Sing it

I swear that every time in the last two days (and nights) that I have stopped doing, thinking or dreaming, I have had Drops of Brandy going round, and round, on an endless loop.

Today I gave in amd started listening to the music in my head. I started to be convinced that I could hear...well, I wasn't sure. It was something that Realta play differently from me, but I wasn't sure whether I had got a note or two wrong, or whether my timing was adrift, or whether actually they play a variation that I had picked up.

Tunes in my head are odd. At the early stage they are there, and I am aware of them, but if I try to listen actively they vanish. They need to be reasonably established before I can actually hum them. Presumably thanks to its persistence I managed to hum this quite quickly - just today. I also managed to isolate that variation and hum it over and over to pin it down.

I got home. My plants arrived so I ran down to the plot to plant them out and get them protected from slugs and pigeons, and ran back to get dinner on the go. When I sat down with the Monkey my plan was to play that variation...but the moment I played a single note the entire tune slipped away. It didn't help that my fingers were slightly sticky, and when I washed them in haste they were slightly damp...

I tried again. And again. I sang the tune through, and again, which meant I was able to recall and sing the variation. I got the pipes going...and immediately that drowned out the tune in my head. In desperation I decided to sing it as I played. This doesn't make for good noise volumes, but it worked. I played my little variation, over and over. When I was sure I had it I wrote it down, and then checked aginst the dots and confirmed that it really was a variation for the last bar in each part. I worked on it a little more, and added in a doubling.

I also managed to recall the variation that the fan taught me at the weekend. I fiddled around with and without the variation...and had to abandon the finish sorting dinner. In all I barely played for 20 minutes. But the important thing is that I have variations, and that for the first time on pipes I've managed to pick out a tune. It's also the first time I've been able to make use of my improved ability to sing. No one else is ever going to want to listen to my warbling, but it has grown more accurate as I've been playing. If I sing or hum a tune to the fan these days he has much less opportunity to make sarcastic comments about random key changes...

I was rather afraid that having being playing longer a month of daily playing wouldn't be enough to make a difference, but even just half way through the month I feel I'm moving ahead, making progress.