They all rolled over

I  need a memory upgrade. I realise that I am, reasonably succesfully, playing my new tunes: Valery, Perth, Flanders. If I rack my brains I also play Magersfontein, although now that it's definitely a set with Vittoria it almost counts as a new tune.

Then there is Flett, maybe Father John and Whaling Song. After that I, have to think, to check my note book, to see that there is also Bee, King, Dargai, Bonnie Galloway, McIntyre's Farewell, Rowan Tree, My Home Town... Even the recent pairing of Women and Sleat gets forgotten. And that's without thinking about the eternally unfinished Miss Girdle, Braemar, Wedding or any of the other tunes that I can play, or at least used to be able to play.

My musical brain is clearly less like Spotify and more like a juke box or old fashioned CD changer with room only for a fixed, and rather small, number of tunes. It's reasonably easy to slot a new one in, but in order to do so I have to take another one out.

The Djokovic moment

I meant to play yesterday but somehow didn't find the time. I played today before we went out, Dargai, Flett, Flanders, Perth (which is going through a tendency to muddle the opening of the A and B parts), St Valery.

I got to the session and was asked about the pipes, so explained, failed twice to get past the second bar of Dargai and played a messy version of Flett. Then I sat down and failed to get past the A part of Flanders, cravenly citing concerns with my drones...and this was before anyone else turned up.

I couldn't think of any tunes, the fan offered The King, but I lost track of it, twice, and crashed out. I kept thinking how badly I'd been playing, which made me bad-tempered. Later I tried Home Town, but my bellows weren't right, and I was pumping too much, which bothered me. I felt a little better having got to the end. I suppose it's like being two sets down and suddenly taking a set: a chance to focus on the set you took, the things you can do. But the things I apparently couldn't do niggled away.

Later on - it wasn't easy to get in between the two fiddle players - I played Father Macmillan and Whaling Song, which was too fast, mostly because I felt as thought my bellows were slipping down and wanted to get to the end before I lost them. Then another abortive attempt at Flanders, which I blamed on the fan's backing distracting me. The crosser I got with myself the worse I played, the worse I played the crosser I got.

My other Djokovic moment was wondering whether a month needs to be a calendar month. I've been trying to catch up at the plot this weekend and wonder whether June just isn't the right time to focus on something else. On the other hand knitting and some domestic issues have also taken up my time since early May. May itself would be no good as we are sometimes away at half term, April can be complicated by Easter, we often take holiday at the end of July...

I just need more days in the week...

Set in stone

Not for the first time I've been pondering sets. I'm mostly wondering whether it's acceptable to reuse a tune in more than one set. It seems a bit of a cop out, but some tunes do just seem to be very easy going and willing to pair with a range of other tunes.

I'm thinking of sessions, of course. Listeners ("audience" implies more choice and interest than the Sunday evening drinkers probably have when we arrive) may find it dull to hear the same tune more than once of an evening. Fellow musicians may also prefer more variety. The other problem would be that if tune A is sometimes followed by tune B and at others by tune C then you run the risk of either having a gap while everyone waits to see if it's B or C this time, or a musical car crash as half the session goes with tune B and the other with tune C.  The answer to that would be to ensure that tune B always follows tune A, but opens the set with tune C.

As ever, I have easy going tunes like Vittoria that seem happy to pair up with all sorts of tunes, and others, like Dargai that don't seem to sit with anything. Maybe I need to learn more tunes...

Oops!

Yesterday I managed not to play, again. We had curtain rails to put up, curtains to hang, the aftermath of some decorating to tidy away, dinner to cook, a cake to bake... Something had to give.

Progress at the half way point isn't looking too bad. Father John is, if not quite shining like a national guitar, at least reasonably buffed up. Women is also improving, with more control now on the opening bars of the B part. More elbow grease required for Sleat, which my fingers still run away with.

Perth is doing well. I'm no longer confusing the 3rd and 4th parts, or forgetting the 3rd part, and speed is picking up nicely. St Valery still needs work. The 2nd and 4th are less likely to get confused but I'm not always getting the variations on the repeat of the 2nd part.

Barren Rocks first part is fine, the second is OK sometimes. I'm less convinced that it sits well with Atholl, which is requiring quite a lot of remedial work. The 4th part considerably slower than the others, the 1st having a tendency to be too fast, too untidy.

Flanders seems to be going the same way as the Creeks: lovely tune, recognise it when I see it, never hum it, can't play without dots, rapidly losing interest...  Lindisfarne and Planxty I think I am sometimes humming in parts, but neither tunes falls easily under my fingers, and a couple of note changes sound rather odd to my ear. In theory I like them rather a lot, but my fingers just haven't taken to them and I fear both will fall by the wayside before too long.

Doh!

I used to play The Heights of Dargai with The Shores of Loch Bee. More recently I've been playing Bee with Flett from Flotta, a pairing which I borrowed from Skippinish (although they have a third tune in the middle).

This has left Dargai as a singleton tune. This evening it finally occured to me that if Dargai goes with Bee and Bee goes with Flett, then surely Dargai  could pair with the two of them? Actually, as experience tells me, just because various pairings work it doesn't mean that a three will do as well. Good job I don't listen to experience over much: this turns out to be a good set of three.

I have half an eye on next month which should be a challenge month. I need to find some new tunes...

Not the hills of home

I've been humming The Glandaruel Highlanders, which is on my latest CD acquisition, Polbain to Oranmore. Actually, that's not quite true. I've been singing the song Campbeltown Loch:

Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky,

Campbeltown Loch, Och aye!

Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky,

I would drink you dry!

Not that I have ever heard the song, but Kevin Macleod mentioned the lyrics on the sleeve notes, and they took my fancy, and I've been singing them (Och aye!) to a very mangled version of The Glendaruel Highlanders. I know that it's mangled because when I tried the tune out on my pipes this evening it didn't sound like any tune I know.

I think this is partly because when I listen to the tune I immediately start singing the song, which means I am not really listening, and I know that I am repeating the chorus only over the whole of the tune. As I've mentioned before It seems that if I have words and a tune my brain seems to prefer the words, no matter how wrong they are.

I suppose the other problem is that voice is, in its way, just another instrument, and just as a pipe tune sounds very different when played on banjo or fiddle or even whistle, it sounds different with voice. It's not just that other instruments can slur or lilt or bounce in a way that pipes can't. Some of it is to do with the different ways in which other instruments treat the gracing. It's something I came across early on when I first heard A Scottish Soldier. It's The Green Hills of Tyrol, Jim, but not as we know it. 

(Incidentally, I found Glendaruel in the Seaforth Highlanders, and I knew it would be there because this handy site told me so).

Stock take

I've managed a little piping this evening while the fan has been out. I don't seem to be finding time for it. The worrying thing is that I have no idea what I am doing with my time. The socks I am knitting are taking forever, I seem to have abandoned the jumper I'm working on, and haven't even ordered yarn for a baby shawl, so it's not that. The weather in the evenings is poor so I've not got to the allotment. My mail box is full of mail that I really do mean to get around to replying to...sometime. I seem to have been reading the same novel for the last month. I'm having trouble switching from the Indy to the Grauniad crossword and am giving up in disgust after the first 20 minutes or so. I can't even blame Pinterest as I have weaned myself off it.

I also have a pile of tunes going nowhere fast. I've cleared off my music stand and this is what I have.

1. Tunes that I actually know and I just need to get round to filing the music.
That'll be Heroes of St Valery. I had thought that this or Heroes of Vittoria might make a pair with Magersfontein or maybe Dargai, but they seem to prefer to be a twosome themselves.

2. Tunes that need work
The Hills of Perth. It's all there, just the 3rd and 4th parts keep getting transposed.

3. Tunes that are just ... meh
These are tune that I've played, and played, and probably have (mostly) by heart, and that I love listening to and that I wanted to learn and sometimes hum, but somehow never fancy playing now, so they don't get played and haven't bedded in and will join that long list of tunes that I can in theory play but never actually do.
Arthur Bignold of Lochrosque
John MacColl's Farewell to Argyll Squadron, Scottish Horse
Kilbowie Cottage
Farewell to the Creeks
The Hag at the Churn
And probably Braemar Gathering belongs on this list too

4. Meh tunes that I haven't quite given up on...yet
The Radical Road
Leaving Barra
The Return from India
The Rejected Suitor

5. Tunes I have printed out in a fit of optimism but not looked at
The Birken Tree
Jeannie Carruthers
The Pap of Glencoe
Leaving Glen Urquhart
Major David Manson
Mrs Macdougall
The Banjo Breakdown
The Pipe on the Hob

6. Tunes the presence of which I cannot explain
Well, the likeliest explanation is that the fan printed these for himself.
The Mist Covered Mountains
Janine's
The Easy Club

I maybe need some new tunes. I certainly need to embed my most recent tunes (Heroes of Vittoria and St Valery, Sound of Sleat, Women of the Glen). I need to play more.

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.

Man of steel

I had an OK day at work, came home and thought that perhaps I wouldn't play today. I've played all but two days this month, and yesterday I played twice: once with my fan and once on my own.

But then things started to go a bit askew and I got flustered. The fan came home reporting an incident that, had it happened at my work place, would have been my problem. I've been trying to stop myself running through the what ifs, thinking what his workplace ought to do, what I would do.

Then I made pastry and ran out of butter, which I needed for cheese sauce. So I put the pastry case in the fridge to chill, turned the oven on to warm, and walked down to the further of the two grocers  because I'm fussy about my butter and the closer of the shops tends to have the more basic stuff. Of course, the new improved Co-op no longer carries my preferred brand, so I came home with something else. So now dinner is running late and I needed to set the table, wash up, tidy the kitchen and hang some washing up while the pie is baking rather than in between the preparation, leaving me with no piping time. I'm feeling cross, flustered, a bit hard done by, and tired.

You'd think at this point I'd be grateful that I'd already decided not to pipe, but as soon as I felt I probably wouldn't have time to do it I really, really wanted to do it. So I flung myself and my pipes down on a stool and played right through Perth and Valery, without dots. Valery just came to me: I could hear a bar in my head and wanted to play it, without even realising what it was. Perth I just decided to play, and there it was.

And now I'm to tired to bother with anything much else, but I don't care because I dug deep and pulled something out of the hat, despite the pressure and the fatigue. Not unlike Mr Murray, the Man of Steel, my tennis hero.

Accidental

I didn't start this month with the intention of playing daily, but somehow or other it just happened, bar one day. I have just been in the mood to play and to learn new tunes. The fan yesterday simultaneously chided me for trying to learn too many new tunes at once and handed me another.

I'm partly wondering whether I will learn new tunes faster if everything I play is new and my brain is therefore always in learning mode, but it's also just that the tunes I love and want to play at the moment are all new tunes. I wish that I could say that two whole months of daily piping have brought my playing on in leaps and bounds, that I have learned a pile of tunes, but that's sadly not true.  I am not even sure if I have formed a permanent habit. But I've enjoyed myself, and that's surely the point.

Do not disturb

I played this evening with no dots. I managed the first two parts of the Horse with no problem at all. Hills of Perth was fine, except that the 3rd part was mysteriously missing and nothing would bring it to mind. Still, when I tried this earlier in the week it only had two parts, so I can't grumble.

It took a number of false starts to get to Kilbowie Cottage, and when the first part appeared I didn't recognise it. Bits of the 2nd and 3rd part were there, which is worse than earlier in the week when I managed both parts in full without too much trouble.

I had real problems with St Valery. I went round and round, pulling out Father John, bits of Leaving Barra and Vittoria,  but not a note of Valery could I play, hum or picture. After a while I had a quick peek at the dots and noted the opening four notes. That didn't help. Playing the high A, thumb grace, grip that I know is in the 4th part didn't help. I went back to the dots and looked over the first part. It was like looking at a foreign language: I could see the dots, but they made no sense. Then right at the end of the first part I suddenly recalled the tune, ran off to try it, but struggled to get the first part. Again, a real regression from earlier in the week.

But I can't decide what to do for the best. Should I let the tune ferment undisturbed and wait for it to bubble up when it is ready? It's a tactic I've tried in the past and sometimes it works and other times the tune simply falls into disuse and I forget I was even trying to learn it. Should I go back to dots? Should I listen to the tune more (I've got Springwell on the CD player now) and hope it comes that way? Or should I just keep trying to play it unaided? Even after all these years of learning new tunes it seems I have no clue what the best way to learn might be.

Recording is of an established tune (for me) and a session favourite. I am  hoping it might demonstrate a general improvement in my playing. It's My Home Town.


Check this out on Chirbit

This and that

I've had a tune in my head all day. It felt like a B part. Once the A part turned up sometime after lunch I was able to identify it as Heroes of St Valery. As it was so clear in my head I was sure I could play it, although I know when I had the dots before I abandoned in disgust as it seemed all but unplayable. The dots took some tracking down, but once I had them I discovered that it's a nice straightforward tune, that it was the 3rd and 4th parts in my head, that I need to sort the gracing on it.  And if I add it to my repertoire will it go with Vittoria (as per Mr McLeod) or Home Town (pace Mr Gillies), or something else?

While we were lunching a wedding party arrived. I must have caught a flash of button on jacket because I wasn't all all surprised when I saw that the groom and, presumably his father, were in kilts. I refrained from asking where the piper was....

No wedding in the outer isles is complete without a piper, it seems, as I read Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland. It's full of snippets of random facts of island and piping life that I know that the fan *really* enjoys when I read them out in bed, over breakfast... It's a little like the book of Matthew, with various pipers begetting other pipers, marrying each other's sisters and teaching each other's sons. I have been glad to read about tunes I play, pipers I've heard or whose tunes I have played, but sorry that there are glaring gaps (no James Duncan MacKenzie of Back), apparently to prevent swaying piping judges!

I'm playing around with Return from India (needs to be faster) and The Rejected Suitor: feels like a set. Also fiddling about with The Hag at the Churn and The Pipe on the Hob. Yesterday I played with the fan who suggested that Miss Girdle and Troy could both be slower. They need to be tidier, too.

That was a bit of a first: normally he asks for more speed. Another first was me being able to fling myself into a tune he had already started on (Braemar). I had less luck the second time as he insisted he was playing a tune we'd already done, I knew we hadn't and thought it was Magersfontein. Turned out to be Battle of the Somme, which I don't play, which explains my inability to join in that one.

Apparently I am still playing every day...

And here is St Valery, with intermittent gracing and some errors.


Check this out on Chirbit

Don't stop me now

I thought I was looking forward to the end of my piping month. I was certainly looking forward the end of January, to a few more minutes of daylight here and there each day. When February came I kept on playing, and I've played every day so far.

I suppose it's partly that I've got into a bit of a routine so that I don't feel I am juggling my evening in order to make piping time. It's partly that I have new tunes that I want to work on. It's also just that, despite the endless issues with comfort, or a lack of it, I do just enjoy playing.

I'll be playing again tomorrow as it's a session weekend. Not sure that any of my new tunes will feature, but actually it might be nice to play some of the old favourites. They've been neglected this year.

Bring me sunshine

I recently acquired Finlay MacDonald's eponymous album. On the face of it this is a straightforward piper's album: piper plays pipe tunes, old and new. The new tunes include many by Finlay, but also Allan MacDonald (the fabulous Plagiarist and The Road to Loch Nam Bearnish). The old includes the wonderfully named The Night We Had the Goats, and, one of the fan's favourites, I Would Have Preferred Thee at First, But Not Now Sir. A lot of it is fast and furious.

As with many pipe albums there is the odd track with whistles, a song (which I am afraid I listened to once and skipped thereafter). There is a track or two with border pipes. There are also some other instrumentalists, including Chris Stout on fiddle. Sadly, Simon Thourmire restricts himself to producing and arranging, rather than playing.

But there is a bit twist. The other instrumentalists are on drums (that's a full kit, not a snare), piano, soprano sax. I think if it had been a full on jazz/lounge sound with pipes running through it that would have been truly experimental, quite possibly not to my taste, but something to admire.

As it is the piping is reasonably standard and the drums and sax just trundle through bits of some of the tracks. It works for me inasmuch as it's enough to make the sound different without creating something I'd prefer not to listen to, and in the end I can just about block it out, which I am sure wasn't what Finlay had in mind, but it feels a bit half-hearted, accidental.

What it brings to mind to me is two images. The first is A A Milne's introduction to Now We Are Six where he says 'Pooh wants to say that he thought it was a different book; and he hopes you won't mind, but he walked through it one day, looking for his friend Piglet, and sat down on some of the pages by mistake.'

The other is Morcambe and Wise. I imagine Ernie in something suitably louche - a red smoking jacket perhaps - doing some gentle boom-sh-sh with brushes on drums and cymbals, when Eric walks across the back of the stage, with bagpipes.

"What are you doing?"
"What?"
"With those bagpipes. What are you doing?"
"These are my bagpipes. I was just going to..."
"Yes, but can't you see. We were sharing a moment of hip coolness. For real jazz cats. Not bagpipes."
"Oh, yes. Sorry. Sorry..."

And off Eric shuffles, but you know there will be a sudden cacophony, which might be pipes or someone falling over pipes or the cue for a joke about a haggis. And the worst of it is that I'm not sure if this way round or whether Eric and his sax is interrupting Ernie's mini lecture on the history of the noble pipe in battle...

Still, underneath, it's a decent album. I don't expect it to make its way on to my most-played list any time soon although I will be tempted, when the current crop of new tunes is settled, to consider I Would Have Preferred Thee and The Plagiarist, if I can get it.

Nightmare

There is a point where a tune wriggles its way into my consciousness in a way that means it bubbles along under everything else. It’s there of its own accord and sometimes it takes a while for me to notice it, and sometimes I have to stop what I am doing to listen to it, to hear what tune it is.

I say “hear” although it isn’t something in my ears, just in my mind. But it’s independent of my conscious mind. Once I’ve noticed it’s there I can make a decision to temporarily stop it, although once I go back to thinking of other things it will bubble through again. I can also make a decision to switch to another tune, although again the first tune might come back once I’ve taken my attention away.

Sometimes there is a previous stage, before the tune has embedded itself. The tune is in my head, but somehow requires my attention to keep it going, at least, I feel that it does, and somehow it is important not to let the tune stop. This seems most often to happen overnight. I feel as though I am constantly being woken by the tune, and the need to keep the tune going, and somehow it feels as though there is an almost physical effort on my part to keep the tune moving. There is certainly an element of concentration. I’m not sure whether I am, or feel I am, needing to pick the next note along, as if I were playing the piece, or whether the note is there, I just need to make the effort to hear it.

It happened last night with the Horse. I feel as though I’ve been awake half the night, flogging that horse along. At one point I think there was another tune, possibly Cottage, and I was keeping the pair of them going, like spinning plates.

Once I woke up I was busy listening to the radio, getting ready to go out, driving to work, chatting to a colleague, tracking down some stuff, concentrating on a number of things and not noticing if I had a tune or not until I went to make a mug of tea. As I stood waiting for the kettle to boil had The Women of the Glen in my head. Later in the day it was Cottage again, but somehow at an embryonic stage. It runs in my head but once I stop to listen to it then it stops, unless I consciously think how it goes next, which I suppose is what is happening with the new tunes in my sleep.

I’d be interested to find some research on this as I can’t be the only person who has had this experience. Oh, and I played this evening...

A horse, a horse...

The horse has been trotting about my head all night and all day. It's a lively beast, more like a skittish pony than an old warhorse. It was inevitable that the moment I picked up my pipes the horse fled. (This was going to be my cue to link to a video clip of Peter Cook as Richard lll in Blackadder whistling for a horse...a horse..., but I've failed to find one).

Still, I listened to the CD, then worked on the horse, the cottage, Arthur and the Creeks. I think that possibly Farewell to the Creeks, if not played very slow on its own, might pair well with Heights of Dargai, now that Flett and Bee have run off together.

This is the end of my challenge month, and it will be nice not to feel obliged to play, but I think the call of these new tunes will keep me going. This month I've improved my speed, I think, and improved the balance between speed and accuracy. That is, the speed at which accuracy goes out of the window is faster than it used to be. I feel I'm also gracing more neatly, and thinking more about what gracing I want.

Four part mystery

I'm never quite sure why it takes me so long to learn four-parter tunes.  By definition they are twice as long as two-parters, but as I seem to be able to learn a number of two-parters in less time than it takes me to learn a four-parter that can't quite be it.

I suppose one of the difficulties is that a four-parter is like two very similar two-parters, and there is always plenty of scope to muddle the A part with the C or the B with the D. There is also more scope for bars that are almost repeated, but each time have some subtle difference. Then the timing might change from one part to another.

In the past, when stamina, or lack of it, was a problem, then I would tend to play the first two parts and then run out of steam and maybe not even play through the final parts. Even now I am inclined to work on the first part and wait until I feel I've got at least the basic shape of it until I move onto the next, so by the time I work my way round to the final part the first two are familiar and the second half is always the bit I haven't played as often. (Others I only play as two-parters, which is what I do with Father John.)

In a way I think that this was the problem with Loch Bee: because I only ever played it as part of a set (with Dargai) if I ran out of steam, ran out of time or patience, ran into trouble, it was always Bee on the end that got ditched or lost a repeat or two. Hopefully playing it (mostly) on its own this month will have helped.

I've picked up two more four-parters despite being far from session-standard with either Arthur or the Cottage. The first is Mrs MacDougall. Despite my earlier confusion when I got round to looking at the various versions they were all about the same, (Mrs Mac, anyway - I overlooked Mrs Mc this time round) so I picked the one with the cleanest layout on the page. I've played it through...and it sounds like no tune I've ever heard, so I need to listen to the tune a bit before I try again.

The other is John MacColl's Farewell to the Scottish Horse. Ceol Sean has a tune with that title, and another - John MacColl's Farewell to Argyll Squadron, Scottish Horse. I assumed they would turn out to be the same tune. They looked different on the page but I've been thrown before by different gracing and layout...but these are two different tunes, and the first is the horse I wanted, the one I know from Highland Strands.

The mystery is that according to the listing on The Bagpipe Shop for what they describe as "the complete works" of Mr MacColl there are only two horse-related tunes, John MacColl's Farewell to the Scottish Horse and The Second Regiment Scottish Horse. As for the Argylls, they receive mention as Major Byng M. Wright's Farewell to the 8th Argylls and The 9th Argylls at Ypres. Also odd is the inclusion of two Kilbowie tunes, a plain Kilbowie Cottage and John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage. How these relate to William Lawrie's tune Kilbowie Cottage, which seems also to be known as John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage I don't know. It's not as these are tunes from the mists of time: Lawrie only died in 1916, MacColl not until 1943. 

The other mystery is the speed at which I seem to be picking up all four parts of Farewell to the Creeks.

Spit and polish

I've had the silver cleaning cloth out today and given the Monkey a brush up, ready for tomorrow's session. It's a nice job, sitting on the sofa with pipes on my lap and Dorney Rock, my latest Kevin Macleod acquisition, on the CD player.

In an ideal world it would have more pipe tunes on it, but it's a lovely CD, and, as always, much more varied than you might expect from a collection of tunes played on strings.  I am now rather wondering whether it would be nice to learn Farewell to the Creeks. 

The other tune that has caught my fancy is the Freeland Barbour Sixteen Miles to the Bottle. I suspect as a modern tune it will be hard to find, leaving me with my usual longing to be able to pick up tunes from listening to them. I suppose I might find the tune in this lavish-looking item from my current favourite publisher. It's a shame that they make no attempt to list any of the tunes included, although I see that Mr Barbour's own website describes the two volume set as containing all of his tunes...oh, and now I wish I hadn't looked at this at all because apparently there is a separate book with 65 of the tunes set for pipes.

Since the fan put up some more bookshelves I do actually have some space for another volume or two...but £60 is rather a lot for a few tunes, even if there are nice pictures of Scotland to go with it, and even if the chap who did the pictures (Cailean Maclean) took the picture that forms the atmospheric cover for Sealbh... Maybe there will be a paperback edition.

I mostly dropped in to remind myself (and my mythical readers) that playing daily is not the same as blogging daily...

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...

Of lions and unicorns

I need a new hobby. Of course I need a new hobby, when you think how much time I have to spare. I'm not sure how compatible my new hobby will be with anything else...I've managed to stab my fingers and draw about a pint of blood, and earlier in the day, until I had the technique sorted, I managed to make my bellows elbow quite sore. Anyway, I managed to make a small lion, and I am quite pleased with him.

I am a lot less pleased with my pipes at present and cut an inch off the tubing. It still doesn't feel comfortable, but again I will stick with it for a while. I' m finding that the bellows slide about and I need to lean over and press the bellows down on my pelvis to fill them. Not good.

New tunes are good. Skyeman's Jig the worst of the bunch, not sounding like much at all at present, Peter Mackinnon will maybe be a challenge, Arthur Bignold (who gets a mention in one of my Christmas books) and Hills of Perth both shaping up nicely, at least across the first couple of parts.

Also shaping up nicely is Skippinish. It's not the fan's sort of thing, but I enjoy the simplicity - mainly just pipes (smallpipes at that, in the main!) and box, with a smattering of fiddle; no fancy arrangements to listen to, just good tunes, some new, others familiar (Loch Bee, Flett), played in unfamiliar ways.