Tuesday, September 14, 2004

 

The Devil's Tailors - Finding our "One"

I got the spend the last week with my guitarist-to-be, Anders Johannson, with the putative purpose of rehearsing sets for our pending band. I confess that I came less prepared than I'd like, but I think Anders also mostly wanted to hang out (when his clients weren't distracting him). But we did get two great rehearsal sessions in, and as Anders put it, "This week, I thought it was most important to find our 'one' and get the first set really together. After that, everything's a breeze". And we did that in spades. We noodled about with several sets of tunes, but really started cooking on a set that includes When the King Came O'er The Water/Tommy's Tarboukas/Tam Lin and raised the roof on the set that includes Coilsfield House/The Athole Volunteers' March/Caledonian Canal/My Only Jo and Dearie/Lady Mary Hay's Scotch Measure, the latter of which will be our show-stopper. It was all very encouraging, and we plan to get together again in November, at the latest, to work up more sets. This is going to be a very pyrotechnic band, and we're going to make a point of digging deep into the repertoire.

Anders also heard me practicing my competition piobaireachd during my stay, and Thursday night, he approached me with the following suggestion - that we end some festival sets with a short piobaireachd on the Highland pipes, possibly on an A chanter, and as I sustain the final note, he will launch into a guitar intro for the final set, into which I will join him on fiddle. I'm all for this plan. The non-pipers I've played my piobaireachd for have all loved it, and as long as I can keep the tune under eight minutes, I think they'll sit through it without squirming.

In other news, Matthew Williams offered me a gig to play with Jiggernaut in Memphis in two weeks, since both their 1st and 2nd string pipers were going to be in Annapolis that weekend. I had to decline, firstly because I don't think I'm quite ready yet, and secondly because I'll be at the New Hampshire Highland Games. But it was very flattering, and I think I'll ask Matthew for the sheet music and such, so that if it does come up that they need a piper on short notice, I'll be able to fill in and feel comfortable doing it.

I also now have whistles/flutes/fifes in low D, low G, low Bb, middle C, D, Eb, F, and high G. Now I just have to come up with places to use them, so I have an excuse to practice! I have been practicing scales on my flute, from Ab major up the circle of 5ths to B major for the last week, and not only am I slowly becoming comfortable with the keyed notes, but my embrochure has really improved. This has finally inspired me to start playing scales on fiddle, something I've needed to do for a long time, again, from 4 flats to 5 sharps.


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