You don't know until you try

There was a time when part of what I was keen to learn, and to demonstrate I had learned, was the ability to play tunes from memory. I now know that, given time, I can indeed play (a handful) of tunes from memory. So these days when I set out to learn a tune I am not setting out to play it through without dots, so much as play it evenly, with the correct timings, appropriate gracing, decent speed and so on. I don't know that this has necessarily turned into a dependence on dots, but it has certainly led to a feeling that it's taking me an awful lot longer to learn tunes by heart.

Today, rather by accident, I discovered that I know the first two parts (all I am currently playing, partly because I'm not 100% sure of the timing in the other parts, and partly because two parts are easier to learn than four) of John Macmillan. I hadn't tried because I really thought I hadn't got it in my head at all, but there it wss.

This may be down to having put Synergy in the CD player in the car, where my feeling is that I play the track over and over and generally only notice the point at which the next tune in the set kicks off and I realise that I have missed John, again. Clearly it has sunk in, from listening, and from playing, and I have not lost my ability to grasp the basics of a tune within a week or two. I'm pleased that a reasonable amount of grace notes have been sucked into my playing memory with the main dots. I now need to improve what I have learned, especially the timing in the second part of the B part, and then consider learning the next two parts, and finding it a set partner.

The other thing I want to learn is the origin of the word "Father" in the title as listed on the CD. I have it on dots from the session, where perhaps it was picked up from Synergy. But why is it there on the CD? They have pipers, they must know Donald Macleod, which is where I have dots from (book 1). It's not a trad tune, with origins lost and titles confused over the years: Macleod attributes it clearly to Norman Macdonald, Glasgow. A bit of research required...

Still having problems with cold/numb right hand, positioning of bellows, and still sticking with D, having not played A at all since who knows when.