Kiss and make up

Sunday was our regular session. After last month's surge in numbers we dwindled back down to four. Four would be fine, although I only count as a half, if that, as I never play along with other peoples's tunes. The problem is not the lack of numbers so much as lack of shared repertoire. The fan and the Irish piper seem to have forgotten the repertoire they shared in the days of the band. The fiddler seems to have a pile of new tunes each month, but none of them are ever anything the others play or even know, and somehow no one seems much inclined to  learn his tunes either.

In some ways I'm the one creating shared repertoire and everyone is happy to pitch in for The Heights of Dargai, The March of the King of Laoise, My Home Town or Bonnie Galloway. It may be that they are catchy tunes, and it may be that my limited repertoire means I play most tunes most months. So despite the fact that I didn't much feel in the mood to go out yesterday evening I was all geared up to play lots of tunes.

And then disaster struck. The fan had terrible problems tuning drones. I think the problem is that, rather shamefully, I've not used drones since I last gave the monkey a polish. I'd forgotten that, so didn't ask the fan to do a pre-sesson tuning. The drones were difficult to tune, and wouldn't stay in tune. As I played the pressure was uneven, adding to the general awfulness of drones. I scraped through Flett, John Macmillan's boat trip, Dargai, and Home Town, but it wasn' t right, and it just got worse, with the chanter sounding sharp and the tube kinking and cutting off air a couple of times. By the time I accepted the Irish piper's suggestion to play without drones I was so cross and unhappy that I failed to be able to play either Woman or Galloway and I am afraid I gave up in a huff. By the time we got home I had pretty much decided that I was clearly in need of a break from piping....

But...I have tunes to play, other tunes I want to learn. And I didn't want to let the sun go down on an argument, to get the monkey out in a month for the next session thinking about how I'd been let down, how we had fallen out. So this evening I played my pipes. The fan got the drones about right. I played a tune with drones then flipped them off and ran through my current playlist and it all went well and I loved it. I think the monkey has forgiven me for doubting him: I got the buzz tonight.