Love, actually

It's been a while since I posted here. It's been a while since I played. Work is very busy. The fan has been having a rough time these last few months. You'd think music would be a solace in all this, but our routines are upset so that finding time to play is difficult, and I've not often been in the mood. I'm feeling bad about leaving the blog, and thinking of drawing a line under it as I always hate it when blogs I follow fizzle out.

So I've been pondering last posts (and have just realised that Last Post would have been the ideal post title!) and how to, as it were, end it all, and my musings have been melancholy as farewells so often are.

Then this evening I've played again and I've thought how much I love this, how much my pipes have brought me. In a way being able to play together has brought the fan and I closer together. I've enjoyed - and continue to enjoy - the community of playing with others. I've enjoyed the blogging - this will be post 609, with two in draft that never got published. I've played for 6 years: Morag, the poor neglected lass, is 6 years old. The Monkey I've had for about 3 and half years which has coincided, I think, with my piping coming on in great strides. I've shaken off stage fright, memorised tunes, put sets together. I've read about piping, and Scotland. I've discovered whole swathes of folk music I never knew existed. I've done so much and I've learned so much and despite the whinges I have loved it. I do love it, in fact. I love the Monkey, I love piping, I love being a piper. And I feel that despite this momentary lull I can go out on a high, and it's not the end, only the end of the beginning.

If you have been on my journey with me, thank you. I'm sorry to leave you, and this blog, but please know that in an enchanted place at the top of the forest a girl and her pipes will always be playing.

Goodbye.

Aft agley

Things don't always turn out as you expect. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to play on Saturday, day 7 of the pop-up. But that was fine, because Sunday was the session and I knew I'd be playing then. Except I didn't - I felt under the weather and the fan went out leaving me to mope on the sofa.

Of course, unexpected changes of plan aren't always bad.

Pop-up piping practice

I've been thinking about getting back to playing, and playing regularly. We've just been away for a week, so of course I've played nothing at all until this evening. It went well today. I played for over an hour, everything was reasonably comfortable, I had good, even pressure in the bag, my fingers wre reasonable nimble. I played tunes I know and mostly had few problems with them. I ran through a pile of tunes, mostly sight reading things I have heard, things I used to play and never nail down, and The Road to the Isles (aka The Bens of Jura, among other aliases), just because it was there in the book and the fan had mentioned it recently.

You'd think that, considering how well everything went, I would have got the buzz, but there was no sign of it.

But it's the session (again!) at the weekend, and I need to get back into practice, and somehow a whole month is too much to commit to for daily playing. So my plan is that I do a pop-up practice and play every day for week from time to time, and hopefully least monthly, with the sessions there to remind me.

Reprieve

Our session has had its ups and downs, but before we took a summer break things seemed to be on a definite downward slide with dwindling numbers, and the fan and I had several conversatons about calling it a day.

Then last month was a little livelier with the new fiddler. This month the fiddler returned, we had a concertina player (an actual Irish player, which caused some consternation among those who play Irish tunes), and a chap who turned up with a drum, a flute, a whistle, a set of Uillean pipes and a set of lowland pipes. These had two stunted drones, the rest of the tubing apparently being internal. He said they were made by a chap in Arran (presumably at Dunfinion) but his chanter was made by Morag's maker, Simon Hope. He knew some pipe standards, but his gracing was definitely not GHB style, and the whole sound was more like Northumbrian smallpipes.

I had a few wobbles caused by the presence of newcomers, people arriving in a clatter and arranging themselves mid-tune, and probably, also, lack of practice, but On the whole it went well, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I just hope we can keep it up.

Slow down, you move too fast

After what feels like a piping lifetime of trying to play ever faster, I am starting to appreciate the slow. I've been hearing tunes that are played more slowly than "my" version (Shores of Loch Bee, South Georgia Whaling Song, Flett  from Flotta). I've been playing tunes that I feel need to be taken slowly (Flanders Fields). I've also been going back to tunes I feel I am, not exactly struggling with, but failing to get comfortable with (Troy's Wedding, Braemar Gathering, Sound of Sleat), despite the fact that I've been playing them, off and on, for quite some time now. 

It's possible that I may speed them up again when I'm ready, but at the moment I feel that a slower pace gives me more control. It stops me tensing fingers, rushing through bits I'm not confident on, messing up the timing. It allows me to concentrate more - or perhaps I just have to concentrate more in order to bring the speed down, and that's why the problems slip away. I'm not sure that this is going to fix things, but these are three tunes I would very much like to have settled into my session repertoire.

I do wonder to what extent my "slow" is actually faster than the "fast" I used to play. Speed is relative. 30mph seems reasonable from a standing stop, a little odd if you're slowing from 70mph as you come off a dual carriage way and, if you are actually travelling along that dual carriage way with traffic tearing by at 70mph, 80mph or more, positively suicidal.

Ch-ch-changes

Sunday’s session was quite different from usual. It didn’t get off to a good start: when we arrived the TV was on and a crowd sat around watching the football and providing a very vocal commentary. We sat at the other end of the pub with a drink each and waited. Eventually the match finished, and the pub emptied out, most people preferring to sit out, and we had our usual corner.

The Northumbrian piper arrived with his wife, who doesn’t play, but she settled down on a sofa by our table and we had a bit of general chitchat between tunes, which slowed the pace. A little later a new fiddle player joined us. He was a young chap, keen, really only starting to come into Irish trad, so not with a large repertoire. He’d sought us out as a change from the usual English/Morris sessions in the area, and he joined in the discussion as well as the music. With the general chat and with the youngster coming and going (he had friends elsewhere in the pub) it had more of the feel of a social evening with music, which was very relaxing.

Somehow we fell to taking it in turns to lead a set, which isn’t something we normally do, and not something I normally enjoy, but it worked well. I played My Home Town, Father John/Whaling Song (the latter rather faster than intended), and Dargai/Flett (with a micropause between the two as I weighed up the risks of plunging into Loch Bee). I twice failed to get passed the first half of the A part of Magersfontein and ended up with Women instead (I didn’t even consider trying Sleat on the end). I played a rather tatty King, partly, I felt, because I was expecting everyone to join in and no one did, and partly perhaps because I was nearing the end of a half of Woodford Wherry  having already had a half of St Austel Tribute.

The pub was empty for most of the evening, then a large and lively young crowd came in, and although they generally talked loudly through all but a song they applauded each set enthusiastically.

The same barman seems to be on duty whenever we are there. He’s rather laid back, never gives the impression of expecting us, or even really recognising us, and has a faint air of surprise about him whenever we order drinks. On Sunday he was rather chatty, and thanked us for saving him from the football, which he hadn’t been enjoying.

Sound of silence

I spent June learning one or two new tunes, but generally polishing existing tunes. I had intended to make recordings, to demonstrate progress, to spur me on. Somehow I didn't get round to it.

Today promised bright and has turned grey and damp, so rather than go to the plot for more harvesting and weedicide I got my pipes out. I think this recent flurry of activity is in part due to the knowledge that tomorrow is a session, the first since July, and I'm afraid of sounding rusty.

So, pipes - and recorder (as in, recording machine, not the instrument). I intended perhaps to do Flanders/Perth and Flanders/Valery in the hope I could decide which is the better pairing. I played this and that by way of warm up, including a reasonably tidy effort on Women/Sleat, which I didn't record because I wasn't expecting it to work. My right hand has a tendency to tense during Sleat, and my bellows tend to slip, which suggests to me that I am not yet comfortable with the tune and am hunching myself up, which, of course, makes things worse.

I had a dry run on Flanders, which I was pleased with, then hit the red button and messed the tune up three times, and several more times after that, even when I'd given up in recording. In the end, thinking I'd have nothing to show for my efforts, I recorded Magersfontein/Vittoria forgetting that it's not five minutes since I last recorded them.

I still feel that my repertoire seems to have hit some sort of steady state whereby new tunes edge out older ones. I've been humming Athol Highlanders, stumbled on the dots for Troy, which I think I had forgotten I ever knew, hardly think to play Braemar (which still needs work), actually had to check the dots before I could play Rowan Tree or Galloway.


Check this out on Chirbit

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...

A retreat too far?

Today the slow tune in my head was Flanders, although Creek was perfectly playable, with dots. Both are at that stage where the dots are moral suport more than anything.

As ever, once I have tunes I want sets. The fan likes slow followed with a burst of speed, which is fine for performance but not so useful in sessions where it's easier for people to join in, I think, if tempo is the same throughout. I'm also thinking of length with four parters (Perth, Valery) probably not lending themselves to the standard arrangement of three-tunes-each-played-three-times-over. Perhaps a short tune tacked on the front or back would work.

So I've pondered Valery followed by Perth, which may be too long. Or Creek  and Perth or Flanders and Valery. Kevin McLeod has Lochanside, Valery and Vittoria together, but I feel somehow that maybe two retreats together isn't quite right, although I think the things they share, like the little triplets, would bind them together.

I also think it's a shame there isn't a tune with Swan in the title, which would make for an amusing set name.

Not blogging, but piping

At the session on Sunday I played March of the King of Laoise and mentioned to one of the flautists, on only his second visit, that I offered it as my concession to Irish music, noting that it's clearly a Scottish tune, because it's so clearly a pipe tune. Not at all, replied the flute: pipe tune, certainly, but Irish war pipes, not GHB. Not something that had occured to me, and now I wonder, where is the rest of the repertoire of the war pipes?

I've just finished Roderick Cannon's very enjoyable history of piping and will blog on that this weekend, hopefully.

Played a little with the fan this evening, and for the first time in ages I got the buzz!

Credit where it's due

Poor Andy Murray. It seems he can never be good enough. He played in his 10th grand slam final at the weekend. There are only 10 men in nearly 50 years of tennis who have played in so many finals.  There are only 12 who have managed that across all four slams. He was beaten by the world number one tennis player, one of the few to have won all four slams during his career. Andy has come so far: it's really only a year ago that won his first tournament on clay. At the start of the French Open it didn't look as though he'd even make it into the second week. There was a time when he thought he'd never reach a final at Roland Garros. Andy is awesome, yet all the focus is on the thing he didn't do, the match he didn't win.

I mention this partly because tennis is one of my distractions, but also because I can sympathise. OK, I don't get to pick up large amounts of money, or get featured in Hello! magazine, or have to fly round the world or practise for hours or have ice baths. However, just like Andy whatever I do never seems quite good enough. However far I have come it's somehow never far enough. The fan said I did well at the session this weekend. I played three sets and a couple of standalone tunes, but mostly I envied the Irish piper his three page tune list, and got cross that I felt my timing wasn't as steady as it might have been, some of the fingering not as tight as it might have been, some of the control of bellows not as good as it should have been.

All we can do is struggle on and remember to give credit where it's due.

Two plus one

We were away at the weekend and flung ourselves back up the motorway from Surrey and Sussex with just enough time to grab a cup of tea and a slice of toast before racing out to the session.

What with one thing and another (the Bank Holiday, last month's visiting fiddler having fallen out with the landlord) it was just the two of us and the ever reliable Irish piper. The pub was busy, the snooker was on the big screen (without sound, thankfully), I was tired and disinclined. The omens were not good.

And yet...once the piper arrived and we got going it went well. The drinkers applauded from time to time, a few of them jiggled about in a loose approximation of Irish dance. The piper played with the fan supporting on bouzouki. The piper accompanied me on pipes or whistle while the fan provided backing. I played along with the fan on his mandolin. We all pitched in together with the fan swapping between mandolin and bouzouki, the piper between pipes and whistle.

I played Flett and Bee (which was a bit raggedy so only went round twice). I played John Macmillan and Whaling Song. I played My Home Town. I played Women and a mangled bit of Sleat on the end of it. I played Magersfontein and Vittoria. Right at the end I tried Valery, but abandoned after three parts as tiredness and the effects two glasses of white wine on an almost empty stomach kicked in.

At one stage the fan, on mandolin, struck up Braemar. I knew he was trying to tempt me, and I gave him a straight refusal. Play it often over endless months as I will it just won't come up to session standard. He rolled into Somme. I said no: it's not a tune I play. And then he came to Dargai, and I felt I couldn't let him get away with playing one of *my* tunes. I waited until he moved on to the B part, feeling that to be safest, but was thrown when he looked at me and said "B". He meant B part, but for one confused moment I thought he was warning me off joining in on the grounds that he was playing in the key of B. I managed to fling myself into the tune as the B part repeat came round, and at the end of his third playing he insisted on one more. It was only afterwards that I realised this was a first: joining in with others, mid-tune, in a session.

By 9pm we were all in and crawled off home, leaving the Irish piper playing to himself in a now empty pub. He noted, before we left, how my repertoire is expanding. It's getting better, I guess.

Playing gooseberry

We had a really good session yesterday. Just five of us, but two who don't come often, so the vibe was quite different. The standard of playing was high and we had a real buzz, with the various musicians bouncing ideas off each other, sharing tunes, playing alternative groupings of tunes. Instead of limping towards, and often of late not reaching, our supposed finish time, we were 20 minutes or more past it before anyone asked what the time was.

It wasn't my best evening. I'm not sure if it was new sessioneers, the pub being buzzier than usual, or the impending storm, but I felt a little nervous and didn't play well. I was also reminded that at a proper Irish (OK, so there were a couple of Scots tunes) session with really good players an amateur smallpiper can really only play a couple of guest spots of an evening. I didn't want to break up the flow of music, so mostly I just sat.

One of the musicians took some pictures for the usual social media platform, which confirms my worry that when I play I look as though I'm about to burst into tears...

Kiss and make up

Sunday was our regular session. After last month's surge in numbers we dwindled back down to four. Four would be fine, although I only count as a half, if that, as I never play along with other peoples's tunes. The problem is not the lack of numbers so much as lack of shared repertoire. The fan and the Irish piper seem to have forgotten the repertoire they shared in the days of the band. The fiddler seems to have a pile of new tunes each month, but none of them are ever anything the others play or even know, and somehow no one seems much inclined to  learn his tunes either.

In some ways I'm the one creating shared repertoire and everyone is happy to pitch in for The Heights of Dargai, The March of the King of Laoise, My Home Town or Bonnie Galloway. It may be that they are catchy tunes, and it may be that my limited repertoire means I play most tunes most months. So despite the fact that I didn't much feel in the mood to go out yesterday evening I was all geared up to play lots of tunes.

And then disaster struck. The fan had terrible problems tuning drones. I think the problem is that, rather shamefully, I've not used drones since I last gave the monkey a polish. I'd forgotten that, so didn't ask the fan to do a pre-sesson tuning. The drones were difficult to tune, and wouldn't stay in tune. As I played the pressure was uneven, adding to the general awfulness of drones. I scraped through Flett, John Macmillan's boat trip, Dargai, and Home Town, but it wasn' t right, and it just got worse, with the chanter sounding sharp and the tube kinking and cutting off air a couple of times. By the time I accepted the Irish piper's suggestion to play without drones I was so cross and unhappy that I failed to be able to play either Woman or Galloway and I am afraid I gave up in a huff. By the time we got home I had pretty much decided that I was clearly in need of a break from piping....

But...I have tunes to play, other tunes I want to learn. And I didn't want to let the sun go down on an argument, to get the monkey out in a month for the next session thinking about how I'd been let down, how we had fallen out. So this evening I played my pipes. The fan got the drones about right. I played a tune with drones then flipped them off and ran through my current playlist and it all went well and I loved it. I think the monkey has forgiven me for doubting him: I got the buzz tonight.

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.

Five things that go well with pipes

I've mentioned those things I feel add nothing to pipes, so it seems right to mention those things that do actually add something to pipes. I've used "five things" rather loosely here...to be perfectly honestly this is more of a list of four and one of those isn't really an item...

More pipes. No better than example than Ross and Jarlath, but I always love it at our sessions when the (Irish) piper plays along with me, mainly on My Home Town.

Fiddles. See, for example, The Waterhorse's Lament on The Desperate Battle of the Birds, but anything by Braebach, or the Mackenzie brothers, will illustrate my point.

Harpsichord. Not the obvious choice, perhaps, but it works astonishingly well. Hats off to Mr MacInnes for dreaming this one up.

Nothing. Much as I like these pairings there is really nothing to beat solo pipes, be that smallpipes or GHB. Many of Mr MacInnes's tracks on both his solo albums give you lone pipes, but for a full CD of unadulterated piping pleasure you need the Grand Concert of Scottish Piping or Alasdair Gillies' Lochbroom. Mr Gillies plays in a very measured style that brings out the forms of the tunes, so you can somehow hear the patterns very clearly. There is something rather zen, I find, listening to it. like Bach cello suites, they are, all different and yet somehow all the same, so that you can listen intently and nothing in the music or the playing of it distracts (except that Mr G is one of the perpetrators of the pointless twiddling at the end of tune....)

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...

Thin on the ground

Another skimpy session. This time the third was another piper, so we had three soloists to all intents, although the fan and the piper could play with me often one or other of them was on their own. We were joined by a singer, but the lack of joint repertoire meant that didn't help much.

I tried out Women, who started too fast so I made a hash of starting Sleat. I tried and failed with it again later on. The fan approved the new pairing of Magersfontein and Heroes. I never have enough tunes, I feel. I never play well enough for my own satisfaction, althouh the few pub-goers were appreciative enough with their applause. Several sat outside, on and evening in December! It was perfectly mild. It's not right, though, not right at all.

Putting my money where my mouth is

This evening the drummer joined us at the session. And that was it: just him, me and the fan. So I had to pull put all the stops and put my new list into action.

I ran through all the singletons. As Father John didn't make it to Nova Scotia (my first attempt at a three tune set in public) I tried, and failed, to tag the Captn on to the end, and ended up playing it, rather too fast, on its own.

I fluffed (I did a lot of fluffing as nerves came and went) my way through Women, but didn't attempt either Sleat or Braemar, the one because I didn't think I was up to it and the second because I simply couldn't remember how it went.

Still, with the fan leading the other half, or probably two thirds, of the evening, we managed an hour and a half, ending with the audience clapping in time through the King.

I think I maybe getting the hang of this music stuff at last....