Cheshire cat

Things come and go. Sometimes I feel like playing, sometimes not. The lure of the plot is getting stronger as the evenings lengthen, and I have an ever increasing list of things I'd like to knit or sew.

I listen over and over to John Macmillan in the car. Sometimes I can hear him, hum him, sometimes not. Generally hearing coincides with being at work, not hearing with being at home. So I struggle on with dots. The first and second parts are there, and part three is coming.

Braemar Gathering is better if I stop fussing about gracing. Sometimes they appear, othertimes not.

I listen to Sealbh. Some things in life are constant.

Lost in translation

Yesterday evening I listened to St Kilda Wedding, mostly because I'd been humming The Braes o' Strathblane for a day or two. I'd forgotten that there are some good pipe tunes on the album, and I'd forgotten because they are not played on pipes. They are played on whistles (which is fair enough, I suppose - pipers seem to play whistles from time to time), fiddle, and Irish pipes. The tunes sound faintly familiar and feel oddly wrong played on Uillean pipes. It's like being abroad and catching a programme you know that has been dubbed. Characters you know as American or Cockney or northern are suddenly spouting in French or German or Italian. It's all the familiar faces, but the voices are all wrong. As well as the language they never seem to try to match the tone or timbre of the original actors' voices.

There was a time when I wondered why a band keen on exploring Scottish music would play Irish pipes. I suppose the answer is that St Kilda was recorded in 1978 before smallpipes were revived or reinvented. Although I do wonder why they couldn't have made a go of it with GHB. By the time we reach 1997 and the Carrying Stream (one of my all time favourite albums) we have smallpipes played by Iain MacInnes and made by Ian Kinnear, the Monkey's maker.

I didn't play yesterday. Today I had two minor breakthroughs. The first was finally cracking Trail and Captn, dotless. I tried them with the Whaling Song - the three seem to go quite nicely together. The second was a small patch where I felt as comfortable with the A as I do with D, felt the bellows and bag pliant and soft, tucked close to me and breathing with me. I had it...and then it went. It's like cats. D is the one that will snuggle and cuddle and purr into your face, A will momentarily rest on you under duress, but then with a switch of the tail is out of your arms and gone.

Amazing Grace

First posted Oct 31st, 2012 by newpiper


I meant to play a lot this week, while I'm off work, and somehow it hasn't worked out that way. The fan is out this evening, and I'm pretty sure the neighbours are out too, so I could have a real pipefest, but I found out this afternoon that a cat who used to visit us a lot was knocked down and killed by a car on Friday. It has really upset me, and I hoped piping might cheer me up, but all my fingers will play is Amazing Grace, which is lovely, but not one for lifting you up when you're down. Dotless - from nowhere, as it were - first came to me when I was thinking about Willie. Not a great version here - denuded of grace notes (I can hear them but not play them) - muddled start, and I all but dropped the pipes at the end - but played with love.
Recording - Amazing Grace.




Amazing Grace on Chirbit