Five things that go well with pipes

I've mentioned those things I feel add nothing to pipes, so it seems right to mention those things that do actually add something to pipes. I've used "five things" rather loosely here...to be perfectly honestly this is more of a list of four and one of those isn't really an item...

More pipes. No better than example than Ross and Jarlath, but I always love it at our sessions when the (Irish) piper plays along with me, mainly on My Home Town.

Fiddles. See, for example, The Waterhorse's Lament on The Desperate Battle of the Birds, but anything by Braebach, or the Mackenzie brothers, will illustrate my point.

Harpsichord. Not the obvious choice, perhaps, but it works astonishingly well. Hats off to Mr MacInnes for dreaming this one up.

Nothing. Much as I like these pairings there is really nothing to beat solo pipes, be that smallpipes or GHB. Many of Mr MacInnes's tracks on both his solo albums give you lone pipes, but for a full CD of unadulterated piping pleasure you need the Grand Concert of Scottish Piping or Alasdair Gillies' Lochbroom. Mr Gillies plays in a very measured style that brings out the forms of the tunes, so you can somehow hear the patterns very clearly. There is something rather zen, I find, listening to it. like Bach cello suites, they are, all different and yet somehow all the same, so that you can listen intently and nothing in the music or the playing of it distracts (except that Mr G is one of the perpetrators of the pointless twiddling at the end of tune....)

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.

Compliments to Duncan Chisholm

Yesterday the fan and I went to see Duncan Chisholm. Duncan brought a couple of his pals along. One was Jarlath Henderson (although the person behind me confidently told *his* pals that it was Ross Henderson...) The other was Matheu Watson. I'm not one to get excited about guitarists, but Matheu is a thoughtful accompanist. I know his work from James Duncan Mackenzie's CD. I nearly saw him once before as he was due to be at our local folk club with Emma Sweeney  but he'd gone down with a bug and wasn't able to be there.

It was good to have another chance to see Jarlath in acton. He's a lovely piper. Sadly we heard less from him than the others. Some sets he sat out, some he only had a bar or two on whistle. It can't be easy sitting still under hot stage lights, listening for your cue for two bars, and it wasn't surprising when he started to yawn. Still, I think the evening would have been the less without his presence.

The Strathglass trilogy - and I think all of the music came from that - isn't really live gig, foot-tapping stuff (many of the rhythms are so complex that it feels next to impossible to tap along). It's thoughtful, quiet and dreamy music. Still, it was good to be able to see Duncan play. I think you understand someone's music differently when you've not just heard them but seen them too. Hearing tunes from all three albums in a different order from  usual made me hear some of them afresh. Duncan also told some of the stories behind the tunes, and it was good to hear those as the sleeve notes on the albums are skimpy.

At the interval I screwed up my courage and went to speak to Duncan, who was, as is the way in our folk club, selling his CDs at a small table. I explained that I wasn't buying as I already own the set...but could I ask a question? He had talked about his sense of belonging to a place where his ancestors had lived for 800 years, about tbe trilogy expresing that place, about the Scottishness of it...and yet he had Irish pipes. Why? He said that it is very much because he loves the sound of Irish pipes, and also in part to do with the greater range of the instrument. I did suggest that Allan MacDonald, a set of small pipes and a wee smidgen of pibroch might have been a not unattractive addition to the trilogy...and he said yes, but he really did like Irish pipes. We shook hands and I left him selling CDs.

So now I know. In some ways I can't blame him. Irish pipes are lovely, and who wouldn't want an excuse to play music with Jarlath? But it seems very strange to me to use an instrument from another country to evoke your own  country. I enjoyed the evening out, hearing the music, and speaking to Duncan, who did seem to be a really nice chap. I will be listening to the triology again soon. But as I listen and dream of Scotland I will cherish that vision of Duncan's fiddle lifting up its voice with Allan MacDonald's smallpipes in a reimagining of pibroch to recreate the heart and soul of the Scottish landscape.

Five things - fiddle CDs

The violin was one of the first instruments I came across in life. My father had one handed down from a family member, although I've no idea who, or what they played on it, nor why my father never learned himself. I always knew I would learn, and eventually I did for a few years, but never really got on with it. I didn't hear any fiddle playing: Dad's taste ran to Yehudi Menuhin, Aaron Rosand and the Mendelssohn  violin concerto. 

These days the fan is the one playing the fiddle and my preference is for Scottish, of course, although both Irish and Scandi figure in  my CD collection. Here are five of my favourites.

Eclection. Gabe McVarish. Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton...a truly eclectic mix, with the added bonus of Jarlath Henderson on pipes.

Welcome here again. Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill. One of my favourite duos. Not your usual Irish fiddle, this album is measured, slow and contemplative. Hearing tunes played this slowly, and so plainly  - just fiddle and very discrete guitar - makes you really listen and rethink Irish music.

All dressed in yellow. Fiddler’s Bid. Mostly Scottish, Shetland at that,  with the odd foray into Scandinavia, and one of the liveliest and most uplifting albums I have.  I make no apology for giving it its second five things mention.

Vamm. The album is eponymous. More Scots and Scandi stuff.  

Canaich. I've mentioned this - the first in a trilogy - in my five things on Scottish CDs. It's incredibly evocative of Scottish landscape, I love the use of the spoken word in it, shame about the wrong sort of pipes...

Just squeezing in Salmander by Bellevue Rendevous. Gavin Marwick composed some of the tunes and there are Brittany tunes  and some Klezmer among the Scandi stuff. 

Five things

Everyone loves a list, it seems. A while ago I started on creating a list of CDs I love to guide those who are interested in hearing more smallpipes, more pipes or more Scottish music.  My main problem was that many of my CDs would overlap the categories I had in mind: CDs that have some Scottish tunes, or some smallpipes but aren’t normally exclusively pipes or Scottish.  I could have had items appearing under more than one category, which isn’t difficult, but I couldn’t find an elegant way of creating and presenting that variety of categorisation on one blog page. I could, yes I know I could, just have done an alphabetical list, but I'm a librarian, dammit - my professional pride is a stake.

So “Five things” will be a series of snippets, short lists, not exclusively CDs. I may also use it to talk about Scottish music, folk music or Scotland more generally.  It also lets me satisfy my blogging urge when I have nothing much to say in terms of piping. Five is flexible - the list will always be called five things, but sometimes there will be more than five, sometime less.

I'll kick off with five CDs of (mostly) Scottish music, No Ossian, because their CDs will turn up on other lists, and not A Jock Tanson's Bairns (which I am listening to as I type) since I've I've only just discovered them. 

1. Canaich. Counting all three CDs as a single item here. It took me a while to like it - I initially felt it had moments of You and The Night and The Music (in a radio 2 sort of a way) - but now I love it. It really evokes the spirit of the Scottish landscape for me. Mainly fiddle, in contemplative mood, there are also pipes, but sadly they are Irish pipes. It’s a failing, to my mind.

2. Fiddler’s Bid. This opens with the FB Ode to Joy and frankly the entire CD makes me feel that it’s good to be alive. They sound like they are having such fun. Great tunes, not all Scottish.

3. Springwell. For some reason I do very much enjoy pipe tunes played on strings, even banjos (although I profess to dislike banjos) and these are such good tunes. It's great to listen to pipe tunes on other instruments as I get to concentrate on the tune without being distracted by the piping. Mostly Scottish tunes, many pipe tunes.

4. Single Track Road Trip I love Scottish fiddle. I have some difficulty understanding why a man who can play pipes would waste his time on stringed things, but I do love his banjo interpretation of pipe tunes, complete with all the grace notes. All Scottish tunes.

5. Doubling. Despite not being mad about boxes, and despite the paucity of pipes I like this album: lots of Scottish tunes, old and new. 

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

Language barriers

Although I read rather a lot I rarely read much that is translated: most of my reading is books written by English speaking authors. The point of translation is to remove a barrier, to allow the speaker of one language to access the literature of another. Certainly without translators I would never have enjoyed the fun, literary mysterys of Artuo Perez-Reverte.

On the other hand, translation can be a barrier, as some of the clunkier attempts of online services for automatically translating websites so neatly demonstrate, or those marvellous handbooks that some with electrical gadgets and are apparently translated into English from Serbian via Chinese by Greek and Dutch working in lose collaboration.

A translator has to strike a balance between being true to the original and producing something that is readable in the new language. Sometimes they take it beyond readable and produce something that reads well in the new language, but perhaps loses some of the subtleties of the original, incorporates its own meanings that weren't really in the original, or overlays the voice of the translator over that of the author. Especially where poetry is concerned such a translator can almost create a new poem that stands alongside the original but is a new and beautiful thing in itself, recreating the spirit rather than the letter of the original.

I once picked up someone else's copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. I was so struck by the beauty of the language that I rushed to get a copy of my own. Alas, I had not stopped to note the name of the translator, and the version I had lacked the poeticism of that borrowed copy, so I didn't enjoy it at all. A new translator can produce a different book, otherwise why ask people to translate Proust when Scott Moncrieff has already done the job? And why does my modern edition of Heidi leave me longing for the Charles Tritten edition I had as a child? (OK, I admit I miss the pictures.)

Music can be translated, too. Of course there is a matter of interpretation by different players, but in a way that's more akin to different people reading a book. The real translation comes when a tune intended for one instrument is played on another. I'm partly thinking about that because I'm listening to Springwell (again!). I listen because I love the tunes - many are pipe tunes, yet there isn't a single note played by pipes on the CD. The tunes are played mainly on stringed instruments and cleverly incorporate notes played as pipe grace notes: I can hear the birls and strikes, reproduced on the mandolin. They are clever imitations of the pipe sound, but they are also good sounds in themselves on the mandolin.

I am still working on the Braes of Castle Grant. As I think I've mentioned before I've heard this on Eclection. It's a pipe tune played on a fiddle. I don't think that Mr McVarish makes an attempt to play in the style of pipes: he translates the pipe tune into a fiddle tune. And very lovely it is to. But now I come along, not having ever knowingly heard the tune played on pipes, so I am trying to play on pipes something that I know as a fiddle tune. Certainly the notes are there for me to play, they are all in my range, I can see where gracing might sit nicely, but in my head all the time I have a lilting, smooth sound as the fiddle slides and glides from note to note. Pipes do not glide; they stomp, they step, they march, they trip; they move move between notes in a manner that is pipish.

I'm therefore translating a pipe tune that has been translated into a fiddle tune back into a pipe tune. Maybe like exchanging currency enough times at enough borders the commission and exchange rates will leave me with nothing of value. I may make a hideous mess of it, or perhaps I will create something new and beautiful, which is neither the original nor Gabe's translation, but something new.