PHOP

Knitters have a concept called PHOP, or pennies per hours of pleasure. The idea is that you take a pattern from a charity website and the amount you give reflects the hours of pleasure you anticipate getting from that pattern. Patterns give pleasure in various layers. First there is the pleasure of imagining the lovely finished article in various different yarns, browsing yarn stores and eventually buying the yarn, then there are the various hours spent knitting your item, and finally the pleasure of wearing it, or giving it away. Patterns are always money well spent.

It's not unlike the concept of cost per wear for clothes, where you divide the cost of an article of clothing by the number of times you wear it to get the actual cost. So £250 pounds worth of lovely linen jacket that you wear all summer long for five years in a row (yes, writing from experience here) is actually better value than £80 of jacket that you wear twice and then leave to gather dust in the wardrobe.

Why am I talking about clothes and knitting? I was thinking about the large amounts of money I spent on my Monkey. I already had a set of pipes, so I didn't exactly need another. I also paid for extra keys, which I haven't yet used, and silver engraved mounts, which make precisely no difference at all to the way it plays or sounds. It was a large outlay. But when you think how often I've played those pipes since May, of the absolute pleasure I've had from playing those pipes, well they start to look like a real bargain.

The pipes had this usual uplifting effect this evening. Picking out a bit of a tune and wondering what it was I discovered it was part of the Shetland Fiddler, which I've abandoned of late, Clearly it would like to come back.

I was going to add to the hours of pleasure for this blog post by attaching a recording. I recorded McIntyre's Farewell. It's lovely and I'm so pleased with how it's going. I playing it smoothly and fluently, glossing over the minor errors, not pausing between repeats or sections. I'm already humming it, already picking out bars, and I only first played it through a week ago. It went so well I thought I'd do Castle Grant while I was at it, as that's also just early read through stage, but sounding good.

Then as I went to master the first tune I got a "card full" message. Duly deleted two tunes I'd left on, tried again, same problem. Now I know why the fan was keen for me to get a second sound card. He didn't mean that I was filling it up - he meant that he had.

New shoes

New pipes are like new shoes. You wear your comfortable old shoes to the shoe shop. You try on tightly snug new shoes. They feel very odd indeed, but you know eventually they will be comfortable. You buy your new shoes, and slip your old dependables back on, but they suddenly feel odd, too: loose and sloppy and not at all right.

I tried the Monkey yesterday, without drones and doing lots of practice at keeping the bag going and not touching the bellows. I can get the whole of the A part of the Rocks out in this way. Then it all felt too much so I swapped to Morag, hoping to feel that old comfort that comes from familiarity, and she felt very strange indeed. The oddest thing is that the Monkey, other than his slim and elegant drones, actually feels bigger and heavier than Morag. Bellows felt loose, straps felt loose, and there's no way I could get the Rocks played without more air from the bellows. I quickly gave up. I feel as though I now have two sets of pipes to get to know, and today I've decided to stick to household chores and knitting instead.

Monkey

I've often thought about this blog post, and what I might say here, but in the end I've decided to leave it to the Monkey to speak.

The tune is My Home Town. I'm adjusting to to the new pipes, I'm very tired, but I'm happy: very happy.

 
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Bukra wba'do

Tomorrow I go to fetch the monkey - my Monkey -  and the blog title that I picked when I moved my blog back in November will finally reflect the reality. The next time I post here there will be three of us: Morag, the Monkey and me. It is only tomorrow only, and the day after.

Throwing down the gauntlet

Yesterday the fan and the fiddle player spent some time talking and drinking red wine, while I sat with my knitting, and after a while we decided to play a few tunes. I played the Tree - somewhat faster than my recent effort, which is really too slow, and the King. I got the King wrong pretty much every time (I blame the wine) but each time I quickly worked out where the fiddle player was and picked up the tune accordingly, which I was very pleased about. The fan says my timing was still not quite right. "But I was waiting for you", I said, so he pointed out that as my accompanist he was waiting for me...

I've been thinking of setting myself another challenge and playing every day for a month again. When I have the Monkey it will surely be no hardship to play every day, and the knitting season is all but done (bar a pair of Christmas mittens - for Christmas gone - that I've only just got hold of the yarn for), and the allotment is so far behind it will be weeks, it feels, before there is anything serious to be done there. If I choose May, and wait until I have the Monkey that will already be a week gone, and then we're away for a week, too. So perhaps I should leave it until June.

If I do challenge myself to another month of playing every day (and I do think February helped) then I need to decide whether to stick to my play list and try to get everything note perfect every time, or whether I should pick say three or four new tunes and set myself to get each one roughly dotless by the end of the month.

Not playing

I feel I ought to be playing lots this week: making the most of Morag. But then, it's not as if Morag is going anywhere, unless I take her back to her maker to check for leaks and get the wavery drone looked at. I also feel I should be playing lots to improve my playing, to get it up to the required level to suit such a set of pipes as the Monkey. But then, that would mean asking Mr Kinnear to hang on to the Monkey for years until I'm good and ready.

I should be playing, but there were seedlings to pot up and seeds and sow this evening, now there is knitting to be done and perhaps some letters to write. I should be playing, but I'm not.

Guilt trip

A week today I''ll be on the final leg of a journey that began last spring, driving from Perth to Edzell to collect the Monkey. Part of me is very excited about this, although the excitement is, as so often when you've waited for so long for something, tempered by doubt. Suppose the Monkey is no easier to play, sounds no better than Morag? Suppose at a session someone says to me "where are your other pipes? I really like them"? It'll be fine, it'll be fine.

Then there's the guilt. Poor Morag. After all she's done for me over the last 18 months and all I've done is whinge and moan and blame her for my shortcomings, and now I feel I am going to abandon her. When I got my previous car I had already cried for weeks about losing the old one; picking up my most recent car I was so excited when I saw her parked outside the showroom that I didn't give the old one a second glance. It feels as though it would be cruel to abandon Morag, and yet, I'm not abandoning her. It's less (I try to tell myself) like buying cars and more like buying boots. It's always exciting to fall in love with a brand new pair of boots, and to be able to wear them out and about and have people admire them - lovely new boots! - but the old favourites are always there in the wardrobe, boots that have been worn, cherished and loved for five, seven or more years (one elderly and decrepit pair I've had for 16 years, and shabby as they are I still wear them from time to time, and love them dearly).

So I must try to stop feeling guilty about Morag and concentrate on looking forward to the Monkey and the next era of my piping life.

The toad work

The brain is a wonderful thing. Having wasted 10 hours of my life today working and getting to and from work, I then proceded to think about work, which made me grouchy and disinclined to do anything else. After a cup of tea and a chocolate brownie I decided to fight back, refuse to let work take over my entire life, and got Morag out. The grouchiness slipped over into my piping: too much pressure on my right thumb (ouch), too much air going through (too much bellows-action needed), drones too loud...

As so often happens as I played on things got better, work was driven out of my mind, I concentrated on playing. I notice that the the tunes I can play well are the tunes I have played lot recently. The problem is that the tunes I played a lot a little while ago and haven't played so much of late quickly become tunes I struggle to get right, so the Rocks are doing quite nicely now, but the King is rather shambolic. I can't play everything often all the time: apart from anything else, as my repertoire increases there simply won't be enough hours in the day (see above re time wasting).

I had to think hard just to recall which tunes I know: played pretty much everything, I think, except the much-neglected Highlanders. I also forget the coaching that the fan did with me recently on timing on the Rowan Tree. It's one-two-three-PLAY, not one-two-three-and-try-to-remember-if-you're-on-the-A-or-B-part-and-how-does-that-start-breathe-and-PLAY. Also persistently playing a run in note against the As in Teribus in the B part, and it's just because I've got into the habit and because the G makes the chanter easier to hold than flipping straight into A.

Did I mention...two weeks today I'll have my Monkey. Musical excitement all round as the fan is expecting his new mandolin to arrive from Somerset on Wednesday.

Counting down

I've not played since Tuesday, and I ought to be practising, getting myself ready for the Monkey. Two weeks today I'll be collecting him. In fact, by this time I will have the Monkey and will be sat in a hotel room with nowhere to play him, and will be longing for Monday so I can bring him home.

Sort of bagpipes

We arrived early at the session, which was fun. I played Rowan Tree as a warm up, just to test the drones were in tune. The fan and the fiddler from the band played around a bit, then I tried Teribus. People started to arrive - although not too many - and I played a few more tunes as the evening wore on: My Home Town, The Rowan Tree (again), Flett from Flotta, The March of the King of Laoise. Not too bad: no tune abandoned, but none note perfect. I lost my place during Home, managed to come in again, but then missed out an A part. The King was a little wobbly, but I was sat next to a man who plays at a Scottish session so was worried he'd actually know my tunes and therefore spot all my mistakes. He didn't join in with the King so either didn't know it, was too busy listening and admiring to play, or was praying that he would be struck deaf and not have to hear a mangled note more.

The usual audience participation: I was asked if Morag was a bit like bagpipes. They were standing away from my bellows side and hadn't worked out how I was managing to play without blowing. Later I had a classic session experience, as described on The Session, with a very happy member of the public asking if we could play The Wild Rover. Luckily a singer could oblige and the musicians pitched in and everyone was happy.

What I've been doing at sessions so far is waiting for permission to play, or a request to play. This is partly because I know I'm interrupting the flow: that I'm about to play (not very well) a tune that no one will know, no one will accompany (although the fan, the fiddle player and others are starting to join in), and I feel as though I'm holding things up while I'm indulged. The problem with waiting to be invited is that I risk feeling hyped by people calling for a tune, being caught on the hop, not even sure which tune to play, and with Morag still on my lap. Better, I find, to just go for it: to get the bag and bellows connected and to pick a tune while everyone is playing, and then, as soon as they pause for breath, dive in.

Still a small amount of nerves: my left hand goes a bit wobbly, but on the whole I'm getting better at playing at sessions, and am quite glad that I've got repertoire enough that I'm not just having to play the same two tunes each time.

Only two weeks until I collect the Monkey...

Making matters worse

Yesterday evening I got out the hemp and scissors and blocks of wood and went about a bit of maintenance. The bass drone is a pain to collapse now - and it has to collapse to fit in the case. And then, naturally, tuning the darned thing is now also a trial of strength.

I also have to report that it has made no difference at all for Morag's insatiable thirst for air, and it seems to have transformed the middle drone's voice from a wavery whine to a whisper: it sounds like a rather small and elderly animal breathing its last.

Still, the Battle is coming on nicely, the King is easy enough when I'm not busy being star struck, Teribus is doable when I'm not asleep on my feet, and I even managed a run through of the Atholl Highlanders (three parts only).

I'm trying to decide what my first tune with the Monkey will be... It's like the fabled first dance at a wedding. I need to get it right.

The fan (or, more accurately, the band) is now on Facebook.

Disaster

Ok, maybe not a disaster, just a minor setback, but it felt like a disaster when I heard. Due to the Easter holiday the engraver (the person engraving beautiful Celtic knots on  the Monkey’s ferules) hasn’t been able to finish in time for Mr Kinnear to complete the pipes between now and next week when I was scheduled to go up. I’m now hoping to go for the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, which is just over a month away.

In the meantime someone I know from the Forrester’s session has written a tune that he thinks would sound particularly nice if Morag played it. He has heard Morag, and clearly admires her, which is nice, but his tune contains three unplayable notes as far as Morag is concerned. Only two will be unplayable by the Monkey... I need to play around with it and see what Morag can do.

Blaming the tools

The fan is out this evening: he's playing rather than drinking, not being a real ale fan. I'm mucking about here on my pipes. Feeling that I'm getting OK at tuning my drones. I can hear when they are wrong and am starting to have a better hit rate at getting them right again.

Playing about with the Battle of Waterloo this evening. It's OK. Much of it by heart. Pretty pleased with the speed. The Green Book, well, the third volume, which I bought and have barely glanced at, gives bpm for tunes. I seem to recall that 140 is a number that crops up from time to time, so when the fan was trying the metronome app out yesterday and worked out I was playing one tune at 118bpm I felt as though I was finally getting some speed up.

I need to think about some pipe maintenance: those collapsing drones sound awful and it's very distracting when they go mid-tune. I have hemp, I just need to use it. Maybe when I have the Monkey I can send Morag back to Simon for some maintenance. Watching me play yesterday Vicki commented that she thought there was a lot of air going through my pipes and maybe I (or Morag) had a leak. She also talked about being ready for a better instrument, and how there are things one can do on a better instrument that aren't possible on a less good one. It's a shame, in a way, that beginners start out with the cheap stuff - in all sorts of fields - because often the best quality materials are easier to work with and give a better result. The most basic square knitted with a gorgeous hand-dyed merino is always going to look a million times nicer than a square of acrylic, although admittedly a plain DK acrylic will be easier to handle than angora, or a lace weight yarn. What I am trying to avoid, though, is this feeling that any lack of quality in my playing is down to Morag and not me. Morag may hinder where the Monkey will (hopefully) help, but it's a bad workwoman who blames her tools...

Anyway, back to the Battle. I played better this evening, but managed not to capture those efforts on the recorder, of course. I've even managed my favourite trick of discovering I've not hit record and have therefore not captured the version I thought I had, then I did a better version and got an error message form the recorder ...

Lots of errors in this one, and I'm using dots. Partly trying not to distract myself by checking the recorder for more messages, and partly massive drone collapse in the middle, after which everything sounds foul, but I wasn't going to get a semi-decent run through get away just because of that.

I vary from the dots to play the tune how the fan does it, and that mismatch catches me out. Still managing GDG instead of GDE on the triple As - in fact sometimes I think it's only GD or even just a solitary G. Presumably I should have a squillion other graces in there, but... Timing: bad: too many places where I stumble at speed through a bar and muck it up. Oh, and while I'm throwing a bucket of criticism at it, I seem to have no idea how to stop this tune. Speed is OK thought, isn't it?


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Pick 'n' Mix

We've got a wintry version of April showers today, with glorious sun following dark clouds and snow on what feels like a minute by minute basis. I'm feeling much the same about my playing.

Yesterday we had an invitation to go and play some tunes. It's always fun to do something spur of the moment and it was a small group of people we mostly know so I didn't mind getting Morag out. The Tree was fine, Home Town I fluffed the same bar in the B part over and over. Eagle's Whistle, the King, Galloway and Teribus just totally fell apart.

The Whistle and the King were on my mind because Peter Puma Hedlund himself was there! I managed not to do embarrassing gushy fan stuff at him, but it was very exciting. He's a fantastic musician, as well as being a very nice chap. I think having him there caused the nerves that meant I couldn't play those tunes. The last two tunes I fluffed because it was after midnight and my brain had gone to sleep some time before: I am not a late night person. Whatever the reason I rather felt that I had disgraced myself and that the people I was playing with probably thought I hadn't improved one jot since the last time I played with them.

On the plus side I realised when I was playing that my hands weren't shaking. Whether this was to do with being in a smaller crowd, or whether my stage fright is starting to go away I don't know. I also managed to tumble headlong out of the zone during the third playing of Home: I accidentally caught someone's eye and at that moment realised I had no idea at all what I was doing; it really was like being suddenly woken and having that "where am I?" moment.

I've played through all my tunes, with dots, today, keen to get them back into my head. The fan has been trying to help my timing with a metronome app, but the tick, tick, tick makes me feel anxious: it's like skipping and standing endlessly by that blasted rope as it turns, knowing that you have to jump in at just the right moment, and only ever managing to spot the moment at which you've just missed your chance. I worked more on foot tapping and the fan said it was noticeable. But mostly I am feeling as though I've made negligible progress over the 18 months since I've had my pipes.

Digging the dots out I discovered that on one set I had added up how many days it would be from ordering my pipes at the end of August to collection. At the time it was 215. I've now got a date to collect my monkey - just 12 days away.

Not long now!

Mr Kinnear says that the Monkey - my Monkey - is very nearly ready and I can go up at the end of the Easter holidays. The end of the Easter holidays! Easter never felt so much like Christmas - and it's not just the weather.

Headache 0, Pipes 1

I know that playing a very loud instrument doesn't spring to mind as the obvious cure for a headache, but when it's a tension (read bad-day-at-work) headache it actually works wonders. And I nailed the B part of Flett, mostly because when I looked at it the second half was the same as the second half of the A part, so there were only a few bars to learn.

I keep checking my emails, waiting to hear from Mr Kinnear when the monkey will be ready....

Advancing armies

There is a fantastic part in the Pini di Roma by Respighi in the last section. Trumpets sound, and as the sun comes up the Roman Army swings down the Appian way in all its conquering glory. I've heard the piece live and it gets into your blood so much that swear I didn't just hear the music: I saw that army, glorious and vigorous, the sunlight glancing off its shields and swords, its banners flapping in the breeze.

I'm feeling much the same about the wonderful March of the King of Laoise, as played by the Sea Stallions. On the one hand it has a courtly, stately feel to it: I can imagine it being a lively but very formal dance. But when the guitar comes in (and I speak as someone who normally feels that guitarists, and accompanists of all sorts, have no place at all in folk music), it definitely becomes an army. This time it's green hills and valleys they are tramping, but the tune is relentless; I can imaging the march going on and on. The guitar gives a percussive sound which is perhaps the drummers, beating time, or the clank of arms (military history definitely isn't my thing, so I think it sounds like chain mail but have a feeling that Irish armies wouldn't have worn such a thing).

Anyway, last night that army marched through my brain. They marched on and on, and this morning I felt I had to play it. Dots courtesy of Mr Kinnear (who says I can go up to collect the monkey in person when he's ready). As with many tunes that sound effortlessly and elegantly simple it's not that easy. I've been trying it without gracing. Although marked as a slow march there is no dawdling here. Despite having the tune in my head - and listening to the Stallions a few times - the timing is problematic. In the end I dusted off my chanter and managed to sort it with that. Still not easy: that DGD, BGB means getting fingers down clean and tight on the chanter, and my hands got too tired to do it properly after a while.

I intend to try again later and hopefully will record.

Too Tired To Think

First posted Nov 12th, 2012 by newpiper

Music in my head all day and as soon as I got home and got the most pressing chores out of the way out came Morag. Rather tired, and struggled to recall whole tunes. Tried a few times over with various tunes and then gave in and resorted to dots. The problem with dots now, with a tune I know, I play the tune without looking at the dots, then when I'm not sure of a note I have to frantically scan the dots to work out where I am and what the next note is. My Home Town I managed to play with no prompting.

Teribus coming on nicely. That grip on the high A (do I mean grip? Too tired to think and can't be bothered to dig the green book out) arrived neatly and sounds great, although I am just assuming I am playing it right and haven't yet stopped to watch myself, as it were, to check that I am doing it right. Sometimes I find that missing out a grace note confuses me as to where I am in the tune, sometimes grace notes add themselves without my hardly noticing (which I think is terribly bad grammar but I am just too tired to think this evening).

Less than five months until the monkey is ready. Hopefully I'll have got a decent repertoire by then and have really improved. Still hoping to be able to put sets together and play three tunes straight through, with repeats, dotless, no errors. I think that's a reasonable aspiration, although I do need to get some faster tunes in to make up sets - too many slow and steady tunes doesn't make for good sets.

I noticed this evening that I am rocking between bellows and bag, tensing my shoulders, but I think that's tiredness. And I think the remembering tunes is not so much tiredness as my mind still being half on work and other things, instead of the music.

I Remember, I Remember

First posted Aug 29th, 2012 by newpiper

So – I can still play my tunes! Town came easily enough, but I had a bit of a fight to get all the bits of the Castle in the right order, and had to check the opening notes of the second part. Banks OK except I keep swinging straight into the B part. I can’t play from memory while reading discussions on the Session...

I have worked out how Iain MacInnes does his trademark end note – keep the pressure up and swipe the thumb off the hole as you cut the pressure. At least – that’s what I think I’m doing. I can only do it by accident at the moment.

Drones sound awful today – no fan here to help me tune them.

Mr Kinnear has sent a receipt and the monkey’s estimated arrival is end of March!

I Did It!

First posted Aug 28th, 2012 by newpiper

I ordered a second set of pipes - beautiful hand engraved silver, combination A/D with a key for high B on the A and one for high E on the D, and a nifty switch to turn the drones on and off. Pipes are being made by Ian Kinnear in the east of Scotland. I can't wait!