Having given up (for now) on memorizing lots of tunes for session play, I've decided to broaden my repertoire of Scottish fiddling another way: by racing through the tune books as fast as I can, not memorizing tunes, but reading them to the point where I can play them at tempo, which I then do twice through, and then move on to the next tune. What this is doing is not broadening my personal repertoire, but broadening my appreciation for the depth of the repertoire, to get at least the diversity of tunes into my head. I should be through all the Fiddle Club books by the end of the year at this rate, and then I'll start looking at other collections, like Gow's or Fraser's. I think this is a very profitable exercise, because I'll get at least basic familiarity with a lot of music, I'll get a "feel" for the repertoire, and I'll vastly improve my sight-reading skills. At the same time, it's forcing me, at least for the slower tunes, to come up with ornamentation and expression on the fly. I hope to soon be able to extend that to Strathspeys, and then Jigs and Reels.

At the same time, Elke and I are looking at reels in the Cape Breton style, and applying the accenting patterns from them to a hypothetical primordial Highland style from which the Cape Breton style derived (and specialized). It's very interesting, and I think I'm becoming more comfortable with complex accent patterns as I do this.

I start back up on Irish fiddle this evening as well; I'd taken 2 months off to deal with competition season, and it's time to get back to it. So it's back to jigs, and short and long rolls.

On the pipes, I'm looking at Strathspeys and Reels again, though I'd like to take some time off to learn Lament for Mary McLeod too (a strikingly beautiful piobaireachd). I think I'm doing well, but I tend to "get lost" in a tune, forgetting when and where to add my pointing in places.

On flute, which I'd put down for a long time, I've got myself into the habit of just doing scales. Start with C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab; then G, D, A, E, B. This has been going so well, helping my embrochure immensely, getting me used to the keywork for all notes not in the keys of D or G, and giving me an exercise that will keep me up on flute without a lot of time devoted to it. I won't ever be a flautist, as in a session player, but I should be competant enough to learn a specific tune for a specific set and play it well.

I also ordered a cheap tenor banjo, which will finger the same as my mandolin, though with more of a stretch because of the scale length; I do practice the latter a little bit to keep my picking hand in practice, especially helped by some of Anders' tips (and the teensy but great pick he gave me).