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.

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.

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.

Hello stranger

I've gone for morning playing again today. I'm slightly wary because I don't want playing to be one of the chores I have to get out of the way before I start on things I'd really like to do. The weather being a Bank Holiday special - grey, dull and cool - I've got nothing much planned other than more knitting and snuggling up with an Angela Thirkell.

I started off with a sudden urge to play in A, so dusted off the long neglected chanter. From the very first note I loved it: it's such a rich sound. The chanter felt huge, and it took an amount of adjusting hand position and stretching to achieve a half decent low G. I played through Perth, Women and Sleat. The wobbly G meant that the third part of Sleat was a mess, but otherwise it went surprisingly well. It did feel as though I needed a lot more effort on the bellows, and as if the whole instrument had doubled in size, so I gave up after those three but must go back to it again, maybe returning to my old plan of starting with A then switching after a couple of tunes.

After that I dug out music books and discovered that tunes I thought I had forgotten (Battle of the Somme, Green Hills of Tyrol, Over the Cabot, Trail Captn Angus L MacDonald, Compliments to Roy A Chisholm, Donald Dhu) are all actually still in the back of my mind somewhere.

I discovered Jacky Latin in one of the Willie Ross books. I also found that I do actually know several tunes that I had abandoned, feeling I'd never learn them. I found different versions of them (Return to India in Barry Shear's book and The Rejected Suitor in the Ross) and struggled to play them because the versions I already know kept trying to push their way in. Right at the end I played Dargai and Bee suddenly appeared, minus its new grace notes...

I gave up after over an hour, feeling like my arms might fall off. For my playing next month I might try to resurrect some of the pile of tunes that fell by the way (Farewell to the Creeks, Blue Bonnets I also played today). I'm half inclined to buy one of the music books on my list. The one thing that is still certainly a stranger to my play list is the strathspey: not a single one can I play. I feel that's a serious omission.

Adjustments

I had the zero sum game sussed this evening, I thought. I made a positive decision not to do more weeding at the allotment, conveniently forgot about various household chores that need to be done, and decided I'd cook and pipe. It looked as though cooking would win out at one stage as I cheerfully threw in artichokes and peas and ginger and rhubarb crumble alongside asparagus and ricotta tart, but in the end I found some piping time.

I thought I'd play Magersfontein as I've been humming it all day, but it didn't come to my fingers so I let it be. I adjusted my Dargai set by playing that first with Bee following and Flett to close. I've made a minor adjustment to Bee, adding a doubling to the second or third note in. I've heard others play it, fiddled around to find the sound I wanted, and threw it in. Every time I play this doubling appears. I think this is the first time I've voluntarily added a grace without having to first beat it into my brain (I say "voluntarily" because sometimes they appear of their own accord.)

The other adjustment was to do with my belief in piping as a cure for headaches. For stress headaches, certainly, but the kind of headache you get with bad light and a PC screen pipes don't help.

My dog could do better than that

It’s the standard complaint about “modern” art: to the uninitiated it doesn’t look very competent. It looks like the work of someone who has no clue what they are doing. Generally, however, everyone from Picasso to Pollock has a training in art that would have covered life drawing, perspective, and so on. They know the rules, they know the accepted methods, and they have chosen to bend, subvert, reinterpret or break them. That is what makes them great artists.

But what of artists who weren’t “trained”, who didn’t know the rules but broke them anyway, and who have still been accepted by the art world? Grandma Moses, perhaps, or Alfred Wallis. Do we “allow” rules to be bent in some places and not others? Are there, I wonder, any self-taught concert pianists? Did Andrea Bocelli study music? 

I started off using online video lessons from a pipe major, and later had real life chanter lessons from Lt Col Willie Allen.  Thereafter I was on my own. In terms of GHB I am sure I break many rules, not because I choose to so much as because I don’t know them. I can’t flout a law that I am in ignorance of. Does that make me a creative smallpiper or a failed GHB piper? I think I am aware, when it comes to the rules I do know, when I am breaking them accidentally and when I am subverting them. I know the difference between unintended crossing noises (currently getting these in The Hills of Perth and trying to eliminate them) and gracing that isn’t quite within the rules but which sounds good and so I am going with it.

Bridget Mackenzie, in Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles describes how one set of rules, one way of doing things, grew and spread, through one or two people teaching a lot of pupils, through the conformism of military pipe bands, or through competitions, so that what was once *a* way became *the* way, with all other ways now considered to be the *wrong* way and so falling out of use and becoming lost. Pipe music must surely be the poorer for that. Bridget doesn’t really talk about the impact of written notation, but that which is written can have a wider audience than that which is transmitted orally/aurally and somehow holds greater weight.

And it’s not just the gracing or the timings, or the arrangements or the names given to tunes that have become homogenised.  Something that is a matter of individual choice becomes set about with rules, to the extent that Lewisach pipers felt obliged to shift their pipes from the right shoulder to the left.

I think this is one of the messages of Reclaimed. Cauld wind piping isn’t a poor substitute for GHB, pipes played by failed pipers or also rans (although many/most smallpipers are fine GHB players) it’s a thing in itself, with new ways of doing things, new rules to be made, and broken.

One more time

Or 27 more times. I've been quite single-minded this challenge in sticking to the tunes I particularly want to learn or improve. Once or twice I've thrown in Flett, King or Home Town but mostly my playlist looks like this:

Arthur Bignold
Troy's Wedding
Miss Girdle
Shores of Loch Bee
Women of the Glen
Sound of Sleat
The Braemar Gathering

Recently I've been throwing in Farewell to the Creeks and Kilbowie Cottage, which seems to have drifted into my head again. I'm wondering whether the Cottage and Arthur might suit each other.

I like all of these tunes, I enjoy playing them, and there is enough of them to give variety over half an hour or so of playing, so it's been no hardship just playing these.

Despite ongoing problems with holding the pipes I feel I am making decent progress. Arthur, as with all 4 parters, is taking while to commit to memory. I think Creeks might get there first. I'm shaking off the tenseness in my fingers that was throwing the run up in the third part of Troy, random bars in Braemar and the not-quite-repeats in the third and fourth of Women. Bee is becoming more reliable, and everything is getting faster and I'm managing to improve the balance between increasing speed and lack of accuracy, although some thumb graces in Troy just vanish when I hit a certain speed.

It's been a long month and I am looking forward to having a break at the end, but, as ever, it has been worth the effort.

Shall we dance?

I've been dancing around this evening with bellows, bag, chanter, drones. Yes, drones! They have taken to slumping across my chest and resting on the bellows. The more I fiddle with strap up, strap down, bellows forward, bellows back, bag up, down, left, right, the worse everything gets. Maybe I'm just expecting too much. At sessions I play a bit, stop a bit, go to the bar, come back again. In the past I'd play and stop and play and stop during practice sessions. Now I expect to play and play, back to back sets, tunes, bits of tunes, with no break. I might sit down or stand up and take a turn or two about the room, but I'm still playing. I suppose even with a good driving positon in a comfortable car you're going to end a long distance journey with joints that need easing, muscles that need stretching.

I've also been dancing with Skippinish, having out it in the car. It's definitely an album of music for dancing to, and I imagine a Shetland tea (and yes, I do know that Shetland isn't known for piping) situation, with old and young gathered together, a dram and a wee cup of tea, something to eat, some tunes and lots of dancing.

What I can't work out is why it's dance music. In general it's the same pipe tunes I come across elsewhere, so it's not a matter of repertoire. The tunes aren't even played that fast, although the have a good, solid rhythm behind them. Perhaps it's the box. It sounds rather bouncy, somehow, with little chirps and coughs, which I assume are grace notes of some kind, and bring to mind someone calling out "woo!", "yay!", or "whup!" during some dancing. Anyway, it's good stuff, and I am enjoying it.

Whether anyone would want to dance to this recording I don't know. Recorded on the same day as the last one, and as with the last I haven't actually listened to it. As I play I feel that I need to steady the tempo of Women: it's uneven, with bits I gabble because I am unsure of them. That's the start of the B part, both sections, and the two bars in each that are variations because I'm a bit tense about getting the "wrong" variation in. The grip is...messy. The tune is missing the lilt, the smoothness, that Kevin Macleod gives it. I like it with Sleat, and the main problems with Sleat are a general tendency to be unreliable, I think I speed up through the tune as I get into my stride, and I am still not sure if I'm playing the closing bars to the B and D parts properly. I may just be repeating one (they are subtly different), or I may have then the wrong way round. I suppose if I could bear to listen to the recording I might find out.



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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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Take your partners

I've been enjoying more of Santa's bounty today, in the shape of Gary West's The Islay Ball. I can't remember now how I came across Gary and became aware that he is a smallpiper. He doesn't seem to have released many albums; this one is from 2001.
On one listening I'd say its's a mixed bag. There are SSP and GHB, which is good, plus a few whistles, which I don't mind. There are some cracking trad sets, including a pair of elegant border jigs, a stonking set of Irish tunes and old favourites The Mason's Apron and the Caber Feidh.  There is some nice cello, which isn't what you might expect with pipes, but works well.  On many tracks the guitars and bouzoukis are subtle.

I'm not sure of the point of the one song, which is not in a Scots style. I did listen all the way through and in future it will be my cue to hit the skip button. I'm sure it's good, but it really doesn't belong on a CD of pipe tunes. Many of the tunes are Gary's own compositions and none of them stood out on first listening... Hopefully they will grow on me. Having mentioned subtle the strings the Irish set (with the fabulously-named Hugh MacDiarmid's Haircut) has a load of strings and percussion, which adds to the fun, except the sound mix makes it sound as though they asked Gary to stand at the back and play, which doesn't seem right.

I'm working on the new tunes, adding graces. Some have appeared of their own accord, some slip in nicely, some I play over and over then when I slot the phrase back into the tune the graces vanish on the way. They may come back. I'm also still fine-tuning Women and Sleat. It's going to be a good set, when its ready. I've no idea what set pairings will come out of the new tunes as yet.

Mistaken identity

I started off with Arthur this evening, and got very confused, because the notes were what I was expecting, and yet the tune wouldn't come and kept grinding to a halt after the first four or five notes. Eventually I realised I was trying to play Hills of Perth using the dots for Arthur, and failing to notice my mistake because the first couple of bars of Perth are already in my head and because the first four or five notes of the two tunes are identical.

I need to do some careful listening to get the fourth part of Perth and the third and fourth of Arthur. I am also finding that Arthur's timings are much easier to get when I sling in more gracing. Perth, on the other hand, seems to want only the barest minimum of necessary graces.

Still struggling finding a comfortable way of doing things. Either bag or bellows can be OK, but not both at once, and the nearer I get the more the tube kinks, so I suspect that more needs to come off.

It also occurs to me that Mr Kinnear set the pipes up for me, including cutting straps, and possibly tubing, when I first collected them, so at one stage they must have looked right to his practised eye. When I saw him recently and mentioned the mangled bellows he didn't say that it was a major problem or that I must  change anything - he said I could try wearing the bellows a little lower. Maybe I'm over-reacting to a minor problem. Maybe I only need an extra half inch or so...

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.

Gimme five

I wasn't really intending to play, but got hit by the urge as I slid dinner into the oven. Women, Sleat, Heroes, Braemar and Troy. Heroes and Braemar I hoped would make a pairing, but they won't. Did a little work on that A, D grace, C movement in Braemar that I had and have since lost, but otherwise just straight play throughs. I need to keep up with Troy: it has a terrible tendency to fall apart very quickly. Today I couldn't get the third part to behave.

I really should pick another new tune, although I am also attempted to go back over one of the (very many) previously tried and abandoned tunes, in the hope that for some of them their time has come. Some I didn't like as much in the playing as in the hearing, but some fell by the wayside due to my lack of competence, especially when it came to speed, and it's those that I can perhaps resurrect.

Lost and found

Back from a few days away, discovering that UK train travel can be reasonably comfortable and convenient, albeit expensive especially if you make the mistake of waiting to get on the train before you grab sandwiches, hot drinks and muffins for two (just over £18!)

Unfortunately somewhere between the train and the waiting car I mislaid a handbag with purse, house keys, library book, my knitting pattern and various knitting bits and bobs. My wonderful graphic memory let me down as although I can picture the bag and contents, including texture, smell, colour and weight in minute detail I cannot for the life of me recall at what point I parted company with it all...

Trying not to think it over and over I eventually managed to get rid of the tormenting pictures by pulling in some tunes instead, and wished I had had my pipes with me.

Pipes and I were back together this evening having found an unexpected half hour. Mostly working on gracing, and really I am ashamed to say that those most often missing from my playing are two of the simplest, so there is no excuse for forgetting them: D and E.

The Women were here, and this time I think they are ready to stay. I do also think that they will pair with Sleat, which will give me a second set with a missing strathspey. At least, I think it's a second set: I was pretty sure that Father John's Boat Trip was also a march and reel and that I had addressed that in a post which I thought I had called "The case of the missing Strathspey", but now can't find. (Found it.)

Women on my mind

Well, it's no longer summertime (despite the blue skies it has been serious knitwear weather today) but I've still got women on my mind. They wandered back mid-morning and stayed all day.

I did wonder if they looked a little plain so I have been working on some gracing, a doubling on B before a strike on B, a grip in the first gap between two high As in the second B part. I thought that might be tricky. It's the kind of serious grace I haven't used in a while, but I like the effect and actually it's easy enough and the speed came very quickly. I say it's easy but I think I am dropping down only to low A instead of low G, and I blame cold fingers, meaning not very flexible fingers, and not very good placement of fingers over holes.

I tried again to introduce the women to Flett and the Heroes, but that induced such a fit of the sulks that I had to go on to Braemar and Troy.

I stopped there: cold hands, the bellows feeling airless, no buzz at all in the chanter.  I should get Women sorted soon: just as long as they don't vanish again.

Speak severely

Apparently having a metaphorical dressing-down of Braemar yesterday worked. I don't thing I've got all the necessary gracing in, but I seem to have got rid of the tension in places where I am anticipating gracing.

Better than that, I had a day where nothing hurt, my fingers felt supple and the chanter really buzzed and sang. I played everything except Troy, which has gone into a state of deep hibernation, it seems, and the Dragon, which, frankly, I believe has probably died.

Fourth part of Sleat  continues to elude me, the repeat of the second part of John Macmillan needs work, as does the non-variant form of Brandy. But I really enjoyed playing today. It was good.

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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It was all going so well

I've been having a good day. It's not a working day, which is always a bonus. The weather has been much better than was being forecast earlier in the week. I went shopping for a pair of wool trousers for work and actually managed to find some I liked. I did some tidying at the allotment and managed to rig up some proper protection for my cavolo nero plants.

Then I decided to play and record... The lead for the recorder was tied into electrical spaghetti. I'd forgotten the faff of having to "create a song" before you even start. The first three-tune set I recorded and then wasted 6 minutes mastering it only to find when I tried to export it that there was allegedly no track to export... The fan salvaged the situation, and the recording, but only after I'd got cross. Add to that the collapsing bellows, a sore elbow, and a general inability to play and the whole thing is a mess.

Recording here is Father John's Boat Trip. The repeat of the 2nd part still isn't quite right. Gracing not very clean, fingers not cleanly enough down on the  chanter. I mised various repeats, which I put down to red-button-itis. Various times I found myself thinking that *this* would be the place where I'd be likely to fluff it...and duly fluffed.

No drones. I recorded a rather poor version of Braemar in which I garbled notes, merged notes, went too slow and then too fast. I will post tomorrow. I couldn't face recording it again and I am not sure how soon I'll be able to bring myself to record again. Is it any wonder that it's over 7 months since I recorded last? There has to be an easier way.

(On the positive side, Andy won a match.)
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Counting chickens

The more I thought of the fan's plans for three of us to play together regularly the more I liked it. I began to think of sets and arrangements...and then our putative third replied to say he had plenty on his musical plate at present, and declined our offer...

Almost everything on the list played today, except Troy (which seems to have vanished entirely from my head), and Braemar, which probably won't suffer for another day of hibernation. I've got Even in the Rain on the stereo right now in the hope of encouraging it along.

Brandy has got a bit confused between where I do and don't insert variations, and I confused the issue further by realising that I've got some ungraced low A to C changes... The  variation still quite clear, but the original of the varied bar quite lost, and even with dots I was needing to think hard to get it right.

I tried pairing Ocean with Sleat. Could work, I think. I need to do more thinking about sets.

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.