Love, actually

It's been a while since I posted here. It's been a while since I played. Work is very busy. The fan has been having a rough time these last few months. You'd think music would be a solace in all this, but our routines are upset so that finding time to play is difficult, and I've not often been in the mood. I'm feeling bad about leaving the blog, and thinking of drawing a line under it as I always hate it when blogs I follow fizzle out.

So I've been pondering last posts (and have just realised that Last Post would have been the ideal post title!) and how to, as it were, end it all, and my musings have been melancholy as farewells so often are.

Then this evening I've played again and I've thought how much I love this, how much my pipes have brought me. In a way being able to play together has brought the fan and I closer together. I've enjoyed - and continue to enjoy - the community of playing with others. I've enjoyed the blogging - this will be post 609, with two in draft that never got published. I've played for 6 years: Morag, the poor neglected lass, is 6 years old. The Monkey I've had for about 3 and half years which has coincided, I think, with my piping coming on in great strides. I've shaken off stage fright, memorised tunes, put sets together. I've read about piping, and Scotland. I've discovered whole swathes of folk music I never knew existed. I've done so much and I've learned so much and despite the whinges I have loved it. I do love it, in fact. I love the Monkey, I love piping, I love being a piper. And I feel that despite this momentary lull I can go out on a high, and it's not the end, only the end of the beginning.

If you have been on my journey with me, thank you. I'm sorry to leave you, and this blog, but please know that in an enchanted place at the top of the forest a girl and her pipes will always be playing.

Goodbye.

Aft agley

Things don't always turn out as you expect. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to play on Saturday, day 7 of the pop-up. But that was fine, because Sunday was the session and I knew I'd be playing then. Except I didn't - I felt under the weather and the fan went out leaving me to mope on the sofa.

Of course, unexpected changes of plan aren't always bad.

Curioser and curioser

These are things for which I have no explanation.

Today, despite strapping in as usual, I cannot keep my pipes in place: drones slips down over my bust, bellows slip down my elbow, and everything feels as thought it is heading towards the floor. My fingers, way too tight on the chanter, so I feel I am prising them away for each note, suddenly hit that soft perfection whee they bounce effortlessly. Despite all this I get the buzz....

I'm also at a loss to know why the version of The Road to the Isles or Burning Sands of Egypt printed in The Piper's Delight is described as being "as arranged for the pipes." It's a pipe tune, written for pipes, so how can it be "arranged" for pipes?

Less mysterious, but equally irritating, has been my failure to find a video of pipes playing The Braemar Gathering. Youtube of course just finds me videos of pipes playing at the Braemar Gathering. Luckily, I remembered that it's on Even in the Rain. 

Ghost in the machine

Of course, having decided that the buzz is simply the result of a certain level of pressure I played around with bag, bellows and elbows in the hope of finding that perfect point. I could't find it.

Not only could I not find it, I suffered from the opposite of the buzz - a thing so awful that it has no name. It feels as though everything is flat - not musically flat, but dampened and dulled like a grey day or a really drab shade of brown. The sound seems to lack any vibrancy, is almost muffled, and the chanter feels lifeless in my hands. After a while things improved, but whether that was to do with the reed warming up, my fingers warming up (it has turned cold here rather suddenly), or a change in pressure I don't know.

Something else I thought I understood the workings of is my musical memory. It only takes me a handful of play throughs to pick up a simple two parter. That may be generally true, but it doesn't work for Isles, which I play over and round and the moment I stop I can neither hear, see, nor hum a single bar.

I've been playing Flanders slowly and plainly with only the necessary graces (I think, although other may creep in if my fingers feel so inclined) but listening to the rather more ornate, and rather wistfully lovely, version of Mr Macleod I'm wondering if that needs to change.

Where do you go to, my lovely

First day back at work after a week away was a busy one, with the usual email avalanche and three meetings that weren't in my diary when I went away, two of them placed so as to wipe out the chance for anything but the briefest of lunch breaks. Nevertheless I felt reasonably upbeat, humming tunes to myself through the day.

It occurs to me that I haven't had tunes in my head of late. I don't know why, and rather like swallows I don't think I noticed them going, but I did notice when they came back again.

The tunes in my head needed to be played, which gave me a spur for my week of playing. I played a couple of tunes, shifted the bag to make it more comfortable, and suddenly got the buzz. I played through three tunes, not wanting to stop in case I lost it. But the bag got less comfortable, I had to shift it an inch...and the buzz vanished.

I kept on playing, anxiously checking to see if I could perhaps almost, sorta, kinda feel the buzz...but I think it's like being in love: you know when you are and if you have to ask then you aren't. Given that it came and went I can only assume that, rather prosaically, the buzz is linked to pressure levels, but I only know that I had it once and then lost it.

Pop-up piping practice

I've been thinking about getting back to playing, and playing regularly. We've just been away for a week, so of course I've played nothing at all until this evening. It went well today. I played for over an hour, everything was reasonably comfortable, I had good, even pressure in the bag, my fingers wre reasonable nimble. I played tunes I know and mostly had few problems with them. I ran through a pile of tunes, mostly sight reading things I have heard, things I used to play and never nail down, and The Road to the Isles (aka The Bens of Jura, among other aliases), just because it was there in the book and the fan had mentioned it recently.

You'd think that, considering how well everything went, I would have got the buzz, but there was no sign of it.

But it's the session (again!) at the weekend, and I need to get back into practice, and somehow a whole month is too much to commit to for daily playing. So my plan is that I do a pop-up practice and play every day for week from time to time, and hopefully least monthly, with the sessions there to remind me.

Goldilocks

I left my office one day last week and got half way to the car before I realised that I was still wearing my office shoes and that my driving shoes were still tucked under my desk. I decided I'd drive home in my office shoes, which that day were a reasonably sensible court shoe, with neither a very high nor very thin and fragile heel. They were, however, just a bit higher than my driving shoes, high enough to amend the angle at which my ankle rests, and to alter the angles needed in my foot on the pedal.

I didn't feel comfortable at all, so the next day I drove into work in a pair of flat pumps. The lack of heel was fine, but somehow the soles were quite slippery, and I didn't feel comfortable at all. I was certainly glad to get back to my driving shoes.

I do worry, however, that the only shoes I can drive in are my driving shoes. They aren't proper driving shoes. I normally just downgrade my oldest and tattiest pair of shoes to the role. The current pair of mid-height black courts replaced a pair of brown mock snake skin courts a few years back. I've had heels and soles replaced at least twice, but they are on their last legs. I'm going to have to adjust to a different pair of shoes. It's either that or give up driving!

I'm feeling like that with my pipes at present. I'm going through one of those periods when I can't quite get comfortable. It's not as bad as things got before I shortened the tubing, but it's bad enought to produce aches and twinges in shoulder, elbow and neck. I find myself feeling that in order to get things just right, or at least better, I have to be wearing certain things. Some are reasonably practical. If I am sitting down to play the chanter sits between my knees so a short, straight skirt isn't much use. But I've convinced myself that even the thinnest jumper means that the bellows strap for my elbow won't fit, but the top I do wear must have long sleeves so that the strap doesn't pinch. And, as previously discussed, I have to be neither too hot nor too cold. 

The most irritating thing is that none of these issues (short skirts aside) seem to either bother me or make any difference at all in a session, but playing at home I invariably change clothing or adjust the temperature, or abandon because of incorrect clothing or temperature.

Thankfully, my footwear doesn't appear to affect  my piping at all.

Crunluath

"Murdo stopped at the end of his pacing and broke into the crunluath. His toe tapped rapidly on the ground. His fingers bounded off the notes so nimbly that they seemed to describe short ripples along the chanter. The virile, slotted notes flew about, throwing a mesh of sound over the hearers, a contracting net that caught and drew the throats and breasts. And left them strangely numb and vibrant when, at last, the music  ceased."

The Albannach. Fionn Mac Colla.

I wonder what he meant by "slotted notes." This is the scene in which Murdo single-handedly resinstates the piping tradition among the men in the village, and thus revitalises the community. The strange thing is that this piobaireachd playing comes out of nowhere. Murdo isn't spoken of as a piper, apart from the playing of the feadan with the priest. It's as if the playing is innate, a core and hitherto undiscovered part of his Scottishness.

The mood of the passage I've quoted is immediately broken by Kenny's comment on Murdo's playing: "O, he'll learn!" Surely this is suposed to be taken as irony: a learner piper would hardly ensnare throats and breasts with his crunluath. Or perhaps it's sour grapes, for when the men first hear "the clear, lusty notes dropping out richly, forming a slow pattern against the wall of drones" someone suggests that the piper must be Kenny:

"'Thats's not Kenny,' says Murdo the Flea. 'Kenny never had that amount of skill in the fingers at him.'"

Iain Mor

"Iain Mor had died at the beginning of winter. Once his had been a great place and namely for the singing and the dancing and the piping and the telling of tales. Great had been the coming and the going about that place at one time and many the notable gatherings on winter evenings, and the fame of some of the men that would be piping there on evenings of the summer was no small thing. But that was in Iain Mor's day."

The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla

A silver-mounted chanter

"One day the priest lifted a solemn finger before his nose and began fumbling in an inside pocket of his coat. With a face of portentous gravity he drew out a silver-mounted chanter, adjusted the reed and fitted it together. Then he began playing, while Murdo tapped time with his toes, inside his boot. When he had finished the little reel he played he handed the chanter over to Murdo, who played another, the priest taping on his knee with plump fingers and clearly delighted. They were there at the piping, laments, reels and marches and snatches of piobaireachd, sitting forward in their chairs as eager as schoolboys and the feadan passing between them until in the middle of a tune the priest happened to look at the clock, and he was up on his feet, clapped his hat on his head and skipped out of the room with the feadan still in his hand almost before Murdo realised the music had stopped."

The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla.

Blogger advises me that this is my 600th post. Think how much piping I could have done in the time it took me to write them all!

Gile na gile

I found a translation of the poem. I also realised that much of the novel takes place earlier than 1932, but certainly not as early as 1892, the year in which women were admitted to Glasgow University.

In the end The Albannach is about Murdo, the protagonist, finding his true self, his identity as a Highland Scot, a Gaelic speaker and a piper. Oddly enough, considering the misogyny, it turns out that the great Murdo, the man who leads his village from the horrors of Calvinism into the sunny uplands of Alba, seems to have been taught to play the pipes by his mother.

"'God about us!' exclaimed Duncan Lachlan Iain, as if in the greatest consternation. 'A woman piper! I won't believe it. The day I see a man bear a child that day I'll see a woman tune the pipes, and that day I'll know I am dead. Man, man, they have not the wind nor the trick of the fingers nor the musician's ear not the poet's heart.'"

The Albannach, Finn Mac Colla.

This evening I certainly felt unfit to play. Following the fan's suggestion that I work on more reels and jigs I've been working on Troy, Miss Girdle and Crossing the Minch.  I've been thwarted by an utter inability to hold pipes and bellows in a way that doesn't involve a numb arm, cricked neck and sore thumb. Maybe it's the drop in temperature - I've had to resort to playing in fingerless mitts. In the midst of all the physical discomfort I got the buzz: there really is no rhyme or reason to it.

Reprieve

Our session has had its ups and downs, but before we took a summer break things seemed to be on a definite downward slide with dwindling numbers, and the fan and I had several conversatons about calling it a day.

Then last month was a little livelier with the new fiddler. This month the fiddler returned, we had a concertina player (an actual Irish player, which caused some consternation among those who play Irish tunes), and a chap who turned up with a drum, a flute, a whistle, a set of Uillean pipes and a set of lowland pipes. These had two stunted drones, the rest of the tubing apparently being internal. He said they were made by a chap in Arran (presumably at Dunfinion) but his chanter was made by Morag's maker, Simon Hope. He knew some pipe standards, but his gracing was definitely not GHB style, and the whole sound was more like Northumbrian smallpipes.

I had a few wobbles caused by the presence of newcomers, people arriving in a clatter and arranging themselves mid-tune, and probably, also, lack of practice, but On the whole it went well, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I just hope we can keep it up.

Iain Beag

"Iain Beag would always be out when it was a question of piping. He was one of the best of pipers himself and would stand there leaning his weight on his artificial leg and tapping time with his one own foot while he went through all the changing parts of a piobaireachd, and he plainly in his glory...He had left a leg in France."

The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla

I like the understated manner in which the artifical leg is explained - the lack of sentimentality, the slight humour.

This is an interesting novel. There are familiar themes: the oppressive religious upbringing, the bright boy who goes away to be educated, a brush with vice and debauchery, the failure to break free. There is a little piping, a little of domestic life in a croft, a fair amount of evocative description of the land.

There is a good chunk of Gaelic in it, some explained, some not. Murdo is a sent a poem, which has quite an impact on him, so it's a shame to have no hint at all of what it means. Google translate is no help at all, telling me firmly that 'Gile na gile do chonnarc' is Indonesian and that, translated into English, it reads 'na gile gile do chonnarc'.

But, the misogyny! Other than motherly Mrs O'Callaghan, who provides bed and board and asks no questions, every last women is fat, ugly, stupid to the point of being little better than an animal, gives herself airs, or moans and complains. They make sexual advances to him. One - a prostitute in Glasgow - passes on a STD. At least, that's how I read it. It's part of the novel that is written in almost a dream state, Murdo being drunk throughout (it's all rather Bloom in Dublin at this point), and I supose there will always be a certain amount of reticence in a novel of that time (1932) on such matters. There are apparently no women students at Glasgow. Women revolt and oppress him. To be fair he's not overly complimentary about the men, either, but at least they have faces and personalities; the women are all breasts, backsides and blather. They seem to have little in the way of opportunities - they bear 14 children, are shouted at and ignored by drunken, or adulterous and righteous, husbands, nurse each other in illness and their only relief seems to be sixpenny novelettes. I wonder to what extent that reflected the real lives of women in rural Scotland in the first part of the last century.

The black Skyeman

"He used to be a singer in his younger days, and a notable piper, too, but his voice was old and cracked now and the rheumatics had put an end to his piping for good a matter of seven years before. Only once had he put finger to reed since then and that was five years back when he had the argument with the black Skyeman about a tune."

"Sometimes, too, the argument would get hot enough in a friendly kind of way, and if it was about piping it would end by someone taking down the pipes and striding out to the patch of grass at the side of the shop with the whole company trooping at his heels, all except old Iain Mor himself who sat in his chair and bent an attentive ear. Every now and then someone would come in to tell the stage of the argument and demand his opinion, which he would then carry out to the men at the gable, who would pause in their arguing to listen and then be at it again. At times a whole evening would be passed in this way, the men arguing at the end of the house and only pausing now and again when someone took the pipes and stepped aside to play over a part of the tune to illustrate some technical matter, and he as like as not continuing the discussion for a bit with the bag hanging limp and the chanter held ready between his teeth."

The Albannach, Finn Mac Colla, 1932

Yes - it really does say that the chanter is between his teeth!

Old times

"The folks were a lusty race in those old times, with a song never far from the lips and feet ever itching to be at the dancing. And the fine piping there must have been! But then the dark days came, with a new kind of religion that changed the old ways, stopped the song on the lip, and let the wind out of the pipes with a squealing of drones. Then the folks began going abroad till none were left but the old people and bairns."

The Albannacb, Fionn Mac Colla, 1932

The first cause

"The First Cause or Unmoved First Mover - we must forget the infinitely subjective and question-begging term 'God', and for a thousand years! - the Ground of all Being or Creative Absolute - as some moderns are calling it, the Ultimate Reference - is in piobaireachd, as it never was in Calvinist theory..."

Fionn Mac Colla (aka Thomas MacDonald), introduction to The Albannach.

Fantasy album

This is pretty much what I played this afternoon.

Bloody Fields of Flanders/Hills of Perth
I think of this as the geography set because it has fields and hills, but it's also a homecoming, from Flanders fields to Perthshire. I really need to record this pair.

The Highland Brigade at Magersfontein/Heroes of Vittoria
The heroes set.

Women of the Glen/Sound of Sleat
Geography again - glens and sounds. Probably I should record this again, as hopefully it's in better shape than it was back in January.

John Macmillan of Barra/South Georgia Whaling Song
Always known to me as Father John's Boat Trip.

My Home Town
Because travel and being away and homecoming all imply the existence of a home.

Heroes of St Valery/Heights of Dargai/The Shores of Loch Bee/Flett from Flotta
This was a rather marathon set, the pipe equivalent of the rather indulgent guitar solo adding 20 minutes to an otherwise run of the mill tune. A heroes' homecoming set, this, from St Valery and Dargai back to the shores of a loch and a Scottish Island. To be honest it's rather too long, and I am still not sure about the Dargai/Bee/Flett combination.

Bonus track was Amazing Grace, which I suppose is a spiritual homecoming.  Clearly the album will be called No Place Like Home and the cover will feature my feet wearing ruby slippers. Now I just need to consider who I might recruit for backing...!

Don't I know you?

Pottering round this evening, spending time doing nothing much, and I've put on some music to help things along. It's Piob is Fidheall, which I haven't listened to much in a while.

I was pottering around making a cup of tea, enjoying the tunes when I heard one that I tuned into immediately, because it's one I'm playing at the moment: Hills of Perth. Which puzzled me, because I didn't think Perth was listed in the booklet. Sure enough, there is no mention of Perth, and the first tune on track 7 is down as Donnie MacQueen's. 

No further information is given about the tune in the CD booklet, other than that it was in a manuscript belonging to Duncan Currie of South Uist. Duncan is described as "an ancestor", but no clue is given to dates.

Hmm, further investigation leads me to the website of Cranford Publishing, where a listing of tunes for the CD gives the opener on track 7 as Hills of Perth aka Donnie MacQueen's. Perhaps Duncan Currie meant to indicate it was a tune he learned from Donnie, presumably before it was published by John Wilson, or, indeed, by the LBPS. No clue as to the identity of Donnie, who was presumably more formally Donald, and South Uist, judging by a quick trawl of the web, has had its share of Donald MacQueens over the years.

Slow down, you move too fast

After what feels like a piping lifetime of trying to play ever faster, I am starting to appreciate the slow. I've been hearing tunes that are played more slowly than "my" version (Shores of Loch Bee, South Georgia Whaling Song, Flett  from Flotta). I've been playing tunes that I feel need to be taken slowly (Flanders Fields). I've also been going back to tunes I feel I am, not exactly struggling with, but failing to get comfortable with (Troy's Wedding, Braemar Gathering, Sound of Sleat), despite the fact that I've been playing them, off and on, for quite some time now. 

It's possible that I may speed them up again when I'm ready, but at the moment I feel that a slower pace gives me more control. It stops me tensing fingers, rushing through bits I'm not confident on, messing up the timing. It allows me to concentrate more - or perhaps I just have to concentrate more in order to bring the speed down, and that's why the problems slip away. I'm not sure that this is going to fix things, but these are three tunes I would very much like to have settled into my session repertoire.

I do wonder to what extent my "slow" is actually faster than the "fast" I used to play. Speed is relative. 30mph seems reasonable from a standing stop, a little odd if you're slowing from 70mph as you come off a dual carriage way and, if you are actually travelling along that dual carriage way with traffic tearing by at 70mph, 80mph or more, positively suicidal.

Ch-ch-changes

Sunday’s session was quite different from usual. It didn’t get off to a good start: when we arrived the TV was on and a crowd sat around watching the football and providing a very vocal commentary. We sat at the other end of the pub with a drink each and waited. Eventually the match finished, and the pub emptied out, most people preferring to sit out, and we had our usual corner.

The Northumbrian piper arrived with his wife, who doesn’t play, but she settled down on a sofa by our table and we had a bit of general chitchat between tunes, which slowed the pace. A little later a new fiddle player joined us. He was a young chap, keen, really only starting to come into Irish trad, so not with a large repertoire. He’d sought us out as a change from the usual English/Morris sessions in the area, and he joined in the discussion as well as the music. With the general chat and with the youngster coming and going (he had friends elsewhere in the pub) it had more of the feel of a social evening with music, which was very relaxing.

Somehow we fell to taking it in turns to lead a set, which isn’t something we normally do, and not something I normally enjoy, but it worked well. I played My Home Town, Father John/Whaling Song (the latter rather faster than intended), and Dargai/Flett (with a micropause between the two as I weighed up the risks of plunging into Loch Bee). I twice failed to get passed the first half of the A part of Magersfontein and ended up with Women instead (I didn’t even consider trying Sleat on the end). I played a rather tatty King, partly, I felt, because I was expecting everyone to join in and no one did, and partly perhaps because I was nearing the end of a half of Woodford Wherry  having already had a half of St Austel Tribute.

The pub was empty for most of the evening, then a large and lively young crowd came in, and although they generally talked loudly through all but a song they applauded each set enthusiastically.

The same barman seems to be on duty whenever we are there. He’s rather laid back, never gives the impression of expecting us, or even really recognising us, and has a faint air of surprise about him whenever we order drinks. On Sunday he was rather chatty, and thanked us for saving him from the football, which he hadn’t been enjoying.