Last night, I attended my first full practice with the City of Alexandria Pipes and Drums. Practice chanter for 50 minutes, short break, 2 hours of piping while drilling. It was totally exhausting (best workout I've had in years), but I think I'm picking up the drill quickly. Now to perfect my attack and cut-offs. Two beats isn't much time to strike in, throw the bag under the arm, and finger E. I need a lot of practice there.

I still haven't recorded my fiddle tracks, hopefully this weekend will be the charm. I'll probably add a hornpipe (Crossing the Minch) and a march/jig set that starts with Wee Michael's March and goes from there...

I did get an interesting idea when I was switching from my regular bridge to the one with the pick-up. While gradually tuning the fiddle back up, I set it to tune at DAEB, a fourth lower than the usual tuning. And while it barely made a sound acoustically, it sounded wonderful amplified, all the richness of a cello. So I'm thinking of getting an inexpensive viola, get the heaviest gauge C and lightest gauge C, G, and D strings I can find, and tune it an octave lower than the fiddle. An "octave violin", as analogue to the "octave mandolin". I think it'll sound great.