Downhill all the way

I seem to be getting worse - every day and in every way, in fact. I struggle to play a whole tune through (although I manage some quite fast it's all very much on the Eric Morecambe principle.) I'm thinking of naming my drones Whinge, Whine and Waver - I can hardly bear to hear them. Still putting too much pressure through on the bellows, not enough on the bag. Failure to remember tunes (I think because the drones or the bad pressure distract me from the tune).

Have decided to avoid the King - possibly to bury him under a car park for a few centuries - in the hope that by the time I dig him out again he's full rehabilitated.

The tune is Bonnie Galloway. Have I got a previous version? I should check. Wavery drones, mistakes, blah - at least the gracing sounds OK, although as it's minimal and simple you'd hope so, really.

Still - chin up - after all, tomorrow is another day.


Check this out on Chirbit

Lamentable Dragon

I decided not to cook and practise: it only ends in tears. I end up doing both things badly, having my mind fully on neither, and feeling rushed to get as much pipe playing as I can between checking pans, setting the table and so on. On the other hand I worry that if I leave it until after dinner I'll be too tired or feel it's eating into knitting time or something. I need, as modern parlance has it, to chillax about the whole "when to play" thing.

I played after dinner, but it didn't go well. The more I play the King the more hideously it falls apart. I can do less and less from memory and even struggle with the dots. It's a mystery and would probably be fascinating if it weren't so incredibly annoying. I'm also annoyed with the pressure. The fan said yesterday's recording sounded wavery on the drones. I think the drones were actually kicking in and out as I played, but it was mostly due to relying on the bellows for pressure: it can't be done evenly - that's what the bag is for.

Still relying on the bellows this evening, snatching at them in such a way that smacks them against my hip bone (ouch) and also involves pulling my neck muscles (no, I don't know how I manage that, either). All this distracted me from playing and although I enjoyed it and the half hour sped by I had problems with all the tunes I tried.

The recording is a lamentable attempt at The Boy's Lament for his Dragon. I've not dared to listen, but from the playing I would say the drones/pressure issue is horribly apparent. I'm having problems reading the first and second endings, because they are literally on top of each other and difficult to pick apart. I'm being thrown by grips. The grip on low A after the high A I've practised very slowly, which is fine. My fingers can go very fast at it but I think they are actually playing high A - low A - G - flip off the D finger...and then straight to A missing out that second G. I also had a panic not being sure that the grip was the same on the B as it is on the A. I'm ignoring the tourluaths entirely.

I did say I wouldn't necessarily blog every day, but whenever I play I want to moan talk about it. I'm also hopeful that there will be signs of improvement and that recordings will demonstrate that. At the moment I think I'm probably just flogging a dead dragon...


Check this out on Chirbit

Day five

It's day five of February and my attempt to play for half an hour a day. I was tempted not to. Tired and cross and late home again. But it's band night which means it was before dinner or lose my chance, and the fan is cooking, which frees up sometime. So I approached Morag in "let's get this over and done with" frame of mind, but as I played things improved and I felt less tired and less cross and began to enjoy playing. I did only do the 30 minutes but the first 20 I spent with an eye on the clock and the last 10 ran by.

Ran through various tunes. Drones slightly irritating, too much right elbow action, connector tube problems, but it was OK. Chunks of the King fell into place...others vanished from my brain. The fan helpfully notes that I am living proof that just because you can do a thing once doesn't mean you can do it twice.

Talking of doing things twice, the recording is The Eagle's Whistle for the umpteenth time. I need to go back and do a compare and contrast job. Just to recap, this is dotless because I learned this from the fan and the CD versions, not from dots. Still lacking in gracenotes. It's great to play - very soothing and somewhat hypnotic. It seems possible to go round and round in gentle circles with no end.


Check this out on Chirbit

Instead of a rant

I wanted to rant. About work, which takes up the best part of 11 hours a day and then gets into my head for the rest of the day and pushes the music out. About pressure - still wrong (drones OK though). About the blasted King, more specifically my inability to learn it. About the fact that I thought I hit record before playing the whistle twice through, but clearly didn't as it's not on the recorder.

Instead of which I am posting the third in my series of rambles on the subject of "why I listen to so much traditional music these days."

I've always had a very strong emotional, sometimes, even physical, reaction to music, and indeed, to sound in general. Very low rumbly sounds (a lorry engine left running in the street) make me feel anxious . Very high pitched sounds can make me feel pain. I get very uncomfortable listening to music that doesn't suit my mood and earphones piping music direct into my head is horribly intrusive. Music often makes me cry – and that’s everything from basic pop songs (the potency of cheap music) to grand opera (I can cry through the whole of La Traviata). Some music creates pictures in my  mind – so the second movement of Beethoven’s fourth is a lady in a blue silk dress against a hedge of dark green yews. Perhaps to protect myself against this onslaught of pictures, emotion and physical reaction I often listen to music only as a background – I turn it on and immediately tune out (I also manage this very successfully, and annoyingly, with the weather forecast most mornings). I can use music to block out other unwanted sounds, which is why I used to revise to music: I wasn't listening to it, I was using it to create a barrier against other noise, and the barrier itself I can somehow totally ignore.

The point is that music is, for me, a mystical, physical, spiritual sort of a thing. I've therefore always shied away from any form of musical theory, which I fear might spoil my enjoyment. Just as someone who has just fallen head over heels in love doesn't want to hear that actually it’s all just pheromones, hormones, serotonin and a genetic imperative to reproduce I don’t want to hear that it’s all down to minor keys or harmonic thirds.

Being a player of music – more seriously than the dabbling I've done in the past – has changed my relationship to it. I've needed to listen to it more attentively in order to remember tunes to play them, or even identify tunes I want to play. Reading music has helped me see the patterns that are there, which makes it easier to hear those patterns, because it sets up certain expectations. You know that a phrase is likely to be followed by something different, but we’ll then return to the first phrase, with a variation on the end. Careful listening allows me to pick out individual instruments, gracenotes, arrangements, and all of this adds to my enjoyment. I think I've mentioned here before that it’s a little like close reading in literature. I can read a well-written book over and over again because there are always so many layers I can be looking at: I don’t need to discard it the moment I know the plot – whodunit or whether the boy got the girl – because there is always so much more for me. Some books, and presumably some music, resist this repeated reading or listening, because there simply isn't enough material to work with.

So on the whole I think that playing an instrument has increased the ways in which I can interact with music, and therefore I can get more out of it. This has happened to traditional music because that’s what I play. I've actually not listened to much outside traditional music for a while, so it would be interesting to see if the effects covered any other genres. On the down side I can honestly say that I'm not moved to tears by any of the traditional music I've listened to since I began to play. Perhaps that’s the choice of tunes I've made, but  perhaps, after all, knowing how the illusion is created spoils it for us.

Too many notes

I've just scraped half an hour this afternoon, despite the fan being out. It's still feeling very tense, very had work on my elbows and shoulder; the drones still sound wavery. Still, I am enjoying it, and will have a cup of tea and probably go back to it.

Some good things to note. One is that I find that if I get stopped mid tune (because the connector flips out or a drone peg falls out) I can pick the tune up where I was interrupted - I don't keep having to take everything from the top anymore. Even trying to play along to the Eagle on my chanter the other evening I could pick it up and carry on - fall in step with the CD. It's like that moment when you stop having to do skipping on a long rope from a standing start and learn how to step into an already turning rope and just carry on.

The other good thing is that instead of relying entirely on memory for playing dotless - trying to remember finger patterns or sneakily visualising the dots (I still feel bad about this) - I've been trying to hum the tune and work out how it must go. I think I've already been doing this with the tunes I do supposedly know - when I get stuck I work through them, but I think I've only just noticed that.

I've not played the King for a few days. Tried it today and whole chunks are coming together, finally, although there are two bars in the middle of the A part which I'm really struggling with. The Eagle is coming along, but still just bare bones. I need to listen very carefully, and probably to the Ian McInnes whistle version as well as the Sea Stallions to get a feel for possible gracing.

Starting on some new tunes. The Boy's Lament for His Dragon (also known as The 72nd's Farewell to Aberdeen), and the Thornton Jig, otherwise just The Thornton. I was reminded of the Thornton yesterday evening. I had a tune in my head and hummed it to the fan , asking him to name it. We decided it was Coilsfield House, which has too many notes for me to play, sadly. It's also sad because half way through humming the Dragon I sometimes find that I've wandered into Coilsfield by accident. The fan says this can be a sign that two tunes would work together. We arrived at the Thornton because Coilsfield made the fan think about the Heilandmen, which is followed on the album by The Thornton. We've always been fond of word association games, and we seemed to have sipped into musical association.

Anyway - time for that cup of tea, and maybe a spot more piping. No recording as the fan took the recorder out to a rehearsal with him.

Something is rotten

OK - not actually rotten, but indefinably not quite right. Specifically my drones feel all wrong - as though they're not getting enough air through. Too much pressure in the system and not enough outlet. I don't know if that's down to having the drones blocked yesterday (when I dither over notes when trying to pick my way through a tune they wheeze and wail and put me off, so I shut them up) or the dehumidifier we've just bought to deal with the condensation (unwanted side effect of living in a Victorian property...although I think it's generally the damp atmosphere that the UK generally labours under). I've had this problem before, so it's probably just me, and I am sure it will go again.

I did try the Eagle again, and it's OK. The first half of the B parts - the higher section - feels too short. It all needs embellishment. I'm also struggling to do the second half of the B parts, which is ridiculous as they are the same as the second half of the A parts. But I am enjoying picking out a tune, not having to shed dots, but pulling the tune out of the air without dots. I want to do it with more tunes. I listened to Ossian recently and wondered about trying to pick out The New House in St Peter's.

Have also played Leaving Barra, Bonnie Galloway, My Home Town, Teribus and The Rowan Tree, which is my go to tune - the one I can most comfortably and reliably play, replacing My Home Town, which sometimes trips me up (why?) I can sit and play for quite a while and not have to get any dots out at all. I did need dots for Barra - I should play it more and shift it on to my dotless list.

Bare bones

Well, here we are in February, and not before time. January is my least favourite month and seems to last at least twice as long as any other. I'm starting as I mean to go on with February. I promised half an hour a day. I've managed an hour this evening - it helps that it's Friday and I managed to leave work on time and I got organised and went to Waitrose yesterday.

I started on the Eagle, fiddled around with the second part, but with limited success. Eventually got the fan to talk me through it, and I've sort of got it - well, the bare bones, anyhow. Recorded, for posterity. Not sure how playing both parts has taken me longer than playing just the first part the other day. A lot of hesitation and error in this, I guess.

Ran through some other tunes, too. Tried to record the Rocks at speed, but my fingers ran away with themselves and the tune went everywhere.

I've been tapping my fingers a lot - just to loosen them, or sometimes it just seems to go with tunes in my head. It's alarming other people - they think I'm drumming my fingers in boredom or frustration, so I've had to come clean and tell them it's sort of finger exercises for musicians. They clearly think I'm mad.


Check this out on Chirbit