Set in stone

Not for the first time I've been pondering sets. I'm mostly wondering whether it's acceptable to reuse a tune in more than one set. It seems a bit of a cop out, but some tunes do just seem to be very easy going and willing to pair with a range of other tunes.

I'm thinking of sessions, of course. Listeners ("audience" implies more choice and interest than the Sunday evening drinkers probably have when we arrive) may find it dull to hear the same tune more than once of an evening. Fellow musicians may also prefer more variety. The other problem would be that if tune A is sometimes followed by tune B and at others by tune C then you run the risk of either having a gap while everyone waits to see if it's B or C this time, or a musical car crash as half the session goes with tune B and the other with tune C.  The answer to that would be to ensure that tune B always follows tune A, but opens the set with tune C.

As ever, I have easy going tunes like Vittoria that seem happy to pair up with all sorts of tunes, and others, like Dargai that don't seem to sit with anything. Maybe I need to learn more tunes...

Accidentally on purpose

I failed to play yet again yesterday. The fan and I made a 7 hour round trip to Bournemouth for a 90th birthday party. We left too early and arrived home too tired for any music. Found a good pizzeria on the way.

Flanders is almost there, which is good, because nice as it is to polish it's also good to have something new to show for my efforts.

A retreat too far?

Today the slow tune in my head was Flanders, although Creek was perfectly playable, with dots. Both are at that stage where the dots are moral suport more than anything.

As ever, once I have tunes I want sets. The fan likes slow followed with a burst of speed, which is fine for performance but not so useful in sessions where it's easier for people to join in, I think, if tempo is the same throughout. I'm also thinking of length with four parters (Perth, Valery) probably not lending themselves to the standard arrangement of three-tunes-each-played-three-times-over. Perhaps a short tune tacked on the front or back would work.

So I've pondered Valery followed by Perth, which may be too long. Or Creek  and Perth or Flanders and Valery. Kevin McLeod has Lochanside, Valery and Vittoria together, but I feel somehow that maybe two retreats together isn't quite right, although I think the things they share, like the little triplets, would bind them together.

I also think it's a shame there isn't a tune with Swan in the title, which would make for an amusing set name.

Strike three

I haven't played today. Again. I'm not worried. I wasn't expecting to have time to play today as I needed to do a supermarket sweep and get some newly delivered plants planted out at the allotment, as well as cooking dinner. I did think that maybe after dinner...but it was 9pm by the time we were done, and now I'm drinking tea and knitting is calling and I just plain can't be bothered.

My polishing is coming on well, and I can normally play bits of either McIntyre, Creeks or Flanders. Not an awful lot to show for the effort, but the polishing is useful, I think.

When you change with every new day

I thought that while I was polishing that perhaps Dargai could do with a quick buff up, so I played that, followed by Flett and Bee. Yes, Bee. I had to give it a poke, but there it was, without the new grace at the very first point, but thereafter note perfect.

Then I started humming and played a few bars, and then an entire A part of Flanders, having pretty much given it up for dead. I didn't go looking for the B part, because really I had been in search of Creeks. I couldn't find them. Gone. What I found instead was McIntyre's Farewell, like the Bee, note perfect and in full despite its prolonged absence. I stuck the Captn on the end.

I shall wait with interest to see which tunes materialise tomorrow. I suspect that McIntyre and Creeks, perhaps because they share 2 or 3 opening notes, will be one of those odd pairs that cancel each other out so that I can never hold them both in my head at once.

Spoke too soon

When I played yesterday I thought that the Bee was back. It appears it was only passing through as today I haven't a clue how it goes. I can't even conjure it up with the old trick of starting on the B part: not a single note will come to me.

This evening I decided to play a token tune or two, not really feeling in the mood. However, once I started everything fell into place, tunes fell out of my fingers and I only gave up after an hour once my bellows elbow started to ache (which I am blaming on the knitting project rather than the piping.)

Before I stopped I thought I'd try McIntyre's Farewell, which I used to play at sessions, although it's not a tune that tne fan is keen on. Various bars came back, but no more, so I headed to the bookshelf, humming as I went. As soon as I saw the Barry Shears book I knew it wasn't the one I wanted because the tune I was humming was Creeks. Despite previous comments  I do apparently know the tune, can hum it, and can play pretty much all of it. What I can't play, even with the dots, is McIntyre's Farewell, because everytime I try it morphs into the Creeks.

Oops!

Yesterday I managed not to play, again. We had curtain rails to put up, curtains to hang, the aftermath of some decorating to tidy away, dinner to cook, a cake to bake... Something had to give.

Progress at the half way point isn't looking too bad. Father John is, if not quite shining like a national guitar, at least reasonably buffed up. Women is also improving, with more control now on the opening bars of the B part. More elbow grease required for Sleat, which my fingers still run away with.

Perth is doing well. I'm no longer confusing the 3rd and 4th parts, or forgetting the 3rd part, and speed is picking up nicely. St Valery still needs work. The 2nd and 4th are less likely to get confused but I'm not always getting the variations on the repeat of the 2nd part.

Barren Rocks first part is fine, the second is OK sometimes. I'm less convinced that it sits well with Atholl, which is requiring quite a lot of remedial work. The 4th part considerably slower than the others, the 1st having a tendency to be too fast, too untidy.

Flanders seems to be going the same way as the Creeks: lovely tune, recognise it when I see it, never hum it, can't play without dots, rapidly losing interest...  Lindisfarne and Planxty I think I am sometimes humming in parts, but neither tunes falls easily under my fingers, and a couple of note changes sound rather odd to my ear. In theory I like them rather a lot, but my fingers just haven't taken to them and I fear both will fall by the wayside before too long.

Not blogging, but piping

At the session on Sunday I played March of the King of Laoise and mentioned to one of the flautists, on only his second visit, that I offered it as my concession to Irish music, noting that it's clearly a Scottish tune, because it's so clearly a pipe tune. Not at all, replied the flute: pipe tune, certainly, but Irish war pipes, not GHB. Not something that had occured to me, and now I wonder, where is the rest of the repertoire of the war pipes?

I've just finished Roderick Cannon's very enjoyable history of piping and will blog on that this weekend, hopefully.

Played a little with the fan this evening, and for the first time in ages I got the buzz!

Credit where it's due

Poor Andy Murray. It seems he can never be good enough. He played in his 10th grand slam final at the weekend. There are only 10 men in nearly 50 years of tennis who have played in so many finals.  There are only 12 who have managed that across all four slams. He was beaten by the world number one tennis player, one of the few to have won all four slams during his career. Andy has come so far: it's really only a year ago that won his first tournament on clay. At the start of the French Open it didn't look as though he'd even make it into the second week. There was a time when he thought he'd never reach a final at Roland Garros. Andy is awesome, yet all the focus is on the thing he didn't do, the match he didn't win.

I mention this partly because tennis is one of my distractions, but also because I can sympathise. OK, I don't get to pick up large amounts of money, or get featured in Hello! magazine, or have to fly round the world or practise for hours or have ice baths. However, just like Andy whatever I do never seems quite good enough. However far I have come it's somehow never far enough. The fan said I did well at the session this weekend. I played three sets and a couple of standalone tunes, but mostly I envied the Irish piper his three page tune list, and got cross that I felt my timing wasn't as steady as it might have been, some of the fingering not as tight as it might have been, some of the control of bellows not as good as it should have been.

All we can do is struggle on and remember to give credit where it's due.

Character building

Here is the plan. I will spend the month on a mix of learning new tunes, refurbishing two rather tatty tunes, and polishing some tunes that I do know but that, well, just need a bit of a polish.

The new tunes are The Bloody Fields of Flanders, Pringle Planxty and potentially Lindisfarne. I am saying potentially because the style being so new to me I am afraid that the two Matt Seattle tunes will clump together in my head amd become entangled if I attempt to learn them both at once. I think I was humming one earlier, but am also aware that the opening of one of them is stirring vague memories of a baroque tune, possibly one from recorder playing days, and maybe that is what I was humming.

The refurbishment is needed for Aden and Atholl Highlanders. I know them, I've played them, I've never got them up to session standard, they need some work, and I am pretty sure they will make a good set.

Then those that need polish. Father John I feel is getting rusty, so a bit of repetiton there won't go amiss. Both Perth and St Valery keep getting their B and D parts switched and confused, so they need work. I'm also wondering if the driving rhythm of Perth  might make an interesting change if stuck on the end of Flanders. 

The others in need of polish are Women of the Glen and The Sound of Sleat. I like Sleat. It seems to me to be, if you get the timing right, rather evocative of a boat on water, of the bubbling and sucking that water does around an obstacle.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I think I have stopped thinking about notes and parts and repeats and fingering, i.e. the nuts and bolts and mechanics of tunes. I think I am now thinking, as I hum, and as I play, of the character of the tune - of its bounce or lilt or sway, and where I think of individual phrases I am thinking of the sad bit, the upbeat bit, the joyful bit. I think that if this awareness of character comes out in my playing I will be a better piper and will also be on my way to developing my own musical voice.

Epic fail

Well, a slight exaggeration perhaps. Yesterday was the first day of June and my latest challenge month and I played not one note. We raced out of the house straight after breakfast and didn't get back until bed time. It was a planned day out (to Birmingham, which I can heartily recommend to those who enjoy modern architecture, Victorian architecture, Victorian art, well kept civic spaces, English baroque  churches, railway stations, canals and shopping).

I printed out three tunes to try this morning. The first is fairly standard, just The Bloody Fields of Flanders, which I have been enjoying on Polbain to Oranmore. The other two are somewhat different, being modern tunes for border pipes. I was googling for Flanders, ended up on The Session and noted a comment by a Matt Seattle, who appeared to be a piper...and does indeed turn out to be that same Matt Seattle who gets mentioned in association with William Dixon in Common Stock from time to time. He has has own website and includes some tunes on it. The two I have chosen are Lindisfarne and Pringle Planxty. They are proving problematic, if only because they are, to my ear, very much not Scottish tunes and the things they do are not the things I expect tunes to do. The fan is quite taken with them. I am intrigued by Mr Seattle's bellows strap: it looks as though he has a shoulder strap, which I think is in addition to the body strap.

I've also been thinking about The Barren Rocks of Aden, one of my first tunes, long since abandoned. I've been wondering if it would make a good introduction for Athol Highlanders, also not played for an age.