You win some

The fan was a bit late home this evening, and, as often seems to happen when he's late, I was able to leave early. Still, it gave me a bit of piping time, unhurried by dinner on the hob.

All my tunes were there, including Flanders. Bellows were awkward again, so that I have to shrug them round my body as I play. I don't seem to be leaning my wrist on them, but I get tingling and numbness in the little finger of my right hand. I also feel as though my piles are slipping down, and in fact they sometimes do slip and then stock and drones press uncomfortably on my front.

Despite this I got the buzz this evening, and the chanter felt alive under my fingers. It doesn't seem to affect, or be affected by, how I play, but it does gladden my heart.

Andy has been winning some. Hope he can avoid losing some.

Click

Just as I was beginning to feel that perhaps a break from piping would be nice, everything clicked. Bellows were comfortable, well out of the way of my wrist. Drones (mostly) sat high and left the bellows alone. I got the buzz! Various bits of Arthur Bignold fell into place. My fingers were fast and furious and (mostly) accurate. I played new tunes, old tunes, tunes from The Piper's Delight which I had on my music stand having discovered (thanks to pipe tune search) that it has Farewell to the Creeks in it.

Still listening to Skippinish in the car. Still loving it.

Making a stand

I try not to think much about posture, simply because it was something that I used to have to think about too often. My mother seems to have spent most of my formative years poking me between the shoulder blades with the injunction to "stand up straight, child", only varied by "sit up straight". The only thing I remember my ballet teaching saying was "head up, bottom in, tummy in", and when I acquired a new violin teacher I remember her opening salvo being "I don't like the way you stand..."

I do sometimes suggest to the fan that his playing might be improved if he didn't hunch over his fiddle while sat on an armed chair, which pins his elbows to his sides. Perhaps it is my aversion to thinking of my own posture that has stopped me realising that if I don't sit up straight then my drones drop onto the stock, and my hands come in close to my body, making me more likely to rest my wrist on the bellows. Not that this moment of enlightenment helped this evening when I found it difficult to get comfortable.

I've been dreaming a lot of my pipes recently. I don't have problems with posture, bellows, wrists or anything else in my dreams. In fact, last night, in a real throwback to my adolescence, I dreamed I could fly, and all the time I was flying I had my pipes in my arms. I'm not sure what an interpreter of dreams would make of this, but I wonder if it's linked to yesterday's session, when I made plenty of mistakes, but did not have one moment of stage fright.

Thigh bone connected to the hip bone

I'm still trying to find a way to be comfortable and this evening nothing worked. It occurs to me that the advice I've seen and been given to wear the bellows as high as possible isn't helpful. The bellows surely need to be adjacent to your elbow, and where that sits depends on the relative length of your arms and body. Actually I see that pipe makers Richard and Anita Evans recommend having the bellows  just above your right elbow.

Wearing the bellows low I am still resting my forearm or wrist on the side, which hurts, because I press, rather than rest, the arm to get at the chanter. Looking at picture of other pipers most hold their arms well clear of the bellows. At least, small pipers do,  Uilleann pipers all seem to lay their forearms along the bellows...

The bellows also slide around my waist, but I don't think I fancy pulling the strap much tighter. However I am definitely using the bag to control air flow better when the bellows are sitting lower. And setting the bellows lower, to stop me continuing to push the outer half down, is what started this whole thing in the first place.

I'm not sure that looking at other pipers is helping. I think that everyone will hold their pipes in a way that suits the size and shape of their instrument and their own body. It's a very physically intimate instrument in some ways, being cuddled into your body on each side and the drones at the front. There is a way for the two of us to fit together, the monkey and I, without damage to either of us. We'll find it eventually.

Comparing apples and pears

I put my tablet on a higher surface this evening, which means I've got a better view of myself playing, but it makes it harder, of course, to compare with yesterday's footage.

I felt today as though the drones were sitting too low. The bellows strap was loose so my bellows kept working their way around my waist. The strap was cutting into my arm above my elbow. I also had some problems with my wrist resting on the bellows uncomfortably. The chanter was somehow in the wrong place so my fingers kept missing: it's a bit like typing with the keyboard off to one side, nothing is quite where you are expecting it to be.

On the plus side my left arm ached, and I think the reason is that I've been working the bag more than the bellows, which is good. I suppose it's also good that despite everything I managed to play tunes, shoving the bellows around, angling the chanter, hoisting bits up and pushing other bits down while I played.

I need to play like this more, try videoing myself a few more times, probably look at footage of other pipers to see where everything is sitting in relation to everything else.

I've labelled this with the now little-used label whinge, but despite the list of things that aren't right I am quite happy, and sure I'll find the perfect tube length soon.

Getting the measure of things

Still playing, although not so often as I was, but not blogging much.

A few days ago I received a 10" piece of piping from Ian Kinnear. I calculated that 10" would be the absolute maximum required to allow me to wear the bellows low so that they sit under my elbow, so that I don't push the outer side of the bellows down, giving me enough leverage to gently, evenly and fully open and compress the bellows, but not forcing me to rest wrist or upper forearm on the bellows, cutting off circulation and feeling. At the same time I want the bag tucked high under my left arm, again to give control over airflow, but also to make  it comfortable for me to reach and hold the chanter. Being female, and with a generous helping of bust, I also want to ensure that nothing is getting squashed in the middle.

Removing the existing tubing wasn't easy (I'm keen not to cut it in case it turns out to have been the ideal length all along). Brute force was the answer in the end, and getting the new tubing on was greatly aided by the tiniest smear of washing up liquid at the fan's suggestion.

I found I could play at once with bellows low, bag high, and 10" in between. I suspect that it's like driving. Once you can drive it's most comfortable to drive one's own car set up in a particular way, but if push comes to shove it's perfectly possible to drive a different car, or one's own car with the seat further back than usual or the steering wheel higher than usual, or an extra 3 adults in the car...

I felt as though it would be useful to see how I looked, but we only have small mirrors set at a height for checking hair in the mornings. So I went hi-tech and videoed myself on my tablet. Looking at the resulting footage I can see:

1. I look a lot like my sister;
2. When I play I look like I'm about to cry (the fan says he doesn't think this is normally the case);
3. My fingers move mysteriously on the chanter and it's often hard to tell which fingers are moving. This seems to me to be a good thing;
4. I can't be totally comfortable with the tubing as when I press the bellows I execute a sort of Mexican wave of hunching first the bellows shoulder then the bag shoulder;
5. I may be kinking the tube a little;
6. It looks as though I am not pushing down the outer side of the bellows at all;
7. My hands looks relaxed on the chanter.

I think now I need to persevere, play like this a few times, and then if I feel it's not quite right and can't get rid of the Mexican wave, then I need to shave off half an inch and go through the whole process again...

Mostly playing The Women - seems I'm a tad obsessed. The fan says it's stuck in his head, too.

No women or heroes in Magersfontein

Those pesky women still hadn't reappeared by this evening so I flushed them out with the help of the dots. B part still needs work to get it into my musical memory.

Since they were there I tried to introduce them to Magersfontein or Heroes, but no mattter which way  I tried I couldn't make a pairing, far less a threesome. I even threw in Flett, but that was a non-starter as well, so after my initial flurry of excitement around sets I am back to a pile of stubborn singletons.

After that Bonnie Galloway, Loch Bee, Braemar. I am trying to take this last nice and slow to check I have notes and timings all in the right place. It sounds, at a slower pace, rather naked without much gracing.

It was one of those evenings where the chanter literally buzzed in my hands, always a really good feeling. I have no idea whether it's to do with temperature or humidity, or is just my imagination, nor do I know what, if any, effect it has on the sound.

I had to stop mid way to rearrange various items in and out of the oven. When I came back the buzz was still there but the bellows jammed themselves on my wrist, my right thumb seized up, and Troy came out as a bit of a mess.