Mulling it over

I‘ve been thinking for a while now that I should try again to play every day for a month. I seem to be very patchy with my playing at present. That’s partly down to the usual distractions and partly just feeling less need to play at the moment, maybe because there is less music around to inspire me now that the band has gone. When I do play daily it’s never as hard to fit it in as I think, the more I play the more I feel I want to play, and each time I’ve played daily for a month I’ve made real strides forward. Now I’m a more established player I expect that those strides will be smaller or less obvious, but even if it only means learning a new tune or two and getting my piping mojo back it will be worthwhile.  

In some ways it isn’t a bad thing to have a break. I find I can pick up my pipes up again without feeling that I’ve gone backwards at all. Some of my tunes need a moment’s thought or a pause for adjustment, but in terms of speed some tunes seem to be faster after a break.

I recently read a discussion on The Session about coming back to tunes after a break, which suggested playing through tunes each day, leaving the ones that are still working, carrying the ones that need fixing on to the next day. This feels a bit restrictive to me: sometimes I am just not in the mood for a tune, although now that my repertoire is expanding it would be useful to brush up on the tunes that I don’t play often. Some tunes I play from time to time but never feel I’m playing as well as I’d want to, so that they are fit to be played at a session. I’d like to brush those up.

I’d also like to try some new tunes and I know from bitter experience that I never learn them as fast as I want to, and some never click for me, either because I never really learn them well, or because I somehow don’t enjoy playing them.

I don’t want to restrict myself with a specific plan.  I never seem to follow plans, and I’ve never wanted my playing to feel like a chore, a set of things to do. I prefer to go with the flow, working on what I feel comfortable with and interested in at that time, having the space to be inspired, to experiment, to go with the flow.  So I think I’ll keep it vague: I’ll play every day, I will aim to play everything in my repertoire at least once, I will have a fiddle with some new tunes.  I’ll try to do some recording. Oh, and the chosen month is September.