Sunday 31 January 2016

A horse, a horse...

The horse has been trotting about my head all night and all day. It's a lively beast, more like a skittish pony than an old warhorse. It was inevitable that the moment I picked up my pipes the horse fled. (This was going to be my cue to link to a video clip of Peter Cook as Richard lll in Blackadder whistling for a horse...a horse..., but I've failed to find one).

Still, I listened to the CD, then worked on the horse, the cottage, Arthur and the Creeks. I think that possibly Farewell to the Creeks, if not played very slow on its own, might pair well with Heights of Dargai, now that Flett and Bee have run off together.

This is the end of my challenge month, and it will be nice not to feel obliged to play, but I think the call of these new tunes will keep me going. This month I've improved my speed, I think, and improved the balance between speed and accuracy. That is, the speed at which accuracy goes out of the window is faster than it used to be. I feel I'm also gracing more neatly, and thinking more about what gracing I want.

Saturday 30 January 2016

Four part mystery

I'm never quite sure why it takes me so long to learn four-parter tunes.  By definition they are twice as long as two-parters, but as I seem to be able to learn a number of two-parters in less time than it takes me to learn a four-parter that can't quite be it.

I suppose one of the difficulties is that a four-parter is like two very similar two-parters, and there is always plenty of scope to muddle the A part with the C or the B with the D. There is also more scope for bars that are almost repeated, but each time have some subtle difference. Then the timing might change from one part to another.

In the past, when stamina, or lack of it, was a problem, then I would tend to play the first two parts and then run out of steam and maybe not even play through the final parts. Even now I am inclined to work on the first part and wait until I feel I've got at least the basic shape of it until I move onto the next, so by the time I work my way round to the final part the first two are familiar and the second half is always the bit I haven't played as often. (Others I only play as two-parters, which is what I do with Father John.)

In a way I think that this was the problem with Loch Bee: because I only ever played it as part of a set (with Dargai) if I ran out of steam, ran out of time or patience, ran into trouble, it was always Bee on the end that got ditched or lost a repeat or two. Hopefully playing it (mostly) on its own this month will have helped.

I've picked up two more four-parters despite being far from session-standard with either Arthur or the Cottage. The first is Mrs MacDougall. Despite my earlier confusion when I got round to looking at the various versions they were all about the same, (Mrs Mac, anyway - I overlooked Mrs Mc this time round) so I picked the one with the cleanest layout on the page. I've played it through...and it sounds like no tune I've ever heard, so I need to listen to the tune a bit before I try again.

The other is John MacColl's Farewell to the Scottish Horse. Ceol Sean has a tune with that title, and another - John MacColl's Farewell to Argyll Squadron, Scottish Horse. I assumed they would turn out to be the same tune. They looked different on the page but I've been thrown before by different gracing and layout...but these are two different tunes, and the first is the horse I wanted, the one I know from Highland Strands.

The mystery is that according to the listing on The Bagpipe Shop for what they describe as "the complete works" of Mr MacColl there are only two horse-related tunes, John MacColl's Farewell to the Scottish Horse and The Second Regiment Scottish Horse. As for the Argylls, they receive mention as Major Byng M. Wright's Farewell to the 8th Argylls and The 9th Argylls at Ypres. Also odd is the inclusion of two Kilbowie tunes, a plain Kilbowie Cottage and John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage. How these relate to William Lawrie's tune Kilbowie Cottage, which seems also to be known as John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage I don't know. It's not as these are tunes from the mists of time: Lawrie only died in 1916, MacColl not until 1943. 

The other mystery is the speed at which I seem to be picking up all four parts of Farewell to the Creeks.

Thursday 28 January 2016

One more time

Or 27 more times. I've been quite single-minded this challenge in sticking to the tunes I particularly want to learn or improve. Once or twice I've thrown in Flett, King or Home Town but mostly my playlist looks like this:

Arthur Bignold
Troy's Wedding
Miss Girdle
Shores of Loch Bee
Women of the Glen
Sound of Sleat
The Braemar Gathering

Recently I've been throwing in Farewell to the Creeks and Kilbowie Cottage, which seems to have drifted into my head again. I'm wondering whether the Cottage and Arthur might suit each other.

I like all of these tunes, I enjoy playing them, and there is enough of them to give variety over half an hour or so of playing, so it's been no hardship just playing these.

Despite ongoing problems with holding the pipes I feel I am making decent progress. Arthur, as with all 4 parters, is taking while to commit to memory. I think Creeks might get there first. I'm shaking off the tenseness in my fingers that was throwing the run up in the third part of Troy, random bars in Braemar and the not-quite-repeats in the third and fourth of Women. Bee is becoming more reliable, and everything is getting faster and I'm managing to improve the balance between increasing speed and lack of accuracy, although some thumb graces in Troy just vanish when I hit a certain speed.

It's been a long month and I am looking forward to having a break at the end, but, as ever, it has been worth the effort.

Wednesday 27 January 2016

Deoch an doris

"This is the last record for tonight," Harry said, searching for the bagpipe music he favoured whenever he wanted to blast everyone out of his house.

Late Nights on Air
Elizabeth Hay

Saturday 23 January 2016

Five things that go well with pipes

I've mentioned those things I feel add nothing to pipes, so it seems right to mention those things that do actually add something to pipes. I've used "five things" rather loosely here...to be perfectly honestly this is more of a list of four and one of those isn't really an item...

More pipes. No better than example than Ross and Jarlath, but I always love it at our sessions when the (Irish) piper plays along with me, mainly on My Home Town.

Fiddles. See, for example, The Waterhorse's Lament on The Desperate Battle of the Birds, but anything by Braebach, or the Mackenzie brothers, will illustrate my point.

Harpsichord. Not the obvious choice, perhaps, but it works astonishingly well. Hats off to Mr MacInnes for dreaming this one up.

Nothing. Much as I like these pairings there is really nothing to beat solo pipes, be that smallpipes or GHB. Many of Mr MacInnes's tracks on both his solo albums give you lone pipes, but for a full CD of unadulterated piping pleasure you need the Grand Concert of Scottish Piping or Alasdair Gillies' Lochbroom. Mr Gillies plays in a very measured style that brings out the forms of the tunes, so you can somehow hear the patterns very clearly. There is something rather zen, I find, listening to it. like Bach cello suites, they are, all different and yet somehow all the same, so that you can listen intently and nothing in the music or the playing of it distracts (except that Mr G is one of the perpetrators of the pointless twiddling at the end of tune....)

Tuesday 19 January 2016

Clueless

I've been videoing myself playing on different days in the hope that I will look at some of the footage and see what is going wrong. I prop my tablet up, hit record, and slowly rotate as I play so that I can see the problem from all angles. In addition  to the things I learned the first time I did this I have also gleaned the following useful facts. (That sentence, if you are reading it your head, requires tones of deep sarcasm)

1. These trousers I wear at home are truly awful: saggy, too big, and generally unflattering;
2. I actually also look quite a bit like my mother;
3. The lighting in the bedroom is not good enough for videoing in;
4. I am pushing the outer half of the bellows down a good few inches below the inner half;
5. I tend to hold my chanter at an angle;
6. The drones do indeed sometimes point up towards my right shoulder and at others they point down to my right elbow, and that's when they rest on the bellows. I can't see that I hold the bag or wear the bellows any differently. Which brings me to...
7. When you hold dark pipes against dark clothing in a badly lit room everything is low on detail;
8. I need to rethink my fringe.

So there you have it. Sometimes things go badly - today that included squealing and sudden total loss of air coming through, which didn't seem to be a kink in the tube - and I can see no reason at all for it.

Sunday 17 January 2016

Send three and fourpence

I went to my local knitting group yesterday, and we spent some of the time discussing allotments. Now that our local plant nursery has closed we swapped recommendations for others, further afield. I noted one down in my knitting notebook: Philpotts.

This afternoon I got round to googling Philpotts, and found lots of links to the story of a man who murdered his children. I tried again, adding "plant nursery" to give Google more of a hint, and finally found (or, perhaps, phinally phound) Fillpots garden centre.

This mild form of Chinese whispers made me think of Skippinish. I've pinched one of their sets: they play Flett with Bee. Or, as they call it, Bea. As the CD is in the car I can't check the rest of the title. Mr MacInnes calls it The sands of Loch Bee. My dots, origin forgotten, give it as The shores of Loch Bee. I suppose the the sands of the loch will lie on its shore, but how does Bee become Bea? Loch Bee is a loch on South Uist. There is no such place as Loch Bea.

I suppose the person in charge of the sleeve note text may have typed the title out wrongly, or only been told the title and guessed at the spelling. Perhaps Skippinish themselves had only ever heard the tune title, maybe at a session somewhere. "Great tune! What do you call that?" is a common enough question at sessions, but I've never heard anyone ask for a spelling. It's one of the frustrations and joys of passing information orally, this mishearing, misremembering. It can amuse. It can mislead. Throw in all the tunes that have alternative names, some closer than others, and you wonder whether tune titles are much use at all. Much better to hum it and let everyone play it.

I suppose some tunes end up with useful shorthand names. One of the oddest renamings for me is Kilbowie Cottage. My dots come from David Glen's Edinburgh Collection, via the ever wonderful Ceol Sean. At the bottom of the tune is a footnote that says "the residence of John MacColl, The Champion Piper". Presumably it is this that leads Braebach to call the tune by the much longer name of John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage. 

On a more practical note, Flett and Bee are getting on well, despite coming from opposing sides of Scotland, I think I need a last half inch off the tubing for maximum comfort, and I think that the buzz is partly to do with temperature.

Friday 15 January 2016

Click

Just as I was beginning to feel that perhaps a break from piping would be nice, everything clicked. Bellows were comfortable, well out of the way of my wrist. Drones (mostly) sat high and left the bellows alone. I got the buzz! Various bits of Arthur Bignold fell into place. My fingers were fast and furious and (mostly) accurate. I played new tunes, old tunes, tunes from The Piper's Delight which I had on my music stand having discovered (thanks to pipe tune search) that it has Farewell to the Creeks in it.

Still listening to Skippinish in the car. Still loving it.

Tuesday 12 January 2016

Shall we dance?

I've been dancing around this evening with bellows, bag, chanter, drones. Yes, drones! They have taken to slumping across my chest and resting on the bellows. The more I fiddle with strap up, strap down, bellows forward, bellows back, bag up, down, left, right, the worse everything gets. Maybe I'm just expecting too much. At sessions I play a bit, stop a bit, go to the bar, come back again. In the past I'd play and stop and play and stop during practice sessions. Now I expect to play and play, back to back sets, tunes, bits of tunes, with no break. I might sit down or stand up and take a turn or two about the room, but I'm still playing. I suppose even with a good driving positon in a comfortable car you're going to end a long distance journey with joints that need easing, muscles that need stretching.

I've also been dancing with Skippinish, having out it in the car. It's definitely an album of music for dancing to, and I imagine a Shetland tea (and yes, I do know that Shetland isn't known for piping) situation, with old and young gathered together, a dram and a wee cup of tea, something to eat, some tunes and lots of dancing.

What I can't work out is why it's dance music. In general it's the same pipe tunes I come across elsewhere, so it's not a matter of repertoire. The tunes aren't even played that fast, although the have a good, solid rhythm behind them. Perhaps it's the box. It sounds rather bouncy, somehow, with little chirps and coughs, which I assume are grace notes of some kind, and bring to mind someone calling out "woo!", "yay!", or "whup!" during some dancing. Anyway, it's good stuff, and I am enjoying it.

Whether anyone would want to dance to this recording I don't know. Recorded on the same day as the last one, and as with the last I haven't actually listened to it. As I play I feel that I need to steady the tempo of Women: it's uneven, with bits I gabble because I am unsure of them. That's the start of the B part, both sections, and the two bars in each that are variations because I'm a bit tense about getting the "wrong" variation in. The grip is...messy. The tune is missing the lilt, the smoothness, that Kevin Macleod gives it. I like it with Sleat, and the main problems with Sleat are a general tendency to be unreliable, I think I speed up through the tune as I get into my stride, and I am still not sure if I'm playing the closing bars to the B and D parts properly. I may just be repeating one (they are subtly different), or I may have then the wrong way round. I suppose if I could bear to listen to the recording I might find out.



Check this out on Chirbit

Saturday 9 January 2016

You've changed

I logged into Chirbit today, only to find they have gone for the same tedious web design as everyone else on the planet. It took a moment or two to remember my username and then I was in. The first tune I uploaded was The Braemar Gathering. Turns out it was also the last tune I uploaded, four months ago. Took a little bit of head scratching to find the bit that gives me the html to drop the link into here, but I got there in the end.

Now, I've not listened to this or the previous version since recording. I will have to compare the two. For this new version, even though it's now a tune that just appears on my fingers rather than only coming when I specifically want it, it still has some errors. There are phrases I snatch at, garbling notes together, although generally I am more relaxed than I was. I've lost the D grace on the low A to C transition. It was making my fingers tense and although I've managed to relax my fingers I've not managed to bring the grace back. I'm not sure about the speed I am playing at, whether it wants to race, or be a little slower. I actually had the dots in front of me, but once I know a tune they are distracting more than anything else.

Recording itself was easier than I've found it in the past, although I did have to ask the fan to remind me of one or two of the various steps. I feel that I had no real red button-itis. It's just a recording, not a performance, and if I fluff bits (which I do) then that's fine. I seem to have taken the pressure off recording. Even so, the tune isn't yet reliable enough to play in sessions, and it is partnerless with no idea at all which tune it might sit with.



Check this out on Chirbit

Five things I could live without

I'm not a purist, I don't think. I love Braebach's rendition of I am Proud to Play a Pipe, and the syncopated  percussion on The Whistlebinkies' version of Donald MacLennan's Tuning Phrase. I enjoy cellos or harpsichords with my SSP. I like change and innovation that adds something, not just fiddle for the sake of it. Like cookery, I'm happy to try new things but think that a few good, simple, fresh ingredients in season are better than any amount of cheffery, jus, foams, coulis and wilfully strange pairings of ingredients. And when it comes to CDs of pipe music I like to hear good tunes and good pipes. I don't need anything else...especially any of the following.

1. Electronic keyboards. To be fair I've only ever come across this on one CD (Enlightenment by PM David Barnes). It's one too many...

2. Guitars especially large, thumpy, chord-heavy guitars in the foreground. Really any rhythym instrument that is louder and clearer than the melody instruments, especially when those include pipes. I hate straining to hear pipes or fiddle behind some rumptety tump guitar or a thud thud of bodhran.

3.  Trilling about at the end of a tune or set. I've really only come across this on the Grand Concert CDs and on Alasdair Gillies' Lochbroom. I can't think of any need for this. There is no physical need: with bellows or blown pipes it is perfecty possible to come to a neat halt. It really takes the edge off a tune, like an actor rounding off a recitation from Hamlet with a nursery rhyme, or a singer sticking a chorus of The Day We Went to Bangor at the end of Nessun Dorma. Is it some sort of in joke? 

4.  Honkey tonk piano. The first time I heard this with pipes, on the Seadan CD, it was something really different and I loved it. Hearing it more, hearing it on almost every track of Piob is Fidheall, for example, the novelty has worn off.

5. Banjos. I blame the influence of the session and the fan, both of whom (or possibly which) purport to despise banjos. I'm certainly not keen on big, noisy banjo chords. Having said that a good banjo player can bring out the best in a pipe tune, especially if he's a piper himself (that'll be Martin MacDonald). Picking out the tune, rather than strumming, can also highlight the speed at which the piper is playing and foreground the gracenotes. It's why I love Kevin Macleod's CDs. Even without pipes, or pipe music, I can enjoy a thoughtfully played banjo


Monday 4 January 2016

Making a stand

I try not to think much about posture, simply because it was something that I used to have to think about too often. My mother seems to have spent most of my formative years poking me between the shoulder blades with the injunction to "stand up straight, child", only varied by "sit up straight". The only thing I remember my ballet teaching saying was "head up, bottom in, tummy in", and when I acquired a new violin teacher I remember her opening salvo being "I don't like the way you stand..."

I do sometimes suggest to the fan that his playing might be improved if he didn't hunch over his fiddle while sat on an armed chair, which pins his elbows to his sides. Perhaps it is my aversion to thinking of my own posture that has stopped me realising that if I don't sit up straight then my drones drop onto the stock, and my hands come in close to my body, making me more likely to rest my wrist on the bellows. Not that this moment of enlightenment helped this evening when I found it difficult to get comfortable.

I've been dreaming a lot of my pipes recently. I don't have problems with posture, bellows, wrists or anything else in my dreams. In fact, last night, in a real throwback to my adolescence, I dreamed I could fly, and all the time I was flying I had my pipes in my arms. I'm not sure what an interpreter of dreams would make of this, but I wonder if it's linked to yesterday's session, when I made plenty of mistakes, but did not have one moment of stage fright.

Saturday 2 January 2016

Spit and polish

I've had the silver cleaning cloth out today and given the Monkey a brush up, ready for tomorrow's session. It's a nice job, sitting on the sofa with pipes on my lap and Dorney Rock, my latest Kevin Macleod acquisition, on the CD player.

In an ideal world it would have more pipe tunes on it, but it's a lovely CD, and, as always, much more varied than you might expect from a collection of tunes played on strings.  I am now rather wondering whether it would be nice to learn Farewell to the Creeks. 

The other tune that has caught my fancy is the Freeland Barbour Sixteen Miles to the Bottle. I suspect as a modern tune it will be hard to find, leaving me with my usual longing to be able to pick up tunes from listening to them. I suppose I might find the tune in this lavish-looking item from my current favourite publisher. It's a shame that they make no attempt to list any of the tunes included, although I see that Mr Barbour's own website describes the two volume set as containing all of his tunes...oh, and now I wish I hadn't looked at this at all because apparently there is a separate book with 65 of the tunes set for pipes.

Since the fan put up some more bookshelves I do actually have some space for another volume or two...but £60 is rather a lot for a few tunes, even if there are nice pictures of Scotland to go with it, and even if the chap who did the pictures (Cailean Maclean) took the picture that forms the atmospheric cover for Sealbh... Maybe there will be a paperback edition.

I mostly dropped in to remind myself (and my mythical readers) that playing daily is not the same as blogging daily...

Friday 1 January 2016

My way

I don't have a music teacher. I've had teachers over the years, including one violin teacher who managed to make me give up and put me off ever playing again. Maybe she was doing a service to the world of music lovers, and perhaps I was just being overly sensitive.

My preferred way of learning how to do pretty much anything is to see it being done, read up on it, have a bit of a think about it, try it for myself. As I try I get things wrong, and my pet hate is for someone to point out that I am doing it all wrong. I already know that and I know that, for me, the best way to get it right is to work out why it is wrong in the first place. I dislike being watched while I am trying something out. I'm working things out for myself and comments from the sidelines, however well meant, are more likely to make me give up than inspire me to try harder, because I already am trying.

I've been thinking about this for a number of reasons. First, the needle felting. I've been pondering this, collecting pictures on pinterest, following blogs on it for a while. My sister gave me some felting materials and a kit for Christmas. I half read the instructions, and then spent time just working out for myself. The finished product doesn't look like the picture on the box because as I went along I wanted to try different techniques. I expect there are some things I've done in the most cack-handed and long-winded way possible, things I've done in the accepted way, and maybe some thing I've done in ways that no one else has yet thought of. I've done it in a way that I have enjoyed, that has inspired me to try more, look more, read more, learn more.

Playing my new tunes and adjusting the tubing has got me thinking about a teacher. I don't need someone to tell me where I am going wrong, and I don't really feel that I need praise (which the fan kindly supplies). What I need is a second pair of eyes and ears to confirm that I hit that grace note, or missed that one, or that I am transposing two bars in Sleat, or that my hands are tense when I play Miss G or Braemar, or my bellows are slipping. 

Learning  by myself, or teaching myself, gives me an opportunity to be creative and to challenge myself. I hate being told that I'm not ready to play that tune at the back of the book yet. If it's a tune I enjoy then I want to give it a go - it will teach me more, challenge and engage me more, than playing mangled themes from Beethoven or whatever learner violinists are fed with these days.

I thought about this while listening to Lochbroom. It's a whole CD of GHB, and nothing but GHB. Tunes include new and old marches, reels, jigs, strathspeys, a pibroch. It's perfect for listening to technique, tunes, and interpretstion. Iain McInnes is the producer and there are some of the tunes he plays - including My Home Town - but played very differently indeed. I love the fact that a reel can be presented as a jig, a march as a waltz; that you can leave out parts 3 and 4, speed a tune up, slow it down, or introduce a bit of a swing. It seems to me to be part of the fun and creativity of music. Tunes become rather like recipes - a general set of guidelines within which it's possible to subsitute ingredients, change ratios, or fiddle with serving suggestions.

Yet the introductory notes on Lochbroom lament "trends and fashions...becoming more bizarre". There is a remark about improved "finger dexterity" which suggests that this is Not A Good Thing, and a swipe at "slurred notes and accidentals that have no place in the true tradition of the instrument".

I have some sympathy with this view. I prefer my cooking to nod to traditon, and although I am happy to tinker with a recipe there are limits. Walnuts, sunflower oil, parsley and vegan cheese substitute might make a sauce but they are never going to make pesto, because that is always parmesan, basil, pine nuts and olive oil. In linguistic terms I tend to grammatical pedantry, but if we all still spoke Chaucer's English then at the very least we'd be lost for words half the time: life moves on, vocabulary moves on. Musically I am happy for genres to grow, blend, merge and create. Quite often what we think of as traditions set in stone have only been there a generation or two. Something that doesn't change or grow is a dead thing.

So these notes reminded me how strongly "the tradition" has bound some young pipers, and why there has been such an urge to do a musical Heston Blumenthal, and why SSP have been a breath of fesh air for some players, sitting as they do outside "the tradition" and therefore outside the rules. I've never encountered any of that, have only ever been left to get things right, or wrong, in my own sweet way...

(I nearly didn't play today - fancied a break after several days. Then I realised that it's now January and day one of my challenge, so of course I played.)