipes. And I do love pipes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)