Summer is about over, it seems. It's cool, grey and damp today, and on Tuesday the fan's long summer break ends. But I don't mind: I have plans. I am going to play every day. I'm going to play the old favourites and work on any that have got a bit worn and faded. I'm also intending to move some new tunes and some that have been kicking round for way too long onto the "session ready" pile.
The new(ish) tunes are The Heroes of Vittoria, The Sound of Sleat and On the Ocean.
The tunes that have been on the learning pile for too long are:
Atholl Highlanders
Braemar Gathering
Troy's Wedding
Drops of Brandy
Miss Girdle
It's not that I don't know the tunes, just that I've not yet got that balance of speed and accuracy that I am looking for. I could add Father John to those. He's generally in good shape, but stubbornly missing the 4th part.
I'd also quite like to work on some tunes that I've given up on but keep finding myself playing by accident, often taking a bar or two before I remember what they are, that I can't really play them, don't much care for them. This list will include The Dragon, Teribus, Barren Rocks.
And the tunes I can play? Well, the goalposts are still all over the place on this one and my current definition of a tune I can play is a tune I can play comfortably at a session, reasonably sure that I can easily fudge as needed.
Ramblings of an easily distracted learner piper
Sunday, 30 August 2015
Sunday, 9 August 2015
My best side
From time to time I see adverts for diets. These normally involve two photos: a before and after shot with the after featuring the dieter either looking slim (or at least, slimmer) in a flattering outfit or wearing an item from their pre-diet wardrobe, holding out the waist band to demonstrate the difference. The before shot often seems to feature the dieter wearing their skimpiest, most ill-fitting outfit, maybe a bikini… I assume that these are the photos that finally made the dieter realise that the days of blaming puppy fat or describing themselves as having big bones had to end. I am sure the after photo is a matter of pride, but personally I feel I’d not want to look at my before photo, ever, unless to remind myself (having recovered a lost pound or two) exactly what the end of the slippery slope looks like. It’s embarrassing, surely, to be reminded of past failures, lapses, youthful idiocies and indiscretions: we like to move on.
I think this is one reason why I’ve been so bad at making the recordings that were the intended purpose of this blog, the reason for it being web-based instead of another in my pile of paper notebooks. Firstly I always want to have the best possible recording: not necessarily wanting the equivalent of a photo that makes me look half a stone lighter and three years younger, but at least not wanting the equivalent of a photo of me caught the hop, squinting at something, my hair unbrushed, spinach on my teeth…
Secondly, once I have got that snapshot of my playing, which I am always disappointed in from the outset, I find looking back at those embarrassing. Can that be me? Fluffing that phrase there, mangling that grace note, playing so very slowly? Even at the time I find the recordings hard to listen to and to listen to them after a period of time is just too much. So I don’t listen to them.
The third reason has always been that recording is reasonably time consuming and setting up the recorder, recording, mastering tracks, transferring them to Chirbit, linking them back to a blog post – which has too be written – all take up good piping time. It also takes some of my concentrations, breaks the flow of playing, of moving from one tune to another.
I think I should try though, just to remind me, if I have a day where I fluff a note or a grace note I’m happy with, how far I’ve come.
Thursday, 6 August 2015
Mulling it over
I‘ve been thinking for a while now that I should try again to play every day for a month. I seem to be very patchy with my playing at present. That’s partly down to the usual distractions and partly just feeling less need to play at the moment, maybe because there is less music around to inspire me now that the band has gone. When I do play daily it’s never as hard to fit it in as I think, the more I play the more I feel I want to play, and each time I’ve played daily for a month I’ve made real strides forward. Now I’m a more established player I expect that those strides will be smaller or less obvious, but even if it only means learning a new tune or two and getting my piping mojo back it will be worthwhile.
In some ways it isn’t a bad thing to have a break. I find I can pick up my pipes up again without feeling that I’ve gone backwards at all. Some of my tunes need a moment’s thought or a pause for adjustment, but in terms of speed some tunes seem to be faster after a break.
I recently read a discussion on The Session about coming back to tunes after a break, which suggested playing through tunes each day, leaving the ones that are still working, carrying the ones that need fixing on to the next day. This feels a bit restrictive to me: sometimes I am just not in the mood for a tune, although now that my repertoire is expanding it would be useful to brush up on the tunes that I don’t play often. Some tunes I play from time to time but never feel I’m playing as well as I’d want to, so that they are fit to be played at a session. I’d like to brush those up.
I’d also like to try some new tunes and I know from bitter experience that I never learn them as fast as I want to, and some never click for me, either because I never really learn them well, or because I somehow don’t enjoy playing them.
I don’t want to restrict myself with a specific plan. I never seem to follow plans, and I’ve never wanted my playing to feel like a chore, a set of things to do. I prefer to go with the flow, working on what I feel comfortable with and interested in at that time, having the space to be inspired, to experiment, to go with the flow. So I think I’ll keep it vague: I’ll play every day, I will aim to play everything in my repertoire at least once, I will have a fiddle with some new tunes. I’ll try to do some recording. Oh, and the chosen month is September.
Monday, 13 July 2015
Compromise
I sat down with the fan to try out On the Ocean again. The moment he reminded me of the starting note I was away. A part done and dusted.
The B part is proving trickier. Partly because it simply is more complex, more varied than the A. It's also at least in part the top note, using (for the first time ever) my extra key. Trying to grace that note, or to move between it and something - anything - other than the next note down is quite a tall order. Having all of my top hand off the chanter, other than my thumb against the key, feels distinctly odd.
The B is also tricky because the fan sometimes forgets the variation he has created for me to make the tune playable within the range of the pipes, and sometimes he updates and amends the variations as we go along. It did my head in, as they say. In the end, he played, explained and guided me, I played, and then I wrote down the notes I had played. So the A was born dotless, as it were, never having existed in any other state for me. The B started dotless, and now has dots, which I suppose I will use to learn from. It's not necessarily the best of both worlds, but it gets me out of a corner.
Now, I wonder what would sound good with The Ocean?
The B part is proving trickier. Partly because it simply is more complex, more varied than the A. It's also at least in part the top note, using (for the first time ever) my extra key. Trying to grace that note, or to move between it and something - anything - other than the next note down is quite a tall order. Having all of my top hand off the chanter, other than my thumb against the key, feels distinctly odd.
The B is also tricky because the fan sometimes forgets the variation he has created for me to make the tune playable within the range of the pipes, and sometimes he updates and amends the variations as we go along. It did my head in, as they say. In the end, he played, explained and guided me, I played, and then I wrote down the notes I had played. So the A was born dotless, as it were, never having existed in any other state for me. The B started dotless, and now has dots, which I suppose I will use to learn from. It's not necessarily the best of both worlds, but it gets me out of a corner.
Now, I wonder what would sound good with The Ocean?
Thursday, 9 July 2015
The downside of the dotless life
I may have mentioned that I've had Out on the Ocean in my head a lot of late, so I decided to learn it. It's quite basic, it's lively, it's Irish, people at the session know it...
The fan had no dots for the version he plays. He printed some from the session for me. They were all in keys I can play...but they all had too many notes. So the fan taked me through the tune until I could play it. The B part was a challenge as some of those extra notes had to be turned into other notes. I actually used my extra keyed note, and discovered that gracing on that is a serious challenge. I played phrases over and over until I had them nailed. And then...life intervened, the tune went out of my head, and I 've only just this evening had the opportunity to get back to my pipes. I asked the fan to hum the tune, then he went out. I picked up my pipes and...no tune. Totally forgotten. I googled. I found a version. Got it. Picked up pipes and...no tune.
The fan will come home later and I'll be able to ask him to take me through the tune again. Hopefully the tune will sink in, my fingers will remember and the tune will be learned. But what would have happened if I'd got the tune from someone in a session? Someone just passing through and not intending to return. Am I supposed to play the tune for several hours solid and thus remember it forever from that one time of playing it? Or does learning from ear only really work if you are learning the tune from a neighbour or someone who you see every month or week at a session? I think that next time I go through the tune with the fan I'll be noting the dots down and getting the best of both worlds!
The fan had no dots for the version he plays. He printed some from the session for me. They were all in keys I can play...but they all had too many notes. So the fan taked me through the tune until I could play it. The B part was a challenge as some of those extra notes had to be turned into other notes. I actually used my extra keyed note, and discovered that gracing on that is a serious challenge. I played phrases over and over until I had them nailed. And then...life intervened, the tune went out of my head, and I 've only just this evening had the opportunity to get back to my pipes. I asked the fan to hum the tune, then he went out. I picked up my pipes and...no tune. Totally forgotten. I googled. I found a version. Got it. Picked up pipes and...no tune.
The fan will come home later and I'll be able to ask him to take me through the tune again. Hopefully the tune will sink in, my fingers will remember and the tune will be learned. But what would have happened if I'd got the tune from someone in a session? Someone just passing through and not intending to return. Am I supposed to play the tune for several hours solid and thus remember it forever from that one time of playing it? Or does learning from ear only really work if you are learning the tune from a neighbour or someone who you see every month or week at a session? I think that next time I go through the tune with the fan I'll be noting the dots down and getting the best of both worlds!
Sunday, 5 July 2015
Great Expectations
It's funny that you define a goal, see a possibility, aim for it, reach it...and immediately, it seems, become dissatisfied with it. What looked from a distance to be enough turns out, on closer inspection, not to be enough at all, just a point on the way to getting somewhere that is still just out of reach.
I'm partly thinking about the tennis, of course. As Dustin Brown is quoted as saying in the paper today: "When I came to quallies, if someone would have said 'sign here for beating Rafa, making the second round and qualifying' I would have signed". But now, of course, it's not enough, because once he beat Rafa to go through to the third round he could see himself going through there, too, and suddenly it's not what he acheived that he can see, but that shining next round that he missed. I suspect Heather Watson and James Ward feel the same. They acheived more than they could have hoped for and all it does is hold out the possibility of more, and the disappointment of the failure to reach that.
Even when you do reach those shining Elysian fields and win a Grand Slam, or two, it's still not enough, because you want to do that again, and again.
It may be that this is because tennis is a competitive game, so that part of the point is always to be better than the person on the other side of the net. Part of it is perhaps the rewards. When you normally earn slightly less than it costs you to get to the tournament it must be such a relief to win a couple of year's salary in one week. And the better you do the easier it it to get into other tournaments: no need to qualify if your world ranking gets you straight in, and hopefully you'll be playing players ranked below you. Yes, life must become easier in all sorts of ways.
And yet. And yet there are players who slog away at minor tournaments, clambering through qualfiying rounds, hoping for wild cards, who in a career spanning years never make it past the first week of a grand slam. If it was fame or money or an easy life they were after they could have found easier ways of achieving those.
At the end of the day they must surely play because it is what they want to do, what they enjoy doing. And it is for themselves that somehow their best is never good enough, and acheiving something new is only a tantalising glimpse of more that might be possible if only they push on, one more time. It is, I think, a lot like playing music. Somehow there is always more to be achieved, more you could do, another round you could get to.
I'm partly thinking about the tennis, of course. As Dustin Brown is quoted as saying in the paper today: "When I came to quallies, if someone would have said 'sign here for beating Rafa, making the second round and qualifying' I would have signed". But now, of course, it's not enough, because once he beat Rafa to go through to the third round he could see himself going through there, too, and suddenly it's not what he acheived that he can see, but that shining next round that he missed. I suspect Heather Watson and James Ward feel the same. They acheived more than they could have hoped for and all it does is hold out the possibility of more, and the disappointment of the failure to reach that.
Even when you do reach those shining Elysian fields and win a Grand Slam, or two, it's still not enough, because you want to do that again, and again.
It may be that this is because tennis is a competitive game, so that part of the point is always to be better than the person on the other side of the net. Part of it is perhaps the rewards. When you normally earn slightly less than it costs you to get to the tournament it must be such a relief to win a couple of year's salary in one week. And the better you do the easier it it to get into other tournaments: no need to qualify if your world ranking gets you straight in, and hopefully you'll be playing players ranked below you. Yes, life must become easier in all sorts of ways.
And yet. And yet there are players who slog away at minor tournaments, clambering through qualfiying rounds, hoping for wild cards, who in a career spanning years never make it past the first week of a grand slam. If it was fame or money or an easy life they were after they could have found easier ways of achieving those.
At the end of the day they must surely play because it is what they want to do, what they enjoy doing. And it is for themselves that somehow their best is never good enough, and acheiving something new is only a tantalising glimpse of more that might be possible if only they push on, one more time. It is, I think, a lot like playing music. Somehow there is always more to be achieved, more you could do, another round you could get to.
Monday, 29 June 2015
Session statistics
How many musicians make a session? Last night there were just the three of us... luckily the other two are multi-instrumentalists, they have a shared repertoire, and the fan and the other guy are getting the hang of my tunes. We were eventually joined by a chap learning some songs, and he gave us a couple, which the other two gamely accompanied him on.
Normally at a sesson I get to play so few times that I have a choice of tunes. Yesterday, by the time I'd done My Home Town, Bonnie Galloway, King of Laoise, the Nova Scotia set, Dargai (without Loch Bee because it took me three goes to remember how to start Dargai so I didn't want to risk it), Magersfontein and Flett and Fathr John I felt I was running out of tunes. The fan advised repeating one or two, but that feels like cheating, like turning back and retracing your steps in a walk, which is a pet hate of mine. I know that my tunes are becoming more familiar to fellow sessioneers so that they are happier to play along, but I'm starting to get bored and feel as though I am churning out the same old. I need (and how many times have I said this?) some new tunes, a couple of new sets , something short and lively and easy to learn...
The other guy did say he was getting the hang of Laoise but wasn't sure how many parts it had... I had to admit that it's just the two: I played some "unauthorised variations".
Despite the smallness of the gathering I had nerves again. I tried remembering to breathe, tried picturing myself safely at home playing to myself, but I think it works best when I just try to listen to the music.
My Home Town we played through four times, at that fan's suggestion ("one more time!") And it was the tune that went best, with both of the others joining in and it felt good.
The audience was small, too, with most people sitting outside in the sun. Mostly we had just the one, later joined by two others. They wandered off, but came back before they left to say how much they enjoyed it. The other fan was barely two, at a guess, and utterly mesmerised by music and musicians.
Normally at a sesson I get to play so few times that I have a choice of tunes. Yesterday, by the time I'd done My Home Town, Bonnie Galloway, King of Laoise, the Nova Scotia set, Dargai (without Loch Bee because it took me three goes to remember how to start Dargai so I didn't want to risk it), Magersfontein and Flett and Fathr John I felt I was running out of tunes. The fan advised repeating one or two, but that feels like cheating, like turning back and retracing your steps in a walk, which is a pet hate of mine. I know that my tunes are becoming more familiar to fellow sessioneers so that they are happier to play along, but I'm starting to get bored and feel as though I am churning out the same old. I need (and how many times have I said this?) some new tunes, a couple of new sets , something short and lively and easy to learn...
The other guy did say he was getting the hang of Laoise but wasn't sure how many parts it had... I had to admit that it's just the two: I played some "unauthorised variations".
Despite the smallness of the gathering I had nerves again. I tried remembering to breathe, tried picturing myself safely at home playing to myself, but I think it works best when I just try to listen to the music.
My Home Town we played through four times, at that fan's suggestion ("one more time!") And it was the tune that went best, with both of the others joining in and it felt good.
The audience was small, too, with most people sitting outside in the sun. Mostly we had just the one, later joined by two others. They wandered off, but came back before they left to say how much they enjoyed it. The other fan was barely two, at a guess, and utterly mesmerised by music and musicians.
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