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.

Fantasy album

This is pretty much what I played this afternoon.

Bloody Fields of Flanders/Hills of Perth
I think of this as the geography set because it has fields and hills, but it's also a homecoming, from Flanders fields to Perthshire. I really need to record this pair.

The Highland Brigade at Magersfontein/Heroes of Vittoria
The heroes set.

Women of the Glen/Sound of Sleat
Geography again - glens and sounds. Probably I should record this again, as hopefully it's in better shape than it was back in January.

John Macmillan of Barra/South Georgia Whaling Song
Always known to me as Father John's Boat Trip.

My Home Town
Because travel and being away and homecoming all imply the existence of a home.

Heroes of St Valery/Heights of Dargai/The Shores of Loch Bee/Flett from Flotta
This was a rather marathon set, the pipe equivalent of the rather indulgent guitar solo adding 20 minutes to an otherwise run of the mill tune. A heroes' homecoming set, this, from St Valery and Dargai back to the shores of a loch and a Scottish Island. To be honest it's rather too long, and I am still not sure about the Dargai/Bee/Flett combination.

Bonus track was Amazing Grace, which I suppose is a spiritual homecoming.  Clearly the album will be called No Place Like Home and the cover will feature my feet wearing ruby slippers. Now I just need to consider who I might recruit for backing...!

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.


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Signs and portents

I’ve got a bird feeder just outside the kitchen window. It doesn’t often get used while I am in the kitchen: our local bird population seems to be rather wary, although the robin and blackbird will eat if I stay reasonable still. The doves are a different matter. They seem to make a point of looking into the kitchen to see me. I imagine they are trying to catch my attention to encourage me to bring food out: they look at the empty tray and cock their heads at me. If I do have something to take out for them I often hear a “coo!” as I walk up to the feeder, which always sounds to me like a “here she comes!”

Once a dove could barely wait until I was out of the way and in her excitement (I always seem to assume that doves are female) she almost flew into me. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised. When I get back into the kitchen the doves will be picking over the food, throwing the larger pieces onto the floor. They will catch my eye, and I feel as though they are thanking me for their dinner.

Yesterday I picked up my pipes. I’d been humming Flanders all day and was sure I could play it. I couldn’t identify the opening note and by the time I’d got it wrong two or three times I’d lost the tune entirely, so swung into a nice rendering of Perth instead. After that I began on what I thought was St Valery. The A part went well, but the B part felt all funny and fizzled out. I struck up the A part again – and that was the moment I realised that I was playing Flanders, not Valery at all. Often when I confuse two tunes it seems a good sign that they might go together, so once I’d gone through Flanders a few times I went straight into St Valery, and that seemed to work very well. I’d been looking for a partner for St Valery, so am glad to have found one – it’s just a shame that Flanders already had a partner in Perth. I suppose they could make a threesome, but that would be a rather lengthy set. I will have to see.

And is this sudden garrulousness a sign that I was wrong to think this blog has outgrown its use? We shall see… 

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.

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.

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.

The old, old story

I am piping, perhaps every other day. I am feeling quite satisfied with my piping, feeling that it flows and is melodic. The tunes I hum during the day are the tunes that I am playing.

I'm still not happy with the size of my repertoire, which stays stubbornly small, although it is now a small number of sets, and some individual tunes, rather than just a small number of tunes.

I am happy with an adjustment that I keep forgetting to mention: I've finally settled on the ideal length for the tubing, and have lost all the problems with resting my wrist and numb fingers.

I suppose I'm not happy with how often I play. The allotment isn't as much of a distraction as it might be. For various reasons I've moved from growing from seed to buying plants, and I've been putting off buying plants while the cooler evenings persist. We've been having rain, to, so there is not much to do other than harvest rhubarb and pull up weeds.

In the meantime I am being distracted by reading and by knitting. That little piece up there is the first part of a very large, very lightweight shawl, knitted in cobweb weight Shetland wool. I need to do a lot of knitting between now and September when the intended recipient is expected.

I did manage to play and record at the weekend, but somehow haven't got round to blogging until now. This is Dargai with its new companions. I'm not 100% sure that they go together. Next month I do intend to play daily and perhaps the more I play this set the more it will sound like a set, just as the combination starts to sound familiar.



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Adjustments

I had the zero sum game sussed this evening, I thought. I made a positive decision not to do more weeding at the allotment, conveniently forgot about various household chores that need to be done, and decided I'd cook and pipe. It looked as though cooking would win out at one stage as I cheerfully threw in artichokes and peas and ginger and rhubarb crumble alongside asparagus and ricotta tart, but in the end I found some piping time.

I thought I'd play Magersfontein as I've been humming it all day, but it didn't come to my fingers so I let it be. I adjusted my Dargai set by playing that first with Bee following and Flett to close. I've made a minor adjustment to Bee, adding a doubling to the second or third note in. I've heard others play it, fiddled around to find the sound I wanted, and threw it in. Every time I play this doubling appears. I think this is the first time I've voluntarily added a grace without having to first beat it into my brain (I say "voluntarily" because sometimes they appear of their own accord.)

The other adjustment was to do with my belief in piping as a cure for headaches. For stress headaches, certainly, but the kind of headache you get with bad light and a PC screen pipes don't help.

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...

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.

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.


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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.

One more time

Or 27 more times. I've been quite single-minded this challenge in sticking to the tunes I particularly want to learn or improve. Once or twice I've thrown in Flett, King or Home Town but mostly my playlist looks like this:

Arthur Bignold
Troy's Wedding
Miss Girdle
Shores of Loch Bee
Women of the Glen
Sound of Sleat
The Braemar Gathering

Recently I've been throwing in Farewell to the Creeks and Kilbowie Cottage, which seems to have drifted into my head again. I'm wondering whether the Cottage and Arthur might suit each other.

I like all of these tunes, I enjoy playing them, and there is enough of them to give variety over half an hour or so of playing, so it's been no hardship just playing these.

Despite ongoing problems with holding the pipes I feel I am making decent progress. Arthur, as with all 4 parters, is taking while to commit to memory. I think Creeks might get there first. I'm shaking off the tenseness in my fingers that was throwing the run up in the third part of Troy, random bars in Braemar and the not-quite-repeats in the third and fourth of Women. Bee is becoming more reliable, and everything is getting faster and I'm managing to improve the balance between increasing speed and lack of accuracy, although some thumb graces in Troy just vanish when I hit a certain speed.

It's been a long month and I am looking forward to having a break at the end, but, as ever, it has been worth the effort.

You've changed

I logged into Chirbit today, only to find they have gone for the same tedious web design as everyone else on the planet. It took a moment or two to remember my username and then I was in. The first tune I uploaded was The Braemar Gathering. Turns out it was also the last tune I uploaded, four months ago. Took a little bit of head scratching to find the bit that gives me the html to drop the link into here, but I got there in the end.

Now, I've not listened to this or the previous version since recording. I will have to compare the two. For this new version, even though it's now a tune that just appears on my fingers rather than only coming when I specifically want it, it still has some errors. There are phrases I snatch at, garbling notes together, although generally I am more relaxed than I was. I've lost the D grace on the low A to C transition. It was making my fingers tense and although I've managed to relax my fingers I've not managed to bring the grace back. I'm not sure about the speed I am playing at, whether it wants to race, or be a little slower. I actually had the dots in front of me, but once I know a tune they are distracting more than anything else.

Recording itself was easier than I've found it in the past, although I did have to ask the fan to remind me of one or two of the various steps. I feel that I had no real red button-itis. It's just a recording, not a performance, and if I fluff bits (which I do) then that's fine. I seem to have taken the pressure off recording. Even so, the tune isn't yet reliable enough to play in sessions, and it is partnerless with no idea at all which tune it might sit with.



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Take your partners

I've been enjoying more of Santa's bounty today, in the shape of Gary West's The Islay Ball. I can't remember now how I came across Gary and became aware that he is a smallpiper. He doesn't seem to have released many albums; this one is from 2001.
On one listening I'd say its's a mixed bag. There are SSP and GHB, which is good, plus a few whistles, which I don't mind. There are some cracking trad sets, including a pair of elegant border jigs, a stonking set of Irish tunes and old favourites The Mason's Apron and the Caber Feidh.  There is some nice cello, which isn't what you might expect with pipes, but works well.  On many tracks the guitars and bouzoukis are subtle.

I'm not sure of the point of the one song, which is not in a Scots style. I did listen all the way through and in future it will be my cue to hit the skip button. I'm sure it's good, but it really doesn't belong on a CD of pipe tunes. Many of the tunes are Gary's own compositions and none of them stood out on first listening... Hopefully they will grow on me. Having mentioned subtle the strings the Irish set (with the fabulously-named Hugh MacDiarmid's Haircut) has a load of strings and percussion, which adds to the fun, except the sound mix makes it sound as though they asked Gary to stand at the back and play, which doesn't seem right.

I'm working on the new tunes, adding graces. Some have appeared of their own accord, some slip in nicely, some I play over and over then when I slot the phrase back into the tune the graces vanish on the way. They may come back. I'm also still fine-tuning Women and Sleat. It's going to be a good set, when its ready. I've no idea what set pairings will come out of the new tunes as yet.

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.

Hup!

Kilbowie Cottage is coming along OK. I've been humming it, and in a controlled way, so I can stop it, or repeat it etc at will. The odd thing is that I seem to have the first and third parts... Listened to it several times on the way home and played it this evening. The first part is coming along nicely. Parts 2 and 3 are hesitant and part 4 not good at all, actually. But on the whole it's coming.

I've also been working on putting Heroes with Magersfontein. I think it will work: Heroes needs to be the first tune. Now I just need to cement the link in my head, so I've been flipping from the end of B part of Magersfontein to the opening bar of Heroes, over and over. I need to get the two running together as I hum them.

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.