I can hear clearly now

One of the things I am definitely learning  to do on my piping journey is to listen better and to understand more what it is I am hearing. I notice this when I go back to CDs I’ve not heard in a while.

Listening to Seudan I think in the beginning the 4th track, which is a long and fast set of 6 tunes, sounded like one enormous splurge of noise. After a while it resolved into some music with a few familiar repeating phrases in it. It also sounded too fast to play. 

Listening now, and bearing in mind I am only doing the distracted listening in the car, I can easily identify 6 different tracks, many of which sound playable. 

This morning I switched to The Royal Scottish Piper's Recital. On this I can hear tunes that sound rather complex, but I can also hear that the complexity comes from the complex grace notes, so I know the basic tune might well be playable. 

I can hear tunes which (and this was car listening so I need to check it out) I think are four parters, and I think that the fourth and maybe the third, parts might be beyond me, but the first two should be doable and should stand as an item on their own.

Also on the CD I can hear tunes I play  - Flett and Loch Bee.  It feels rather odd, and somehow rather exciting, to hear my tunes being played. It makes me feel like a proper piper!

(Bringing the CD box in from the car to get the title I also realise that one of the pipers is Gary West, whose book Voicing Scotland, I've recently read and may review here. All part of my knowledge of the genre that I am slowly building up, things I am discovering, links I am making.)

The corner of my ear

I'm a radio fan. More specifically, I am a BBC Radio 4 fan. I've been listening to it certainly since I was a student, and before that I used to listen along with my grandfather when I was small and we were both early risers.

In recent years I've fallen out of love with it somewhat.   I flirted with digital radio, but apart from some extra Archers it mostly seemed to be "comedy" or sci-fi. I enjoyed the reading of Lady In To Fox and I enjoyed The Day of the Triffids. The first time round. 4 Extra seems to be on a permanent short loop of repeats.

My radio salvation was the podcast, so now I only listen to the programmes I want and GQT is always on when I do the ironing, whenever I do the ironing.

I still listen to live radio in the mornings. It's force of habit and a gentle and constant reminder of timing. Weather forecast indicates breakfast time, when the news bulletin ends I need to be in the bathroom, by the time the business news is done I should be grabbing my bag, when I turn the car ignition I should be into the sports news, the review of the papers means turning off the main road, the repeat of the weather forecast as I park means I am running late. On the way home it's either one of the better afternoon programmes, or PM, which I loathe. But it's there as background, and I only catch it out of the corner of my ear, as it were, as the levels of concentration I need for driving ebb and flow through my journey.

It occurs to me that I really wouldn't miss the radio if I just listened to CDs as I drive. I sometimes listen on the way home, when Eddie Mair is particularly trite, sensationalist or intrusive, but I will grit my teeth all the way through John Humphrys being patronising, dismissive and self-important in the morning and never switch off.

I do want to learn more tunes, and in lieu of hearing Scottish tunes at sessions I need to listen to CDs. I'm in search of new ones - but that's probably for another blog post. The problem with CDs in the car is whether I listen closely enough. The road takes my attention, and the drive is that liminal space between the worlds of work and home, a sort of decompression chamber where I think ahead to the world I am about to enter in order to shrug off the world I have just left. When I am not concentrating 100% on driving other things occupy my mind. Music becomes background that I sometimes catch out of the corner of my ear...

I'm hoping that tunes will filter through even though I am not actively listening. I've been replaying tracks 4 and 5 on the Seudan CD. I replay mostly because I keep getting distracted and realising I've not heard half the track, but also because I like the tunes and hope to get them into my brain. This evening have one of the tunes in my head. No idea which tune, or which of those tracks. Nor can I hum it. It's at that delicate stage when it's in my mind's ear, but whenever I try to look (as it were) directly at it, to really hear it, or to vocalise it, it melts into thin air. Still, hopefully it means that background listening will settle some deposits in my brain, and at east help me identify tunes that are resonating with me, so I can bring the CD in from the car and really listen with all my ears.