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.