Life is full of surprises

We had an orgy of music at our local folk club in November: Emma Sweeney, Vamm, Anna and Mairearad, Breabach. Our folk club, quite fairly, I suppose, as we're in England, favours English Folk, so it was a welcome surprise to find so many Scots and Irish bands in the line up this season.

Anna has a good line in patter. She had an anecdote that required a Swedish accent, first checking that there were, of course, no Swedes in the audience. She had less luck with the French - there was a French man sitting (as she noted in a stage whisper to Mairearad) right in the front row.

During Braebach's set Calum noted they were about to play pibroch and asked if anyone was familiar with this. I obviously didn't shout up loud enough as Calum looked rather bemused and said he wasn't sure if that was a yes or someone's dinner disagreeing with them...

In the interval I did the fan thing and told JDM that I admired his solo CD. He seemed very surprised that anyone would have heard of it, seemed to think it made sense that I would be a fellow piper (he liked smallpipes, he said), but was amazed that I am not a lone piper in the South East. We have, I said, the Essex Caledonian, CADPAD, bands in Southend and Ipswich, and host the RSPBA London and South East competition each summer.

When Vamm were playing Catriona cheerfully said they had improved on three pipe tunes by playing them on fiddles. She did ask, laughingly, if there were any pipers in the audience. She was expecting silence, of course she was, but one voice piped up....

Vamm themselves are full of surprises. Their CD has an irritating lack of information about any of the tunes, but there is one that sounds rather Baroque-ish, and one that sounds as though it might be written by  Duncan Chisholm. Nothing sounds quite as you'd expect a couple of Scots fiddles to sound, but it all sounds very good indeed.

Just the chanter today, and more work on grace notes. Surprisingly I rather enjoyed it.

Rumpelstiltskin

Bad, bad day at work. I came home determined to play - on D, tunes I know. I sat on my little stool with my eyes closed and just payed...mostly tunes I know, but also Dargai kept popping up.

As before, I start playing, I wonder what it is, I decide it's Bee and start playing that instead...wonder if it's Magersfontein, and get very confused. After a while I realise it's Dargai and then I can play it. I need to know the name to play it, somehow: having its name gives me power over it, as in all good fairy tales. This isn't true for all tunes, mind you. I'm rather vague on the names of the tunes in the Nova Scotia set. Maybe it's enough to know the name of the set. A mystery, anyway.

But who cares about work, anyway, when you have a little velvet monkey to soothe the day away. 

In my end is my beginning

Mostly Balmacara and the Falls of Glomach this evening. Starting to get some of it by heart, inasmuch as I know when I've played a wrong note... I still can't hum either tune, or be totally sure which is which. I'm also having problems with seeing where the sections begin and end for repeats. Each section ends on a short note, which, of course, I am holding as a very loooong note as I hold it and try to work out where the beginning of the section is for the repeat. Not a problem you have when you play from memory, of course!

Also played Dargai. It could do with some more grace notes, but is coming on quite nicely.

Sticking to A and finding it slightly hard work this evening, but only for the bag: bellows and fingers both fine.

Give me a break

I thought I'd take time out from new tunes and the A this evening. Picked the pipes, wasn't sure which chanter was in, put the two together and decided D was in, rested hands very comfortably on chanter, pumped, pressed down on bellows...and realised I had A.

Still, A felt comfortable, so I played the Tree, Galloway, the Farewell, Flett and the Whaling Song, which all went fine, although the triple As in the Song were a bit sticky. Then I shifted across to D, played the Barry Shears set, Bee, Magersfontein, Home Town, and the Whaling Song again. Bee and Magersfontein still both a little unpredictable, but on the whole it was all good.

Felt a little fickle, though: A was so mellow and when I switched to D it felt a little harsh, a little thin.

(I wrote this on the 10th January and thought I had posted it, but found it this evening in my drafts...)

Back to basics

My day's practice was on the chanter. I dug out the Green Book and The Piper's Helper and I worked on GDE graces and grips. I rather enjoyed it and mostly stopped because the reed kept getting to water logged I kept having to dismantle the chanter to dry things off. It's not like a recorder where you can cover the fipple and blow, or a trumpet, where you have a handy water outlet. I'm sure all good pipers keep clean handkerchiefs in their sporrans for wiping a wet reed: I use the hem of my tee shirt, because it's less bother than going in search of a tissue.

I can't remember now where it was I read that you need, or generally use, fewer grace notes with smallpipes than with GHB. I've noted that graces I can do come out perfectly (chirrups, burbles etc) on A and badly (as stumbled together notes) on D. But I have become lazy, strip out everything except strikes, thumb graces, D throws and Gs. I feel I should vary my single graces more and make use of D and E. I also have a couple of tunes (Dragon, Highland Brigade) where grips would be useful.  Some tunes are too pared back, too basic without their gracing.

I rather gave up on working on gracing when I got Morag. The Green Book is full of dull exercises and dull tunes, and I have enjoyed myself much more picking tunes I like and trying to learn them. Willy, my one time tutor, was bemused that anyone would bother with books of exercises, although I suspect he used them in his youth. Vicky definitely recommended such exercises to me. I thought I'd given up that sort of thing, but right now feels like the right time to go back.

Mistaken identity

I felt reluctant to play today: I feel neither confident not competent at present and was rather relieved that the fan didn't feel inclined to venture out to out usual session. I played in A: Murray, Rocks and the Dragon. Then I played the King, then back to Murray, Rocks, the Dragon. I must work on grace notes.

When I am playing a tune I know the bellows and bag are better: playing a new tune I find I lose pressure, and everything comes to a halt, very quickly if I pause or dither, which I do often.

I had pretty much finished for the evening - skipped to the kitchen to put the pan on for the greens - and decided to squeeze in 5 minutes more playing time. I had a tune in my head, which I began to play. I've decided I can tell if it's a tune I know because if I've played it before I can envisage playing the grace notes.

Anyway, after playing a couple of bits with great confidence, and then hitting the rocks, I decided it was The Shores of Loch Bee. So I played the bit that was clear in my head, then though about how the Bee goes, trying to picture the dots, and played that, but it didn't feel quite right. Eventually I realised that I was playing the Heights of Dargai. The two did seem to work together, though, which hopefully bodes well for them being a set.

I'm not totally sure about the Rocks/Murray/Dragon set, just because it means moving from fast(er) (Rocks) to slow(er) (Murray). I must learn them so I can record them and hear how they sound. Maybe the answer is to play Murray/Rocks/Dragon - we'll have to see.

The others

As always happens when I select a batch of new tunes I take very quickly to some and others fall by the wayside. This evening I went back to some of the fallen: Gaelic Club, Captain Grant, Highland Lassie and The Portree Men. 

I played on the chanter only as the fan isn't well and had taken himself off to bed. Didn't go too badly and I managed to play for about half an hour before my lip started going and I felt I'd bothered the fan long enough. More work needed on timing and grace notes.