Two by two

I'm playing things in pairs more - I hesitate to call them sets, simply because a set for me is a set as played in an Irish-style session in an English pub: a set of three tunes, played three times each. I'm still not totally sure how well they sit together, but it's getting easier to segue from one to the other. I don't often now play one without the other.

Magersfontein and Flett is the one I am least sure of. Magersfontein seems to confuse fellow sessioneers, and they don't join in. I don't know whether it's too slow, or doesn't follow enough expected patterns, or is just plain dull. Flett they have always loved and joined in with.

Dargai and Loch Bee. Well, I keep flunking Bee, but again Dargai is a popular one and everyone pitches in.

I'm working on more pairs. Trying (as I think I've tried before) to put the Whaling Song alongside The Cabot Trail. Both in 6/8, one slowish, one much faster (and lacking gracing - needs work. Lots of work).

The other pair is the Dragon and The Barren Rocks. I've been unhappy with these for longer than I can remember. The rocks probably one of the earliest tunes I recorded for this blog. I just keeping humming these, and always together, one after the after, round and round, both of them with a real swing, not so much a march as an eager jog trot to meet an old friend or the kind of skip that comes on you (or me, at least) when you get let out of the office and the sun is still shining and the sky is still blue, a Friday sort of a feeling. Anyway, Dragon isn't too bad, now I've nailed a flurry of G graces in the B part, although it still wants to go too fast. Rocks are improving. Good gracing, provided I keep the speed down - the faster I go the more random the gracing. I play the pair of them over and over and over. Determined to get these two.

Miss G still on my music stand, along with Troy and the Braemar Gathering. Which would be a set and a half....