Hello stranger

I've gone for morning playing again today. I'm slightly wary because I don't want playing to be one of the chores I have to get out of the way before I start on things I'd really like to do. The weather being a Bank Holiday special - grey, dull and cool - I've got nothing much planned other than more knitting and snuggling up with an Angela Thirkell.

I started off with a sudden urge to play in A, so dusted off the long neglected chanter. From the very first note I loved it: it's such a rich sound. The chanter felt huge, and it took an amount of adjusting hand position and stretching to achieve a half decent low G. I played through Perth, Women and Sleat. The wobbly G meant that the third part of Sleat was a mess, but otherwise it went surprisingly well. It did feel as though I needed a lot more effort on the bellows, and as if the whole instrument had doubled in size, so I gave up after those three but must go back to it again, maybe returning to my old plan of starting with A then switching after a couple of tunes.

After that I dug out music books and discovered that tunes I thought I had forgotten (Battle of the Somme, Green Hills of Tyrol, Over the Cabot, Trail Captn Angus L MacDonald, Compliments to Roy A Chisholm, Donald Dhu) are all actually still in the back of my mind somewhere.

I discovered Jacky Latin in one of the Willie Ross books. I also found that I do actually know several tunes that I had abandoned, feeling I'd never learn them. I found different versions of them (Return to India in Barry Shear's book and The Rejected Suitor in the Ross) and struggled to play them because the versions I already know kept trying to push their way in. Right at the end I played Dargai and Bee suddenly appeared, minus its new grace notes...

I gave up after over an hour, feeling like my arms might fall off. For my playing next month I might try to resurrect some of the pile of tunes that fell by the way (Farewell to the Creeks, Blue Bonnets I also played today). I'm half inclined to buy one of the music books on my list. The one thing that is still certainly a stranger to my play list is the strathspey: not a single one can I play. I feel that's a serious omission.

Buzzed off

In a break with tradition I played right after breakfast this morning. I'm a creature of habit, and generally feel that the morning is for chores, although at this time of year it's also for the allotment before it get's too hot, or, a more likely scenario, the weather breaks.

It was the allotment that made me change my habit. I was only there a couple of hours yesterday, which should have left ample time for piping. But two hours digging and weeding in the sun were followed by a rush to the local shops, some quick chores, a dive through tbe shower, cooking dinner...and when dinner was in the oven and I might have had my pipes out I was physically tired and lay on the sofa with a glass of wine instead.

In another break with tradition I just sat down and played non-stop, one tune after another, just in the order they occurred to me. I had been thinking to play some tunes, mainly Bee and Women in a slow and measured fashion, to really get a grip on the gracing (pun unintended!) In the end some tunes came out rather fast, and Miss Girdle just flew. She's still a bit untidy, though, like someone rushing out of the house, hatless, gloveless, hairpins dropping, still hoiking up her skirt and buttoning her blouse as she goes.

The one tune I didn't play was Loch Bee. I've been humming it a lot of late, but this morning I couldn't bring it to mind, or fingers. It just vanished.

Here is another recording from the other day. This is Magersfontein and Vittoria. It's working well as a pairing, I think, although the second half of the B part of Mags is suffering from some temporary glitches were those two little sets of fast notes are. Working on that.


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The old, old story

I am piping, perhaps every other day. I am feeling quite satisfied with my piping, feeling that it flows and is melodic. The tunes I hum during the day are the tunes that I am playing.

I'm still not happy with the size of my repertoire, which stays stubbornly small, although it is now a small number of sets, and some individual tunes, rather than just a small number of tunes.

I am happy with an adjustment that I keep forgetting to mention: I've finally settled on the ideal length for the tubing, and have lost all the problems with resting my wrist and numb fingers.

I suppose I'm not happy with how often I play. The allotment isn't as much of a distraction as it might be. For various reasons I've moved from growing from seed to buying plants, and I've been putting off buying plants while the cooler evenings persist. We've been having rain, to, so there is not much to do other than harvest rhubarb and pull up weeds.

In the meantime I am being distracted by reading and by knitting. That little piece up there is the first part of a very large, very lightweight shawl, knitted in cobweb weight Shetland wool. I need to do a lot of knitting between now and September when the intended recipient is expected.

I did manage to play and record at the weekend, but somehow haven't got round to blogging until now. This is Dargai with its new companions. I'm not 100% sure that they go together. Next month I do intend to play daily and perhaps the more I play this set the more it will sound like a set, just as the combination starts to sound familiar.



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Adjustments

I had the zero sum game sussed this evening, I thought. I made a positive decision not to do more weeding at the allotment, conveniently forgot about various household chores that need to be done, and decided I'd cook and pipe. It looked as though cooking would win out at one stage as I cheerfully threw in artichokes and peas and ginger and rhubarb crumble alongside asparagus and ricotta tart, but in the end I found some piping time.

I thought I'd play Magersfontein as I've been humming it all day, but it didn't come to my fingers so I let it be. I adjusted my Dargai set by playing that first with Bee following and Flett to close. I've made a minor adjustment to Bee, adding a doubling to the second or third note in. I've heard others play it, fiddled around to find the sound I wanted, and threw it in. Every time I play this doubling appears. I think this is the first time I've voluntarily added a grace without having to first beat it into my brain (I say "voluntarily" because sometimes they appear of their own accord.)

The other adjustment was to do with my belief in piping as a cure for headaches. For stress headaches, certainly, but the kind of headache you get with bad light and a PC screen pipes don't help.

Doh!

I used to play The Heights of Dargai with The Shores of Loch Bee. More recently I've been playing Bee with Flett from Flotta, a pairing which I borrowed from Skippinish (although they have a third tune in the middle).

This has left Dargai as a singleton tune. This evening it finally occured to me that if Dargai goes with Bee and Bee goes with Flett, then surely Dargai  could pair with the two of them? Actually, as experience tells me, just because various pairings work it doesn't mean that a three will do as well. Good job I don't listen to experience over much: this turns out to be a good set of three.

I have half an eye on next month which should be a challenge month. I need to find some new tunes...

Not the hills of home

I've been humming The Glandaruel Highlanders, which is on my latest CD acquisition, Polbain to Oranmore. Actually, that's not quite true. I've been singing the song Campbeltown Loch:

Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky,

Campbeltown Loch, Och aye!

Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky,

I would drink you dry!

Not that I have ever heard the song, but Kevin Macleod mentioned the lyrics on the sleeve notes, and they took my fancy, and I've been singing them (Och aye!) to a very mangled version of The Glendaruel Highlanders. I know that it's mangled because when I tried the tune out on my pipes this evening it didn't sound like any tune I know.

I think this is partly because when I listen to the tune I immediately start singing the song, which means I am not really listening, and I know that I am repeating the chorus only over the whole of the tune. As I've mentioned before It seems that if I have words and a tune my brain seems to prefer the words, no matter how wrong they are.

I suppose the other problem is that voice is, in its way, just another instrument, and just as a pipe tune sounds very different when played on banjo or fiddle or even whistle, it sounds different with voice. It's not just that other instruments can slur or lilt or bounce in a way that pipes can't. Some of it is to do with the different ways in which other instruments treat the gracing. It's something I came across early on when I first heard A Scottish Soldier. It's The Green Hills of Tyrol, Jim, but not as we know it. 

(Incidentally, I found Glendaruel in the Seaforth Highlanders, and I knew it would be there because this handy site told me so).

Done and dusted

I have too much to do. I needed to shop on my way home this evening, cook dinner, and bake cakes. Once the cakes are done that’s the end of that…until the next time it’s the fan’s turn to take cakes into work, and dinner needs cooking every day of the week, unless we starve: even takeways would need ordering and collecting and eating every day.

Sometimes I think that work – my job – is the problem, in which case time off work would be the answer. The house needs cleaning, but if I took a week off and scoured and polished and reorganised the entire house from top to bottom, well, the dust would start accumulating again before I’d even got to the end. There is no meaningful way in which housework is ever “done”.

I could just spend that week knitting, and that way I’d get my jumper finished and make a good start on a shawl for my cousin’s baby. I’d almost certainly also think of a dozen other things I wanted to knit with stash yarn, and that’s before I’ve even thought of buying more yarn. I could decide that when the jumper and the shawl are done I’d be finished with knitting…but where would be the fun in that?

It’s ridiculous, really, this feeling that I have lots to do, lots to get done. That somehow the only good state to be in is one of having Got Stuff Done. It’s treating life like Christmas. The way that you think I just need to clean and shop and write cards, bake a cake, get a tree and put the decorations up, and post packages and travel or feed people and make up beds, and write thank you cards and take the decorations and the tree down…and then at last it’s all over! Which is when you realise you’ve not enjoyed the run up, and the day itself has come and gone, and all you can do is start looking forward to next year and promising yourself that you’ll enjoy the doing of it, the preparations, the doing of stuff, and not just look forward to twelfth night when you’ve got it all done. It’s the doing that is as important as the having got it done.

Why do I mention this? I suppose it’s partly feeling that the endless slew of stuff to get done is a zero sum game, whereby if I go home via the supermarket, cook dinner and bake cakes there won’t be any time for piping. If I go to the allotment I won’t get any further along with the knitting. I if do the crossword I can’t write letters. I can’t decide if I need to make piping more of a “must do” item – give it a higher priority, if you like – than other things on the list, or whether I just need to go with the flow, do the pressing stuff, and then whatever I feel like doing. I worry that I don’t feel much like piping at the moment, but then sometimes I don’t feel like knitting or reading or tackling the crossword.

I’m also wondering whether I am getting bogged down in the concept of a sort of piping D-Day (maybe that should be P-Day), on which the piping will be done. I will have learned all the tunes I want to learn, be able to play them all note perfectly on demand at sessions, never miss a grace note, never lose pressure. I will, at last, be A Real Piper! But actually, that sounds rather dull, and surely the only thing to do then will be to move on to something else. I need to enjoy the getting there more, enjoy doing stuff, not getting stuff done.

Two plus one

We were away at the weekend and flung ourselves back up the motorway from Surrey and Sussex with just enough time to grab a cup of tea and a slice of toast before racing out to the session.

What with one thing and another (the Bank Holiday, last month's visiting fiddler having fallen out with the landlord) it was just the two of us and the ever reliable Irish piper. The pub was busy, the snooker was on the big screen (without sound, thankfully), I was tired and disinclined. The omens were not good.

And yet...once the piper arrived and we got going it went well. The drinkers applauded from time to time, a few of them jiggled about in a loose approximation of Irish dance. The piper played with the fan supporting on bouzouki. The piper accompanied me on pipes or whistle while the fan provided backing. I played along with the fan on his mandolin. We all pitched in together with the fan swapping between mandolin and bouzouki, the piper between pipes and whistle.

I played Flett and Bee (which was a bit raggedy so only went round twice). I played John Macmillan and Whaling Song. I played My Home Town. I played Women and a mangled bit of Sleat on the end of it. I played Magersfontein and Vittoria. Right at the end I tried Valery, but abandoned after three parts as tiredness and the effects two glasses of white wine on an almost empty stomach kicked in.

At one stage the fan, on mandolin, struck up Braemar. I knew he was trying to tempt me, and I gave him a straight refusal. Play it often over endless months as I will it just won't come up to session standard. He rolled into Somme. I said no: it's not a tune I play. And then he came to Dargai, and I felt I couldn't let him get away with playing one of *my* tunes. I waited until he moved on to the B part, feeling that to be safest, but was thrown when he looked at me and said "B". He meant B part, but for one confused moment I thought he was warning me off joining in on the grounds that he was playing in the key of B. I managed to fling myself into the tune as the B part repeat came round, and at the end of his third playing he insisted on one more. It was only afterwards that I realised this was a first: joining in with others, mid-tune, in a session.

By 9pm we were all in and crawled off home, leaving the Irish piper playing to himself in a now empty pub. He noted, before we left, how my repertoire is expanding. It's getting better, I guess.