Tunes!

Okay, I think I can actually play a couple of tunes now. It's quite exciting to get to the point where I can go and have a crack at anything in Liestmann's section of introductory tunes and play them so that I can recognise that I'm playing more or less what's written on the page. It's about the same standard I was when I started having recorder lessons I think - only my actual ability to read music is significantly better now than it was then.

Whether my piping technique is actually up to that level or not is something entirely different though, it's quite possible that my increased musical literacy is covering up for that. There are times when my fingers just do the wrong thing, and there are a few moments when they start attempting recorder fingerings, although fortunately this doesn't happen very often because the whole feel of the instrument is completely different.

I think if I do continue with this piping business and get my own set though, I'd like one with a bit lower pitch. At about high F# and above, this set's rather shrill, and I've never liked playing hugely high instruments anyway, which is why I like treble and tenor recorders so much - and even treble goes a bit high really. Shame the bass isn't agile enough for some of the really good treble music, because being able to play it all an octave lower would suit me very well indeed.

But enough recorder ramblings. It may definitely be worthwhile investigating what it's like to play a D or C set.

Pressure stability?

Something approaching pressure stability is occurring in my piping. The drone's getting more constant, and I'm getting better at timing my use of the bellows to fill the bag at opportune moments. It seems - although this may turn out to be a delusion on my part or just a compensation for bad technique - that the way to go is to avoid refilling the bag on long chanter notes, because then any pressure fluctuation is significantly more audible than it is when the chanter's changing notes, partly because I'm also getting the hang of the idea that some notes seem to require slight pressure variations anyway.

That latter might be down to having a hire set of pipes that's presumably not in the best of condition, but given my experience with the recorder it seems that anything using a tube of differing lengths with discrete fingerings is going to require pressure variations to get the temperament right throughout the range.

Which perhaps answers why the high A is so sharp and unpleasant. Time will tell... that not's so extraordinarily unpleasant that I'm readily willing to believe in a minor chanter defect of some sort.

Tuning

I'm pretty dreadful at tuning. Sometimes I can hear when things are out of tune, sometimes I can't, and when I can I usually can't tell what's actually wrong - it just doesn't sound right. Oft-times playing in recorder groups I only realise that it was wrong when we get the tuning right and everything sounds great. At that point I think ah yes, that's what it's meant to sound like. Unfortuately I've not yet had much luck keeping the memory of that sound sufficiently fresh to let me do better in the next out-of-tune group. Even given a reference pitch to tune just me to, I still can't tell if I'm sharp or flat half the time, I just have to go up and down and see if I can hit the right spot.

Now while those days are slowly becoming less frequent (they still make up the majority, but I tune to the harpsichord much more quickly in my recorder lessons now), some days I revert completely to my pre-music-lessons self and am utterly, utterly awful. This morning I did it while I was playing the pipes.

I tuned my G drone, got everything nicely set with the chanter. Started to play. Everything sounded wrong. The drone note was utterly out of place, completely unrelated and disconnected to the tune I was just about managing to play. I tried mucking about with the pressure and got some improvement, but the irritating thing was that the drone still sounded (to my dodgy ears) to be in tune with both low and high Gs on the chanter.

Bizarrely, adding the high D drone to the mixture, something of an act of desperation, helped to reveal that there was indeed a problem, and the G drone was retuned to fit in. Then the D drone was retuned again... eventually I got something vaguely okay-sounding, but by this point I was tired and frustrated and my pressure control was all over the place.

I guess some days one just isn't meant to play. To ease the frustration I picked up a recorder and ran through a couple of Almands from a book of Renaissance dances. At least I can play something...

More noise isn't necessarily the same as progress

More noise can be fun, though. Yesterday I got around to playing again after a bit of a break with returning from my parents' after Christmas, and also after they came up and delivered my water manometer, which was far too large to take on the train with me. After a quick pressure check I unplugged the thing and decided to just try and play, and it worked out fairly well, although the same old problem with refilling the bag still manifests. This is to be expected, I'm sure.

I've also noticed that differing pressure has a very pronounced effect on the middle notes of the chanter. Particularly today I was finding that the middle D was going sharp at the slightest inclination, and by sharp I mean really sharp. However, once I figured out the cause I was able to keep some better control over it, and it usually only happened around bag filling time, where my pressure control is right out of the window anyway. That does seem to be the critical thing at the moment.

I also thought, just for fun, try opening up drone number two. I was playing simple pieces in G, so I had the low G drone going anyway. Opened up the high D drone and tuned it in (surprisingly easily, I must be getting a better ear or lower standards), then played for a bit. It was nice, but a little odd. Opening up the low D drone as well added a real depth and richness, although the bag empties at an alarming rate with three drones running.

I don't think I'm supposed to use the low D drone for G music, but I thought it sounded quite nice with some pieces. Presumably it'd work horrendously with others though... maybe today I just got lucky.

Pressure problems

My bag and bellows technique quite obviously sucks. While I can just about maintain a steady drone, when I start playing a tune all attempts to maintain a suitable constant pressure and keep the bag nicely full seem to fail, and inevitably things start to go horribly flat and out of tune. When I do manage to fill the bag up while playing, there's usually something of a pressure surge and so everything goes sharp for a moment, then flat as I realise what's happening and relax my bag arm, and then wavering somewhere back to the proper pitch as the bellows empty (and I direct one eye at the water manometer and see just how under pitch it's showing me to be).

It's a tad on the irritating side, especially when it comes as I'm starting to get the hang of playing the low keyed notes without causing strange squeaking noises.