Rumours

I've not played for a few days. No particular reason, other than the usual limit to hours in the day and wanting to do other things more than I wanted to pipe.

Fiddling around with various tune pairings. Still having problems with associating tunes with their names, so the Professor decides to play tune A, the mice begin on tune B, but in the style of tune A, thanks to the "help" of the old prof. This generally means playing tunes faster or slower than I would normally. I do this a lot with McIntyre's Farewell. Now McIntyre could just be taking his leave after a visit, but somehow I have always assumed that this is his final farewell, and he has shuffled off this mortal coil. I therefore pay the tune lament-wise, slow and stately. But when I think I'm playing the Trail I play it good and fast, because the Trail is a jig.

I've always played the Trail then the Captain, because that's the order they appear in, in the book. But as the Trail speeds up  they work less well together in that order: fast to slow doesn't work for me. (Does it ever? I can't think of an example). So I wonder about playing Captain and the Farewell slowly together, but can't decide which would go first, and somehow ending one tune I can't recall the other. I have the same problem trying to put the Trail with Flett: I simply can't remember how the next tune goes. I even though about the Trail and Loch Bee but the moment it occurred to me every note of Bee was apparerently erased from my musical memory... Maybe this means these tunes don't want to belong together.

Then I play some tunes slower on A than I do on D and I wonder if some tunes might take different partners on A and D: I still like the thought of Flett and the Whaling Song, but only if played fast, and the Whale still doesn't feel right on A.

There's a session this weekend and I feel I should get some pairings sorted.

P.S. The mysterious tune that keeps morphing in to the Heights of Cassino turns out to be Balmacara (or possible the Falls because I'm still not sure which is which).

Two of a kind

I lay in bed this morning, feeling lazy in the sunshine, and I thought about a house I used to know in Italy, about my allotment and plans for an asparagus bed, and then about music. I started wondering whether the Dragon might not be a good companion for Brose and Butter.

I didn't get to try my plan out until the evening. I was earlier distracted by breakfast, our weekly trip to the farm shop, a visit to a garden centre, a chat with a neighbour, some gardening, and then a hunt for a good recipe for mincemeat....

In a way the two tunes are similar inasmuch as I can play neither. The Dragon doesn't like to be too slow, but if I play very fast the mice win out over the woodpecker and get confused and over excited and it doesn't turn out quite right. The dots are hopeless and only confuse me, because I keep stopping to wonder what note that is there, and what note did I just play, and oh, I'm not actually on that bar, am I.

Brose is just as bad. Although I've only played it for a few days I'm already past the stage where dots are useful. I think that Brose will come in after the Dragon, but I couldn't get a decent enough run at them to record and see.

I played various other tunes. The playing was comfortable, but somehow my accuracy in remembering tunes was rather poor. In the end I switched from D to A and decided to give Castle Grant a go. I feel that slow tunes sit better on the lower chanter.

Having just switched from D to A the pressure was an issue, as was hitting all the notes, especially low G, cleanly. I am playing slowly - more slowly than Mr McVarish - but that's because that's how I think I'm going to get that dreamy lilting that I feel I hear. I've stripped out almost all of the gracing to the same end: I don't want anything to disturb the flow of the tune.

There are plenty of...pauses while I check what I am doing next. A lot of these are down to me checking the dots against what I think I am playing: that odd no man's land between needing the dots and being able to move on from them. I'm being thrown by reaching that point so much sooner than before.

No drones, and just the once through. The parts are longish and occasionally I'm having to scan the page to find where my repeats start. some straightforward fluffs where I just play the wrong note.

As I've mentioned, I have no idea at all how this sounds compared to the standard pipe version, but as a tune inspired by a fiddle tune it's not bad, it's sort of approaching what I was hoping for. It needs work, but it's going in the right direction.


Check this out on Chirbit

Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ

I'm starting to think of my fingers and my brain as Mice and Professor Yaffle. The mice are chaotic and make a lot of noise, but normally manage to get one over on the Professor, who thinks he's really very clever indeed.

Yesterday the Mice played a tune. Here's a tune! We will play it! The Professor took no notice. He has no use for mouse music and was thinking Important Thoughts about what to play next, or blogging, or recording. After a moment his thoughts were distracted by the Mice - silly mice - playing a fast tune on their own, without him. Ridiculous!

So he listened. It was a fast tune. A nice fast tune. How clever of the mice, playing a fast tune, all on their own. Of course, he said, that's The Athol Highlanders (because Mice are far too stupid to know for themselves what they are playing). Very nice, he says, now the B part, and he tells them how the B part goes, the B part of the Athol Highlanders.

The Mice are confused. It's a B part they wanted, certainly, but this B part resembles the A part not at all. This isn't what we were playing! This isn't the mouse tune!

Yes, yes, yes, says the Professor. You are playing the Athol Highlanders. This is the B part. Play the A part again and you'll see. So the Mice play their fast mouse tune again; and do you know what, it wasn't the Athol Highlanders at all, it was The Barren Rocks of Aden, which the Mice could play perfectly well, A and B part, when there was no idiotic woodpecker to confuse them.

Clever old Mice.