Character building

Here is the plan. I will spend the month on a mix of learning new tunes, refurbishing two rather tatty tunes, and polishing some tunes that I do know but that, well, just need a bit of a polish.

The new tunes are The Bloody Fields of Flanders, Pringle Planxty and potentially Lindisfarne. I am saying potentially because the style being so new to me I am afraid that the two Matt Seattle tunes will clump together in my head amd become entangled if I attempt to learn them both at once. I think I was humming one earlier, but am also aware that the opening of one of them is stirring vague memories of a baroque tune, possibly one from recorder playing days, and maybe that is what I was humming.

The refurbishment is needed for Aden and Atholl Highlanders. I know them, I've played them, I've never got them up to session standard, they need some work, and I am pretty sure they will make a good set.

Then those that need polish. Father John I feel is getting rusty, so a bit of repetiton there won't go amiss. Both Perth and St Valery keep getting their B and D parts switched and confused, so they need work. I'm also wondering if the driving rhythm of Perth  might make an interesting change if stuck on the end of Flanders. 

The others in need of polish are Women of the Glen and The Sound of Sleat. I like Sleat. It seems to me to be, if you get the timing right, rather evocative of a boat on water, of the bubbling and sucking that water does around an obstacle.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I think I have stopped thinking about notes and parts and repeats and fingering, i.e. the nuts and bolts and mechanics of tunes. I think I am now thinking, as I hum, and as I play, of the character of the tune - of its bounce or lilt or sway, and where I think of individual phrases I am thinking of the sad bit, the upbeat bit, the joyful bit. I think that if this awareness of character comes out in my playing I will be a better piper and will also be on my way to developing my own musical voice.

Back to basics

My day's practice was on the chanter. I dug out the Green Book and The Piper's Helper and I worked on GDE graces and grips. I rather enjoyed it and mostly stopped because the reed kept getting to water logged I kept having to dismantle the chanter to dry things off. It's not like a recorder where you can cover the fipple and blow, or a trumpet, where you have a handy water outlet. I'm sure all good pipers keep clean handkerchiefs in their sporrans for wiping a wet reed: I use the hem of my tee shirt, because it's less bother than going in search of a tissue.

I can't remember now where it was I read that you need, or generally use, fewer grace notes with smallpipes than with GHB. I've noted that graces I can do come out perfectly (chirrups, burbles etc) on A and badly (as stumbled together notes) on D. But I have become lazy, strip out everything except strikes, thumb graces, D throws and Gs. I feel I should vary my single graces more and make use of D and E. I also have a couple of tunes (Dragon, Highland Brigade) where grips would be useful.  Some tunes are too pared back, too basic without their gracing.

I rather gave up on working on gracing when I got Morag. The Green Book is full of dull exercises and dull tunes, and I have enjoyed myself much more picking tunes I like and trying to learn them. Willy, my one time tutor, was bemused that anyone would bother with books of exercises, although I suspect he used them in his youth. Vicky definitely recommended such exercises to me. I thought I'd given up that sort of thing, but right now feels like the right time to go back.

Thunderbolt City

The fan said today that I am doing better than he expected. It's not that he thought I wasn't capable, just that he doubted my ability to stick at it, given how many other instruments I've tried.

There are people who marry the first person they meet, and are happy 50, 60 or 70 years later. Many of us are less lucky and have to hunt around, which might entail everything from one night stands and disastrous dates to moving in, to give it a go... As I've mentioned before I played recorder at school - I think many people of my generation did. Before that, at my first primary school, I remember playing triangle for Away in a Manger and I have a tiny scrap of a memory that involves a concertina, but I can't have been older than four at the time. There was the violin, played to please my father. There was the trumpet, which was hopefully close enough to the baritone my sister played to be equally fun without being close enough to annoy her. That went well, and in the end it was a maths O level that came between us because I couldn't do both, and maths seemed more pressing at the time.

There was a guitar - Stairway to Heaven - taught by someone else's boyfriend... There were penny whistles, because Dad thought they'd be fun; there were ocarinas because they came in pretty colours. There was even a mouth organ, but I have no idea where it came from, and we never really worked out how to play it properly. The mandolin, of course, the mandola and bouzouki (too big).

Even when I started with my pipes they were a poor substitute. I'd fallen in love with those big, hunky GHB. I had romantic visions of me on a loch side with my pipes and the music. I wasn't prepared for the harsh reality of marching bands, uniforms, and kissing goodbye to my weekends.

And then, after a while, I stopped pining for those big, chunky, hunky GHB and fell in love with my little Monkey. Why would we not be together forever?

I'm pondering whether or not I feel I want to play every day in September. I've played today, just in case, but also because its the last of my 9 days of holiday. To mark the occasion I've also recorded! This is Cabot and Captain, again, this time with the Whaling Song. I start way too slow, partly because if I am too fast I go into Captain instead of the trail. I then fumble because I realise I have the dots, and worry they will distract me. I speed up. I make a few fluffs. I go through each tune twice.  I fluff in Whaling where there are what the fan calls snaps - at least, if they aren't there Id like them to be, but somehow they make me forget the next note. Whaling is too fast - you cold never sing at this speed. Tempo is something I must get fixed. No drones - and how thin the pipes sound without them. A bit lost. Which makes sense really, because pipes and drones belong together.


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Getting to know you

I've had the Monkey out again this evening. I'm staring to get used to him. Sometimes when I start up I get a sound something between a fan belt going and gears being crunched: there just seems to be one point at which the pressure is balancing out that does it. The fan got his tuner out and retuned the drones to A and E. I still can't hear the drones singly, but as a set they are fab - the bass drones really resonate, and the full set sounds something like a church organ, somehow.

I've fiddled around with the usual tunes, but also with Ye Banks and Braes (which I used to play on my recorder a million years ago) and The Willows, both being tunes that involve a high B. Playing it took some getting used to. For some reason I kept wanting to hit it with my thumb instead of my little finger, but I'm getting the hang of it, mostly through playing some bits of scales to include it.When I'm not playing it I already find I'm not too aware of it: when I first picked up the Monkey the key felt as thought it was all over the place and getting under my fingers' feet, as it were.

One thing I can't seem to manage is my usual style of ending. Still, this was only the third time I've played the Monkey and it will take us a while to get to know each other.

Bonus tracks tonight because I didn't think I'd recorded at all the first time round so did a second tune. First up is Flett, and the second is Bonnie Galloway. If I hadn't just wanted to get a tune recorded I would have thought to try my drones' switch and play first time round without. Another time, certainly.

Oh - and another random person at work asking if that was me they saw in a pub with a set of pipes. I suppose there is no reason why everyone shouldn't know: I think most people know I knit and have an allotment, but I feel a little shy about it. I am still only a beginner, not a real musician or a real piper yet.

Anyway - enough chat. Here's some music!


Check this out on Chirbit


Check this out on Chirbit