Floating towards Flotta

Note to self - do not attempt to cook and play at the same time. It really doesn't work....

Trying Flett from Flotta today. It's been kicking round a while now, but I don't often play it. I was going to try other tunes as well, but then got really determined to play it through without dots, so I've played over and over - trying without, playing with, trying without again. Got there eventually - and I've got the recording to prove it! Except it is only the A part, and as soon as I got it right it was time for the Archers, so I stopped. Hope I can play it again.

Two recordings. One is me fiddling around between memory and dots. Can you spot which is which? The other, shorter, is me playing without dots.

The fiddling about version


Check this out on Chirbit

The finished version



Check this out on Chirbit

And there's more

It's grey, damp and not very light: welcome to the English spring. I've spent a lot of time on a sofa with some books thinking about playing... But the fan's gone out, which tends to make time drag, so I finally crawled off the sofa and managed almost an hour's practice. I should go back to playing every day - it wasn't such a hardship.

Anyway - I seem to have been humming The Battle of Waterloo for much of the day, so I dug out some dots and gave it a whirl. When the tune's already in your head you can play (bits) very quickly without dots. Flett also creeping towards a dotless state. Heights ... well, let's just say there's a bit of a landslip going on there today. Galloway, Banks and Home Town, and the King, of course.

Oh - I played without drones because I couldn't get them in tune. I must learn to do this without the fan, but it's playing a note and fiddling with drones at the same time that isn't easy. Odd how I used to think it easier to pay without drones or with only one or two going. Now I find it difficult to restrict bellows action to feed the chanter alone, and sometimes a drone peg will pop out under pressure (normally the middle drone, which is the one that wavers and whinges most).

(Eek - just realised I used this blog post title only a few days back.)

Long live the King

I almost called this post "best yet" or "Morag's triumph". We went out to a session yesterday and I wasn't quite sure about playing. It took a while for us to find a seat and I was angled into a corner and a little worried about my sister who had come along to listen but got seated elsewhere. But she soon got chatting to someone and I got chatting to a couple of the other musicians, so when I was asked to play I went for it.

I decided to live dangerously and go with the King. As I suspected they might a handful of people joined in. I managed twice through, with mistakes - some quite clunky big mistakes - but I managed to keep going each time and pick up the tune again. My birls were poor, just because my hands were shaking so much I couldn't make a clean G.

When I'd done the fiddler (who is in the band) pronounced it my "best yet" and the applause seemed quite enthusiastic. The fan says my extra practice has paid off. I suppose if I normally only play two or three times a week then I actually got a couple of month's worth of usual practice into February. Or maybe I've just moved up into the next stage of beginnerdom now that I've been playing almost 18 months, or I'm just losing my stage fright, or maybe it was sheer fluke.

I played once more. I tried humming tunes to myself and couldn't reliably hum the one I wanted to play, so I stuck with the Rowan Tree, because it's so reliable and just falls out of my fingers somehow. I played twice through and ended with a long note so people could tell I was stopping.

I do definitely feel that I could - and should  do better. But secretly I'm just a tiny bit pleased.

Ready made

Here is the last of the recordings I made last week. It's the King again. Like the others from the same day I speed up where I am feeling confident, but generally the tempo is even, I think. Some mistakes. A version from February (not so bad, but more mistakes than this versions) and January (slow, and lacking that marching gait, that swing, not to mention that considering I had dots it's not even that accurate) to compare with.

Today I've been working on the Heights, Troy (both still need work on the GDE on the triple As), Flett and Banks (which just gets worse and worse - it's the very simple gracing that throws me for some reason - its only G all through and I keep missing half of them). Also played the King and the Tree. I love the Tree: I feel I could almost drift off to sleep playing it, it's so soothing.

I've also been listening to Enlightenment again - in the car this time, with enough distractions that I can mentally block out the accompanying keyboards and focus on the pipes. I've enjoyed it more this time round. In style he reminds more of Vicki Swan than Iain MacInnes. I'm not sure if that't the repertoire or the arrangements or something else.

Morag has an outing without me tomorrow. She's going to school to help some children find out about traditional music. They'll be looking at her rather than listening to her. Hope she'll be OK.


Check this out on Chirbit

One I made earlier

This is another of those recorded a day or two ago. It's Teribus, which I really want to have on the back of Bonnie Galloway. I was listening to it so I could record its faults...but I can't actually hear too many. Tempo varies - I pick up speed where I'm feeling most confident. The D throws are clunky. I can't actually hear those grips that don't make it all the way down to G and only get to A. It's OK, actually, not bad. (And I've just listened to the version with Galloway and actually, although it lacks accuracy, it's in some ways a better version than this.)

By means of comparison here is a version from January (which doesn't seem that much slower, but perhaps less fluent, D throws less clunky, struggling to get through the tune more - this isn't so much better, maybe). And a much slower and more hesitant version (with dots) from November.

I didn't play Teribus today - Flett, Heights, Banks, Whistle, Tree, King, oh, and Troy's Wedding.


Check this out on Chirbit

Cheating

I went up to London yesterday. I went out humming the Heights and came back humming Cheek to Cheek. I didn't play at all...

Today I've been working on the heights again. I've noticed that my supposed GDE on the A's is actually GDG. I think G is just more natural - I play it a lot more often. So I've had to stop and watch my fingers and play it over and over. I know that on Teribus for the grips where I should be dropping right down to G I'm somehow only making it as far as A. Work needed there.

Also played the Rocks and the Banks and the King and tried to go round twice or more, not stopping when I made mistakes, but just going round and round. I think accuracy on the Rocks is improving, if I slow it down a little, but the Banks still needs work.

Towards the end I thought I'd just try a bit of Heights without dots and discovered that actually the first three parts I can pretty nearly do, which was a nice surprise. Then I found myself humming something familiar, wondering what it was, picking it out on the pipes...and realising I was playing Troy's Wedding.

The cheat is in the recording because I didn't record today and so this is one of the batch from Friday. Seemed a shame to waste them. It's the Barren Rocks of Aden, on their own. Also recorded 21st Feb with Bonnie Galloway when Galloway was OK although the tempo seems to vary a bit, and the Rocks are too fast for me to play comfortably - I almost immediately slow down and need to find my way, then I slur and elide notes and the tempo is shot. Also recorded on 29th December where I started very slow, speeded right up, slowed down, speeded up... Patchy indeed.

As to this version. More even tempo, but it still comes and goes a bit. Do you hear the awful wavery drones. Mistakes aplenty. Better? Actually - go back to this version (don't ask how long ago) and the improvement is big, isn't it?



Check this out on Chirbit

And there's more

I suppose I could have had a break from piping today, but I didn't want to. I even braved the blasted recorder and out of another batch of ten got an amount of growling, but no rude words. I just played round with a few tunes. I'm realising I have enough in my repertoire to play regularly for reasonable amounts of time and still have tunes that I haven't played for an age so I can ring the changes if I ever do get bored. Still working on timing for the Heights, reasonably pleased with it. None of it seems to be seeping in to my brain:  totally tied to dots.

Actually I salvaged four reasonable recordings today and I'm going for the Heights. It needs a lot of work but I have to keep remembering this blog is about me improving, which means posting the bad as well as the good. I was pretty sure I had posted it once before, but apparently not. In fact, looking over the blog for previous recordings I realised how rarely I've recorded and how many times I've recorded the same old tunes.

Over dinner the fan and I discussed, among other things, forms of meditation. I mentioned the feeling I get at the plot of being totally relaxed and engaged and the fan asked if I didn't feel that when when I played my pipes. Actually I don't because playing is still quite hard work and there's lots to think abut. But with the Whistle and the King I can see how it might be - I shut my eyes and just imagine the music and play the music and listen to the music and I'm almost in that space...


Check this out on Chirbit