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.

Fortune cookie

It's damp and grey, so indoor pursuits are on the agenda for today. I've written letters, done a pile of ironing, wiped round the kitchen, run some washing, cooked lunch...but feel no inclination to pipe.

I'm thinking about Hector the Hero a lot. It was one of my early tunes, not played in years, but the flautist played it at the session on Sunday and it sounded good. I didn't join in, mostly because although I knew the tune was familiar I could't name it, I'm not sure if I actually know it well enough to play, and, my usual problem, that I had no idea if it was being played in "my" key.

I've also been listening to a new CD of Scottish fiddle music, which includes a few pipe sets, one actually with some pipes.

We've been away this week. We ate Chinese one evening. There were fortune cookies. My fortune said "just try your best". It feels like sage advice.

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.

Green eggs and ham

It doesn't matter what I try I cannot find a tune that Heroes likes, or a tune that likes Heroes. I feel that it doesn't stand alone as a tune, but maybe it's just that the more I play sets the more a singleton tune looks incomplete, lost and lonely.

It was Women in the Glen that I really wanted to play today. Neither Kilbowie nor John Macmillan came to mind so I ran through Rowan Tree, My Home Town, Galloway, Braemar, Troy, Loch Bee, Dargai, Magersfontein, Sleat. Bits of Eagle's Whistle, Brandy, Ocean and Miss G all bubbled up. I wonder how I will manage to keep learning new tunes and still hang on to the old tunes.

As good as a rest

I thought I'd give myself a break from new tunes today and just play whatever came to mind or fingers. Oddly enough the first tune in my head was Father John, so I played his Boat Trip to Nova Scotia.

After that the play list looked like this:

The Rowan Tree
Magersfontein, Flett, Dargai, Bee (too many for a set, but that's how they came out)
Bonnie Galloway
My Home Town
King of Laoise
Amazing Grace

I've been considering making a list of all the half-learned, or learned and abandoned tunes I have left behind, but I feel it would be a very long list and perhaps rather depressing.

I do also need to record. Maybe at the weekend.

Summer's lease

Summer is about over, it seems. It's cool, grey and damp today, and on Tuesday the fan's long summer break ends. But I don't mind: I have plans. I am going to play every day. I'm going to play the old favourites and work on any that have got a bit worn and faded. I'm also intending to move some new tunes and some that have been kicking round for way too long onto the "session ready" pile.

The new(ish) tunes are The Heroes of Vittoria, The Sound of Sleat and On the Ocean. 

The tunes that have been on the learning pile for too long are:
Atholl Highlanders
Braemar Gathering
Troy's Wedding
Drops of Brandy
Miss Girdle 

It's not that I don't know the tunes, just that I've not yet got that balance of speed and accuracy that I am looking for. I could add Father John to those. He's generally in good shape, but stubbornly missing the 4th part.

I'd also quite like to work on some tunes that I've given up on but keep finding myself playing by accident, often taking a bar or two before I remember what they are, that I can't really play  them, don't much care for them. This list will include The Dragon, Teribus, Barren Rocks.

And the tunes I can play? Well, the goalposts are still all over the place on this one and my current definition of a tune I can play is a tune I can play comfortably at a session, reasonably sure that I can easily fudge as needed.

Not bad

I thought I should so something about my plan to record some old tunes in the hope of seeing some improvement. This is MacIntyre's Farewell and Capt Angus L MacDonald. The recorder cheerfully ran out of memory half way through the first play through and time was wasted (good piping time!) while I fiddled about deleting stuff.

Other than that recording was fine, and I managed to remember the correct sequence of creating an item, recording, setting in and out points, laying down a master and exporting it.

I should have fiddled with settings a bit more - dropped the volume. I stood to play, with the recorder on a table beside me and did some swaying and shuffling about. I don't think that's too obvious on the recording.

As for the playing: it's not bad, I think. It could do with being more evenly paced, more measured, more controlled. No drones, as is often the case. But, the first attempt with the full memory aside, this was the only take I did and I have done absolutely no editing at all.

Not bad, for a beginner, I reckon. Not bad at all.

(What I haven't worked out on my Galaxy Tab is how to select the code to paste it in to Blogger to get the link. Glad that the fan still has a PC!)




Check this out on Chirbit

More notes from the tune clinic

It's odd how differently different tunes progress. McIntyre's Farewell and Capt Angus I thought were dead and turn out to be alive and well and rather thinking of getting together, which is great. My only reservation is that I think they may feel more comfortable on A. When did I last fire up the A chanter? Don't even ask...

The Cabot Trail is needing more work on grace notes: a common complaint. Miss G is currently the pester tune: she wants to be played after absolutely every other tune I play.

Some tunes arrive and very quickly are ready for release into the wild. Others seem to spend endless months suffering from false starts and relapses. some recover, some languish as chronic patients, and some die off....

Still, I'm playing a lot at the moment and, dead and dying tunes not withstanding, I'm loving every minute of it.

All sorts of funny tunes...

Hands too cold to play particularly well this evening. Head full of tunes. Flett wasn't among them: I couldn't conjure him from anywhere. Instead I had Miss G, Home Town, Amazing Grace, Irishman's Cudgel, the Dragon...fragments of Murray (remember when!), Highland Cathedral (on my mind because it's a favourite of friends we're visiting soon), Hark the Herald (no idea). Horsburgh a bit hit and miss, Troy crashed out in the B part...

Maybe I should revisit some of those old tunes that never came to anything. But Miss G is about there, although sometimes a little uncertain om the last bar but two.