Bonus track (got a little list)

Our house guest left earlier than I had expected today, and after getting keys cut, buying a new purse, visiting our brand new local supermarket and getting some washing done I had a spare half hour and spent it playing my pipes.

I've also finally made a little list of tunes I can play to help me at sessions when  I can't actually remember what tunes I can play. I've erred on the side of caution and haven't added Heroes (mostly because it needs a set partner), Troy  or Braemar, although Braemar is probably doable on a good day.

The first part of the list is singleton tunes  which don't have set partners and don't seem to feel too lost or half-finished on their own. When the fan was thinking of putting performance sets together we did try Galloway with Braemar, so I may consider that at some point.

• McIntyre's Farewell (which I do tend to forget that I know)
• Bonnie Galloway
• My Home Town
• The Rowan Tree
• March of the King of Laoise

Part two of the list is the smug marrieds, aka sets. (Yes! Real sets for playing in public!)

• John Macmillan of Barra/South Georgia Whaling Song/Captn Angus MaDonald
• Heights of Dargai/Shores of Loch Bee
• Women of the Glen/Sound of Sleat
• The Highland Brigade at Magersfontein/Flett from Flotta

I feel that Flett and Magersfontein get on well enough but haven't quite found their true soulmates. The others I am happy with. Captn Angus is easy going and doesn't mind making up a three as needed, but John and Whaling sound fine without him, too.

I'm still working on Miss G, still hoping that one day the Dragon will really fly. Still considering Kilbowie Cottage as a potential new tune.

Lost and found

Back from a few days away, discovering that UK train travel can be reasonably comfortable and convenient, albeit expensive especially if you make the mistake of waiting to get on the train before you grab sandwiches, hot drinks and muffins for two (just over £18!)

Unfortunately somewhere between the train and the waiting car I mislaid a handbag with purse, house keys, library book, my knitting pattern and various knitting bits and bobs. My wonderful graphic memory let me down as although I can picture the bag and contents, including texture, smell, colour and weight in minute detail I cannot for the life of me recall at what point I parted company with it all...

Trying not to think it over and over I eventually managed to get rid of the tormenting pictures by pulling in some tunes instead, and wished I had had my pipes with me.

Pipes and I were back together this evening having found an unexpected half hour. Mostly working on gracing, and really I am ashamed to say that those most often missing from my playing are two of the simplest, so there is no excuse for forgetting them: D and E.

The Women were here, and this time I think they are ready to stay. I do also think that they will pair with Sleat, which will give me a second set with a missing strathspey. At least, I think it's a second set: I was pretty sure that Father John's Boat Trip was also a march and reel and that I had addressed that in a post which I thought I had called "The case of the missing Strathspey", but now can't find. (Found it.)

End of the road

I've  managed, not through any particular plan, to play every other day this month. That's about to come to an end. We've got a few days of being away and a few days with a house guest, so unless I can muster the energy to play tomorrow today was probably the last time this month I'll have my pipes out. I feel slightly sad about that, but hopefully a rest will help tunes ferment in my brain a little.

Today I worked on the Women. It's odd how when I read a tune I go from start to finish, maybe note complex gracing, but rarely spot patterns. It seems to be after I've played a tune for a bit that I start thinking that this bit is rather like that, and then I go back to the dots and see the patterns, the repeats, the not-quite-the-same bits, like the B strike B on one bar in the B part which in the variation is B A B. Or the low G that I have been playing as a low A, and actually I will continue with that as somehow the G sounds wrong now.

Anyway, I think I may be able to forge a pairing between the Women and Sleat. Maybe. I worked on both of these this evening, made a complete mess of Miss G once or twice, fluffed My Home Town, but nevertheless enjoyed playing.  In a quiet sort of way I am feeling the love at the moment.

Women on my mind

Well, it's no longer summertime (despite the blue skies it has been serious knitwear weather today) but I've still got women on my mind. They wandered back mid-morning and stayed all day.

I did wonder if they looked a little plain so I have been working on some gracing, a doubling on B before a strike on B, a grip in the first gap between two high As in the second B part. I thought that might be tricky. It's the kind of serious grace I haven't used in a while, but I like the effect and actually it's easy enough and the speed came very quickly. I say it's easy but I think I am dropping down only to low A instead of low G, and I blame cold fingers, meaning not very flexible fingers, and not very good placement of fingers over holes.

I tried again to introduce the women to Flett and the Heroes, but that induced such a fit of the sulks that I had to go on to Braemar and Troy.

I stopped there: cold hands, the bellows feeling airless, no buzz at all in the chanter.  I should get Women sorted soon: just as long as they don't vanish again.

No women or heroes in Magersfontein

Those pesky women still hadn't reappeared by this evening so I flushed them out with the help of the dots. B part still needs work to get it into my musical memory.

Since they were there I tried to introduce them to Magersfontein or Heroes, but no mattter which way  I tried I couldn't make a pairing, far less a threesome. I even threw in Flett, but that was a non-starter as well, so after my initial flurry of excitement around sets I am back to a pile of stubborn singletons.

After that Bonnie Galloway, Loch Bee, Braemar. I am trying to take this last nice and slow to check I have notes and timings all in the right place. It sounds, at a slower pace, rather naked without much gracing.

It was one of those evenings where the chanter literally buzzed in my hands, always a really good feeling. I have no idea whether it's to do with temperature or humidity, or is just my imagination, nor do I know what, if any, effect it has on the sound.

I had to stop mid way to rearrange various items in and out of the oven. When I came back the buzz was still there but the bellows jammed themselves on my wrist, my right thumb seized up, and Troy came out as a bit of a mess.

The lady vanishes

But it isn't just one lady that has gone. It's several: a whole glen full. I cannot bring it to mind, couldn't play a note of it this evening. I feel there are three little three-note run downs in row, but that didn't help. I can't even picture the dots, which, as I've mentioned before, I know I am not supposed to do, but really can't help.

Hopefully it will come back next time I play, if not I may have to go back to dots.

Other tunes went fine: Shores of Loch Bee, My Home Town, Troy, Braemar, Heroes, Dargai, Flett. There must have been others. Oh yes, a rather abortive Miss Girdle. Sleat, too, but I am still not sure that I have the 2nd and 4th final bars right, and in the third part if I come up inelegantly from the bottom G that seems to throw me.

I have tunes from Highland Strands in my head. I love them all. Listening more closely than I have been, noticing the layering of instruments, the whistle.

Chocks away

I've been thinking of late that I am hanging on to dots for too long and allowing myself to get dependant upon them. So this evening, as the Women had come back during the day, I decided throw caution (or dots) to the wind and just go for it. The A part is there already and the B part is there in parts, with confusion over the first second versons of the B. So really I've only been playing it a couple of days and it's half memorised already. Ok, so I had a head start with knowing the tune, but I had been worrying lately about how slowly I was picking tunes up. I think my experience with Braemar and Troy both show that I need to throw off the dots and not lean on them.

Sleat is still troublesome with the variations in the 2nd and 4th parts getting themselves swapped over. Braemar needs a bit more control, a more even tempo. Troy needs more confidence. John Macmillan needs me to listen to it a bit more, but is generally good.

Elusive women

Women of the Glen haven't come back: the tune vanished out of my head to be replaced with various fragments I can't quite identify. I played it this evening anyway, and tried to introduce it to various other tunes. The mood is wrong for it to pair with Dargai, it doesn't sit well with Sound of Sleat, and is so utterly wrong for Heroes that I can't hold both tunes in mind at once and have failed to play them consecutively.  It needs something, but I am not sure what. Sleat is also in need of a partner. It ends so abruptly, somehow, and despite the return to the key note it doesn't feel finished when I get to the end. The Ossian option - they run it into Aandowin at the Bow - isn't available to me: too many notes, as ever.

Hearing things

I've had the Women of the Glen going round my head, day and night, it seems. It's somehow tiring to keep hearing a tune, and it's not far in the background of my brain, it's at the front all the time, just, but not quite, at the point where I find myself humming a tune. The only respite was while cleaning my teeth when it was suddenly, inexplicably, but temporarily, replaced with Joy to the World.

Of course, when I decide to print it (yesterday I played it straight from my tablet), it slipped away, and by the time I had my pipes out it was a bit of a struggle to remember how it went at all...

Apart from the Women,  and a brief and inelegant appearance by Miss G,  I stuck to the old tunes: Magersfontein, Dargai, Loch Bee, King of Laoise, My Home Town, Rowan Tree, Bonnie Galloway, Amazing Grace, McIntyre's Farewell. I skipped Whaling Song because it gets played with the new tune, and I forgot all about Flett. I definitely need to make that list of tunes I know...

Slight change of plan

I began on a new tune today, albeit not one of those on my list... I've been listening to a lot of Kevin Macleod and one of the tunes I'm really enjoying is Women of the Glen. Unfortunately the sleeve note for the tune is incorrect: it says that it can be found in the Seaforth Highlanders, but it can't. Luckily it can be found on Coel Sean where it is listed as coming from McLennan, although the collection link goes through to Donaldson's Broadside to Broadband.

It's a nice little tune. I thought it might make a pair with Heroes, but it won't.

While I was poking around Coel Sean I also came across Kilbowie Cottage. It is by William Lawrie and there is a little note to explain that the cottage is the residence of John MacColl, champion piper. I did feel that this ought to be the same as John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage, also by Lawrie, but I couldn't make it sound like any tune I know. I need to listen to the tune on CD and try again because I'd rather not pay for the Bagpipetunes version if I don't need to.

Still good-byeing

I think that normally after a month of playing I stop. This month...well, I just wanted to wind down from a rabbit-in-the-headlights day at work, check that I still knew how to play The Rowan Tree (I do) and run through Sleat on the grounds that I thought of playing it on Sunday and wasn't quite confident enough.

Sunday session

We were a bit thin on the ground, but still managed to muster three pipers. We were also badly placed, hemmed in between the gents, the ladies and the door and endless trails of smokers and the weak-bladdered. Still, it was a decent enough evening.

My playing was patchy. I blame hunger as the anticipated large lunch turned out to be a toasted sandwich. I struggled to remember which tunes I play: I must make myself a little list.

The opener - Heights of Dargai
The old favourite - My Home Town (everyone joined in)
The long shot - Father Johns's Boat Trip (well-received and everyone joined in with the second tune)
The odd one - Magersfontein/Flett - people join in with Flett, but Magersfontein continues to throw them
The old faithful  The Rowan Tree (which some joined in for and which I mucked up quite badly!)

Missing you already

I'm glad that the month ended on Wednesday. Thursday was another long and stressful day in a long and stressful week and I was really glad not to have to fit in any piping, even with the fan cooking dinner. Friday evening was given over to the shopping, cleaning, tidying and arranging that is preparatory to hosting weekend house guests.

Saturday morning was more of the same, and then once everything was ready and I had only to sit and wait I picked up a book, then put it down and pulled out my pipes instead. I had a good 20 mins playing time, that ended with a round of applause from guests, who had been admitted by the fan: I hadn't heard the doorbell!

Twenty minutes of tunes old and new. I do need to have another look at the dots for Sleat as there are a couple of places where I am not confident that I have got it quite right. I had been humming Whaling Song, which has nice drops, pauses, swoops and snaps which I was convinced I wasn't playing, but when I listened to myself I was indeed playing the same nice version that I had been humming.

Troy just needs a bit more confidence, a more relaxed attitude. I've got into the habit of feeling I can't play and now that I can I reel between over-hesitancy, tense fingers, and way too much speed.

This evening is a session and I hope to try out a new tune or two.