How much?

Now that I've finished knitting the shawl I'm starting to plan other projects. I've wound a skein of crushed-berry coloured, hand-dyed silk bought in Basle a couple of years ago. I've bought a pattern, but I'm not sure if it's the right one for the yarn. I may use a pattern I already have, or I might buy another. In the meantime I've bought the pattern for a jumper and am pondering which yarn to buy.

Which is all very fascinating in itself, but doesn't obviously have much to do with piping, beyond forming one of my regular distractions. The point is that a knitting pattern is normally a pdf, so not even a physical object. There will be a front page with a picture of the pattern knitted up, a page of stuff needed to knit the item (the yarn, the needles), and possibly a list of abbreviations, although that might have a page to itself. It will close with some remarks on copyright and permitted use of the pattern, maybe some thanks to test knitters. There will be more pictures: a close-up, the item in a different colour, or worn by a different model. Somewhere in the middle will be one or two pages of actual instructions for knitting something. Sometimes these are free, sometimes to help promote a company's yarn and sometimes because it's a new designer. Often you have to buy the patterns, and that might cost between £3 and £5 or more.

Oddly enough I seem happy to buy the patterns, even when I'm not totally sure I am going to use them. Music, on the other hand, I have a real aversion to paying for. In some ways music is just another pattern, more instructions for making something. I've yet to see any fancy additions, any musical equivalent of pictures and abbreviations,  but then when I've seen charges for sheet music it's a lot cheaper than for knitting patterns.

I'm just as bad with books of music. There are several I'd like and I've not done anything about buying them, partly because, I suppose, I feel they won't be good value, I won't get my money's worth from them. And yet I have knitting books, and cookery books, on my shelves where I've really only ever used one or two patterns or recipes. So why am I happy to pay for the one and not the other?

The books of patterns or recipes often have additional information in them - perhaps some essays on knitting history or pictures of a particular country of region. I can sit and flick through either and get enjoyment and inspiration from them in a way I can't with a book of music. I can also tell from flicking through how many of the sets of instructions I am genuinely likely to use, whereas, as I've mentioned before, looking at printed dots tells me nothing about how playable or enjoyable I will find the tune.

A printed tune has limted use. Once I have the tune by heart the dots are useless. It takes me longer to get a recipe by heart, so I need to go back to my cookery book more often. I rarely knit the same pattern more than once, but would need the pattern every time I knitted it again.

A tune is not a thing, somehow. I can cook, share and eat a dish over and over. Once I have followed a pattern I have an item I can wear or use over and over. And although I can play a tune over and over for years it's somehow not a solid object in the same way as a dish for dinner or a pair of mittens.

I suppose one of the reason to pay for patterns is quality. Anyone can put together a pattern and share it round. When you buy a pattern you normally expect it to have been tested by a number of knitters, to have been technically edited, to be failsafe, to include a variety of sizes. A tune is a tune, and although the presentation on the page might be more or less clear, and gracing might be included or excluded, I've not generally found free printed tunes containing errors.

The other reason is that through the various knitting blogs I follow I appreciate that these (usually) women depend on pattern sales to make their living. Many of them promote their work through blogs. There is a feeling that you have a personal connection with the blogger.

That's something I really don't have with the composers of pipe tunes. Most of them seem to be dead, and those who are still living I know nothing about. And maybe that perceived personal connection makes all the difference. Because when I buy a pattern from an independent designer I'm not just gaining instructions; I feel as though I am suporting  small business, paying back into a blog I enjoy reading, even supporting my own escapist fantasy in which I, too, would sell a few patterns in between knitting, piping and gardening. I'm buying myself membership of a community.

And maybe it's just that I need to pay if I want good quality, up to date knitting patterns. Pipe music doesn't date and the older tunes do just as well and there is a lifetime's worth of free pipe tunes out there before I'd need to pay. Good quality recipes can now be had online for nothing, from various sources, some of which are trying to sell you groceries or utensils, others are  providing a public service (or possibly enticing you to buy the book of the TV show...).

So should I be happy to reap the musical benefits of free dots, or should I be putting my money where my elbow is? I really don't know.

Miscellany

Yesterday I played. I remembered all the tunes I wanted except Flanders, which I couldn't bring to mind, or fingers. I couldn't lay my hands on dots, either.

I had dots for Braemar, but couldn't play it. At least, I couldn't play the first part, mostly because I was trying to play a GDE gracing on the opening pair of low As. Once I remembered it was a low G I wanted the whole tune fell back into place. Bee, which was posted missing a while back, turned up on my musical doorstep, a little dusty and footsore, but otherwise intact.

Today I printed dots for Flanders and as soon as I lifted the sheet of paper from the printer the whole tune fell back in to my head, rendering the paper useless. It's a mystery to me, this whole musical memory thing.

There was something else I wanted to write about this evening, but that has also gone. Like Bee, like Emmeline, who slipped through the trees, I am sure it will turn up later.

I've been listening to all sorts of things in the car. Queen, Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac. Some of it now only seems to have value because of the memories it invokes. I love Simon's language, his ability to tell a story. I think to myself that his greatest hits is the best short story collection I know.

This evening I listen to Rostropovich play Bach's  cello suites. No nostalgia required here. It's some of the most moving and beautiful music I know.

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.

Gimme, gimme, gimme

I've had a tune in my head on and off these last few days and this afternoon I worked out that it is Saw Ye Never A Bonnie Lass from Reclaimed. The CD has the piper, Martyn Bennett, introduce the tune. I can't remember his exact words, but the general gist is that the tune is what the fan would call a bit of a pig, which is a tad offputting. Still, I would like to play it, and the dots are out there in The Master Piper. It's on my list of books I'd like.

I haven't (yet) rushed out to buy it, partly because I'm aware that I've yet to touch the book of quicksteps purchased recently. I've also got my eye on Freeland Barbour's The Music and the Land. And John Maclellan's collected works. Oh, and John MacColl's tunes. And Roddy MacDonald's. (Last Tango in Harris! Good Drying!)

And that's just the tune books. I've got a gap in my Deaf Shepherd collection. Anna and Mairearad have got a new CD out. I don't have the latest Battlefield Band offering, I'm missing a Kevin MacLeod CD, and I would love to track down  something that had a very good review in The Living Tradition.  I missed Blazin' Fiddles when they were in this neck of the woods and am tempted to indulge in a CD from them to compensate.

It's a while since I mentioned it, but I'm short of hours in the day. I did find time to play today though, and once I found a couple of parts of Vittoria and Perth that had gone awol everything went well.

Reclaimed

Reclaimed is a compilation CD, which isn’t always a good thing. Too often compilations are mixed bags, a bit of a curate’s egg. This has is a common thread, apart from the pipes, which is the music of William Dixon. This is certainly one for my (long) tune book wish list. Several of the tracks use voice or strings (violin, viola, or cello). There are no banjos or bodhrans, no snare drums, no MSR sets. In short it’s neither folk nor GHB stuff, it is cauld wind pipes (not just Scottish) finding their own level. 

Reclaimed also gives me some additions to the list of things that go well with pipes. This CD gives us pipes and voice, which I already know from Seudan and Fhuair Mi Pog and hadn’t really thought about when I was compiling that five. This isn’t just singing with the pipes, though. Mairi Campbell on Now Westlin Winds, gives us voice used almost like drones, which works really well. And I’ve already said how good pipes sound with more pipes, mostly thinking SSP or GHB with Uilleann pipes, but I think this is the first time I have heard smallpipes played with more smallpipes, (Jack Latin) which is just perfect, actually. It’s a long time since I’ve played with another smallpiper. There aren’t many of us about.

While I'm mentally updating Five Things this CD gives us an extra place to hear Mr MacInnes. He’s on two tracks here, one unaccompanied set of three tunes (The Night Visitor's Song, Willie Stays Lang at the Fair and Well Bobbit Blanch of Middlebie) and with strings and voice on Helen of Kirconnel Lea. 

Eslewhere Mike Katz plays pipes by the Monkey's maker, there is an intriguing narrative piece on border pipes, a track featuring Martyn Bennett, and a rare chance to hear pastoral pipes. The icing on the cake of this CD is the informative sleeve notes.

Fancy that!

From time to time I glance over some of the discussions on The Session. My eye was recently caught by one on musical memory, especially as the opening poster was looking for tips on remembering. As ever the comments varied from the flippant to the serious, but the general gist was that memory works in mysterious ways.

One poster mentioned Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, so I trundled out to borrow it from the library. It is an interesting book, not too technical, and well written. Dr Sacks was (he died in 2015) clearly a well-read and cultured man and as well as citing standard journals such as JAMA he mentions Darwin, Henry James, EM Forster, Somerset Maugham, Nietzsche amd Proust, among others. He was also a musician from a musical family.

I suppose the clue is in the word "tales" in the title, because in the end it is not much more than a collection of fascinating anecdotes and case stories about the strangeness of the human brain in relation to music. The most concrete finding seems to be that music is independent of other types of memory, so that a man who cannot remember the day of the week or his wife's name will still be able to play from memory hundreds of pieces of music. Learning music may also be different from other types of learning, allowing someone who has never learned to tie their shoe laces, count muffins or draw an elephant to be able to accurately play and sing. Music is also linked in to emotion differently from other things, so where emotion is deadened by dementia, Parkinsons, psychopathy, autism or brain injury, music may bring emotion out.

So all very fascinating, and full of human interest, stories sad and happy, but very short on anything on how musical memory works, and therefore how one should best go about learning.

I suppose it's not surprising. Even my own experience is mixed. Some tunes fall into my head after one or two times having them as background sound in the car. Others will not stick despite repeated listening, on a loop, while doing nothing else at all. Sometimes I can throw dots away almost at once, for other tunes I need weeks or months with dots. Some tunes I can only play once they start to play themselves in my head, other tunes I learn very well but never spontaneously hum. Some tunes I can get if I "look" at the picture of the dots in my head, for others I struggle to "see" the dots, can't "see" enough to help, or just don't need those phantom dots. Songs I find easier to remember, I suppose because I can memorise words more easily than notes, follow the internal logic of the song (most trad songs tell linear stories), and then use the words and fragments of melody to piece together a likely whole.

I think this will all boil down in the end to more practice...

Click

Just as I was beginning to feel that perhaps a break from piping would be nice, everything clicked. Bellows were comfortable, well out of the way of my wrist. Drones (mostly) sat high and left the bellows alone. I got the buzz! Various bits of Arthur Bignold fell into place. My fingers were fast and furious and (mostly) accurate. I played new tunes, old tunes, tunes from The Piper's Delight which I had on my music stand having discovered (thanks to pipe tune search) that it has Farewell to the Creeks in it.

Still listening to Skippinish in the car. Still loving it.

You've changed

I logged into Chirbit today, only to find they have gone for the same tedious web design as everyone else on the planet. It took a moment or two to remember my username and then I was in. The first tune I uploaded was The Braemar Gathering. Turns out it was also the last tune I uploaded, four months ago. Took a little bit of head scratching to find the bit that gives me the html to drop the link into here, but I got there in the end.

Now, I've not listened to this or the previous version since recording. I will have to compare the two. For this new version, even though it's now a tune that just appears on my fingers rather than only coming when I specifically want it, it still has some errors. There are phrases I snatch at, garbling notes together, although generally I am more relaxed than I was. I've lost the D grace on the low A to C transition. It was making my fingers tense and although I've managed to relax my fingers I've not managed to bring the grace back. I'm not sure about the speed I am playing at, whether it wants to race, or be a little slower. I actually had the dots in front of me, but once I know a tune they are distracting more than anything else.

Recording itself was easier than I've found it in the past, although I did have to ask the fan to remind me of one or two of the various steps. I feel that I had no real red button-itis. It's just a recording, not a performance, and if I fluff bits (which I do) then that's fine. I seem to have taken the pressure off recording. Even so, the tune isn't yet reliable enough to play in sessions, and it is partnerless with no idea at all which tune it might sit with.



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Picking and choosing

I love to eat, I love to cook, I love to think about food, and I love to read recipe books. I read cookery books for several reasons, only one of which is to identify new recipes might like to try. I might pick something because it has ingredients that I particularly enjoy (anything with aubergines) or because it has ingredients I normally have to hand so won’t require an extra shopping trip. I’m not likely to try recipes that involve ingredients I know I can’t get hold of, or those that look as though they are going to take three days and a couple of comis chefs to prepare. Pictures can help with the 
selection process, but I don’t need them. The recipe is normally enough to allow me to visualise the dish and how it might taste. 

The fan, on the other hand, cannot do this. If I show him a recipe I’m excited about and suggest I try it he tends to be non-committal. He’ll wait until it’s on the plate before him before he passes judgement. 

What I can’t do is look at a printed tune and know whether or not I am going to like the sound of the tune or find it easy to pick up. Nor can I often easily envisage a tune just from looking at the dots. I need the equivalent of cookery book pictures, which for a tune means that I need to have heard it, or need to be able to find it being played online so I can have a listen.

If I hear a tune I can normally tell if it’s a pipe tune or not, basically through the limited number of notes used! I’m getting better at listening to tunes and being able to identify the grace notes and visualise (or whatever the aural equivalent for that is) how the tune would sound without those gracings, or with less complex gracings. There are tunes that will accept a paring down and others that are nothing without their gracings. I’m getting better, too, at hearing which tunes needs their speed and which could sound well played at a more sedate pace. I’ve been listening to Flett, played at a much more sedate pace than I play it, and I know I play Loch Bee faster than Mr MacInnes. 

Conversely I’ve come across CD notes where a band will say that they have chosen to play a tune at a slower pace than is usual. So speed is a reasonably flexible thing, but there are some tunes that definitely need their speed. I think the thing I still find hardest is hearing a pipe tune played on fiddle and thinking how that will sound on pipes. Although pipes and fiddle sound good together the pipes never have the slide and glide that a fiddle can have.

It was after listening to Springfield a lot recently that I printed the dots for Heroes of both St Valery and Vittoria as both tunes got stuck in my head. The place that I found St Valery also had Sound of Sleat, which I hadn’t really thought of as a pipe tune before. When I first played it was as if I wasn’t reading anything new, more as though the dots were reminding me of a tune I already knew. I had the tune firmly in my head and felt that I was barely reading the dots as I went. The tune initially came together really quickly, then stalled.

I wrote this a while back and it has sat in drafts. Since then Sleat hasn't made much progress and The Session has had a discussion about whether or not musicians can "hear" tunes as they read the dots. Looks like I'm not alone in lacking this ability. 

This has festered in draft mode for a while more. Sleat and Heroes are being assimilated into my repertoire. I've been playing them this week.

As if by magic

Kilbowie Cottage appeared in my head today. It's at that stage where I can hear it, but on the whole I can't hum it, and even if I sit and listen to it the moment I pick up my pipes it vanishes. The bits I can hum I can play: that's most of the A part, just about by heart, with a slightly muddled mess in  the two bars in the middle.

I find that the dots guide me in the shape of the tune, confirming the notes I can hear in my head, but where the timing is wrong in my head, or not there at all, I struggle even with the dots to play the tune properly, despite being able to read music.

I've had tenderness in my right index finger this week, at the middle joint and tip, and soreness in my elbow and shoulder. I am hoping it's excess use of a PC at work and that it won't interfere with what seems at the moment to be an insatiable desire to play. It has meant that I've failed to be comfortable with my bellows and had to abandon before doing my elbow serious damage. It's a shame, because apart from feeling the love and being keen to get this tune sorted, I just started getting the chanter buzz this evening, and as well as feeling good that always sounds fantastic and spurs me on.

No women or heroes in Magersfontein

Those pesky women still hadn't reappeared by this evening so I flushed them out with the help of the dots. B part still needs work to get it into my musical memory.

Since they were there I tried to introduce them to Magersfontein or Heroes, but no mattter which way  I tried I couldn't make a pairing, far less a threesome. I even threw in Flett, but that was a non-starter as well, so after my initial flurry of excitement around sets I am back to a pile of stubborn singletons.

After that Bonnie Galloway, Loch Bee, Braemar. I am trying to take this last nice and slow to check I have notes and timings all in the right place. It sounds, at a slower pace, rather naked without much gracing.

It was one of those evenings where the chanter literally buzzed in my hands, always a really good feeling. I have no idea whether it's to do with temperature or humidity, or is just my imagination, nor do I know what, if any, effect it has on the sound.

I had to stop mid way to rearrange various items in and out of the oven. When I came back the buzz was still there but the bellows jammed themselves on my wrist, my right thumb seized up, and Troy came out as a bit of a mess.

The lady vanishes

But it isn't just one lady that has gone. It's several: a whole glen full. I cannot bring it to mind, couldn't play a note of it this evening. I feel there are three little three-note run downs in row, but that didn't help. I can't even picture the dots, which, as I've mentioned before, I know I am not supposed to do, but really can't help.

Hopefully it will come back next time I play, if not I may have to go back to dots.

Other tunes went fine: Shores of Loch Bee, My Home Town, Troy, Braemar, Heroes, Dargai, Flett. There must have been others. Oh yes, a rather abortive Miss Girdle. Sleat, too, but I am still not sure that I have the 2nd and 4th final bars right, and in the third part if I come up inelegantly from the bottom G that seems to throw me.

I have tunes from Highland Strands in my head. I love them all. Listening more closely than I have been, noticing the layering of instruments, the whistle.

Chocks away

I've been thinking of late that I am hanging on to dots for too long and allowing myself to get dependant upon them. So this evening, as the Women had come back during the day, I decided throw caution (or dots) to the wind and just go for it. The A part is there already and the B part is there in parts, with confusion over the first second versons of the B. So really I've only been playing it a couple of days and it's half memorised already. Ok, so I had a head start with knowing the tune, but I had been worrying lately about how slowly I was picking tunes up. I think my experience with Braemar and Troy both show that I need to throw off the dots and not lean on them.

Sleat is still troublesome with the variations in the 2nd and 4th parts getting themselves swapped over. Braemar needs a bit more control, a more even tempo. Troy needs more confidence. John Macmillan needs me to listen to it a bit more, but is generally good.

Hearing things

I've had the Women of the Glen going round my head, day and night, it seems. It's somehow tiring to keep hearing a tune, and it's not far in the background of my brain, it's at the front all the time, just, but not quite, at the point where I find myself humming a tune. The only respite was while cleaning my teeth when it was suddenly, inexplicably, but temporarily, replaced with Joy to the World.

Of course, when I decide to print it (yesterday I played it straight from my tablet), it slipped away, and by the time I had my pipes out it was a bit of a struggle to remember how it went at all...

Apart from the Women,  and a brief and inelegant appearance by Miss G,  I stuck to the old tunes: Magersfontein, Dargai, Loch Bee, King of Laoise, My Home Town, Rowan Tree, Bonnie Galloway, Amazing Grace, McIntyre's Farewell. I skipped Whaling Song because it gets played with the new tune, and I forgot all about Flett. I definitely need to make that list of tunes I know...

Missing you already

I'm glad that the month ended on Wednesday. Thursday was another long and stressful day in a long and stressful week and I was really glad not to have to fit in any piping, even with the fan cooking dinner. Friday evening was given over to the shopping, cleaning, tidying and arranging that is preparatory to hosting weekend house guests.

Saturday morning was more of the same, and then once everything was ready and I had only to sit and wait I picked up a book, then put it down and pulled out my pipes instead. I had a good 20 mins playing time, that ended with a round of applause from guests, who had been admitted by the fan: I hadn't heard the doorbell!

Twenty minutes of tunes old and new. I do need to have another look at the dots for Sleat as there are a couple of places where I am not confident that I have got it quite right. I had been humming Whaling Song, which has nice drops, pauses, swoops and snaps which I was convinced I wasn't playing, but when I listened to myself I was indeed playing the same nice version that I had been humming.

Troy just needs a bit more confidence, a more relaxed attitude. I've got into the habit of feeling I can't play and now that I can I reel between over-hesitancy, tense fingers, and way too much speed.

This evening is a session and I hope to try out a new tune or two.

Piecemeal

After yesterday's fiasco with The Braemar Gathering, which I can't bring myself to listen to, but post below, I felt I ought to enter into battle and get it sorted. The third part seems the worst, and as I slowed it down and worked on it a bar at a time I realised that it is somewhat lacking in gracing.

My dots have no gracings, although many are needed to split like notes, so those I've always played. I've mentioned before, I am sure, that the low A to C transition needs a simple D grace, but then the low As, I feel, should have a little drop down to a bottom G, then the D grace up to the C, and then a doubling on the E. (I refer to dots in A, as written, although clearly I am playing in D).

On the little run that trips me up in the first, but generally not the third, part (BCE FGA) I keep trying to put a D grace between the B and the C, and then I think I must have played A to C and maybe that is what throws me. I've tried a G grace, but that doesn't work, so am going for a doubling on the E.

I don't feel I am playing - 3rd part again - a clean transition between B and C. There can't possibly be crossing notes, it's only a matter of dropping a finger, so I think the problem is a sloppy B with fingers not clean on the chanter. I think, too, that the garbling I mentioned yesterday is actually a tansferring of short and long note on the penultimate triplet in tbe third part, and probably the first.

Anyway. I played it in bits and pieces: this phrase, that note transition, those bars; but also in bits around getting dinner ready. I could have played earlier but have spent the day on the sofa, in the sun, reading Trollope. I also played Magersfontein,  just for the sake of variety and rather think that the two might sound well together, although that leaves poor Flett friendless. Why is it that some tunes seems to fit into multiple partnerships and others into none?

The only other thing to note is that elbow, wrist and thumb of my right hand are sore today. The wrist I noticed when playing, elbow and thumb only since I stopped. Oh, and Andy won another match.



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Forward look

I've been thinking of new tunes. Not the new tunes I've been learning - am still learning - this month, but tunes for the future. I feel it might be best to concentrate on one at a time, so I am trying to keep the collection small so that tunes don't suffer from the same problem as knitting projects, where I have already lined up more than I could knit in a lifetime, and haven't yet stopped adding to the list...

I feel that I should move on from marches and work on some jigs and reels. I don't yet aspire to Strathspeys, but I will.

Having said that my first tune is another march. It's John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage, which I know from The Big Spree. The second tune is The College of Piping at Summerside PEI, which is on Whistlebinkies' Inner Sound. I am going to have to take the plunge and sign up to Pipetunes for these, I think (where PEI is described as a hornpipe). There are other tunes I like, but can't find dots for. I'm listening to plenty of Breabach at present, so no shortage of pipe tunes to choose from.

I'm sure there was a third, but I've forgotten it. A fourth might be Good Drying, but there I must stop because that already takes me into next year at the rate at a new tune a month....

Today's tunes were hampered by a bad bellows day. I tried with jumper on, jumper off, bellows high, bellows low, I readjusted the strap. Much had to do with cold hands. I really must knit some fingerless mitts.

John Macmillan to start again, going nowhere, because I didn't play the other pieces in the set. I have parts of the third part in my head and should go back to that as I am only playing two parts at the moment.

Struggled to find the 4th part of Sleat or the non-variant of Brandy and resorted to dots for both. Miss G  got herself into a muddle. Home fell out by accident when I was looking for Heroes. Highlanders, whihc went with Heroes today, came out at such an alarmingly rip-roaring speed that the fan asked if I was taking off...

No Dragon, and no Troy. Hopefully it will emerge from hibernation soon.

Solemnisation

I feel quite tired today, perhaps the change of the season. My bed is so snug when the alarm goes off that it's hard to drag myself out of it.

I still wanted to play. I thought of just playing through a couple of Tunes-I-Can-Play-When-I-Am-Dead-On-My-Feet, which would probably be Rowan Tree, Dargai, Magersfontein, maybe Home Town. But the tune that has been in my head all day is Troy's Wedding. I thought it was probably a tall order, but I sat down without dots and set myself to play it. My fingers were cold and stupid and simply wouldn't bend properly at times, but I knew which shapes I needed to make, which notes to play. I had to go over and over the fourth part, then the full thing again, round the fourth again, slow then faster. The faster just happened. But I played it through with no dots, at last committed to memory. So now I must play it and play it, no dots and eventually I will be able to take it out to a session. It's been a long time coming....

Skew whiff

The complete set of tunes today. I'm aware that I am missing out those without dots. Not that I am necessarily using dots, but they remind me which tunes I'm working on. I've written out the full list of tune names to work from instead.

More bellows issues. Over the years I've pushed down the outer side of the bellows as I've played, leaving them permanently skewed. This means that if I drop the bellows down to where they need to be I need longer arms to sit on the skewed side. If a longer bit of piping doesn't do the trick I may ask Mr Kinnear to straighten my bellows. I dislike the thought of being without bellows, and therefore pipes, for any length of time...

Anyway, aside from that the tunes are OK. Braemar still losing the run up in the middle of the first part. Not getting the the two first bars or the second repeat of Father John  quite right. Heroes dotless. The Dragon still all over the place. I tried Sleat  from memory but couldn't, mostly because I was starting from B instead of A, idiotically, as what sort of a tune starts on B? The third part still stuggling - those low As and Bs need to be fast and properly graced.

Preliminaries

Something of a trial run for September today. Problems feeling that the bag lacked air, and difficulty in getting my bellows elbow or wrist comfortable. My fingers were a little tense, too, perhaps because I don't feel very warm today. I notice that these days hitches like this don't put me off or spoil my enjoyment of playing at all, perhaps because I know they are only passing fads.

I looked at the handwritten dots that the fan had found in a pile and quickly discovered that it wasn't the Ocean. Had in mind a bouncing finger on F, tried that...and there it was: part A of the Ocean. The fan heard it, asked if I'd found the dots. In a way I had - albeit the tune rather than the dots, and that was in my head all along. I think I'll need the fan to walk me through the B part again, and probably write that down.

Othe tunes played were The Sound of Sleat, Atholl Highlanders, Troy's Wedding, Braemar Gathering, Horsburgh Castle, Heroes of Vittoria and Teribus.

Drops of Brandy is having problems where I keep forgetting that the final triplet in each part drops to G, and I am playing A instead. Oddly this is one where I find the B easier than the A, or at least the transition from A to B is easier than that from B to A. Then the Dragon. Still doesn't feel right, but I still can't put my finger on what exactly is wrong with it. Maybe a recording is needed so I can listen. It seems to have a good amount of gracing, the speed is good, I like it as a tune to play. Maybe it's that it doesn't feel very complete by itself.

Still, a good start, I think.