I played my first Scottish Country Dance this weekend, thrown by the fiddle club and put on at the Glen Echo, MD town hall. The turnout among musicians was quite good - we had 24. The turnout among dancers was half that, unfortunately, so a couple musicians got up and joined the dancers on the floor.

The sets went very well, and we all had a lot of fun playing them. Some of the transitions were harder than others, but in all, the band sounded really good, at least from where I was sitting. The only group flub was when a couple people played a Strathspey only once before moving on to the next tune, when the dance called for twice. At that point, most of the band hesitated, wondering if they'd missed their cue to change tunes, and it threw the dancers. This incident revealed a weakness on my part. I was one of the ones who hesitated, even though I knew full well I'd only played the tune once. I should have just kept right on playing; another strong fiddler playing the correct tune would probably have lured the rest of the band back on track faster. So the lesson I learn is: 1) pay attention to what I'm doing at all times, and 2) don't let others' mistakes throw me, because that just compounds the problem.

I was flattered when Liz Donaldson (Elke's usual pianist) came up to me during the intermission and complimented me on the quality of my playing. To pick up one fiddler from a group shows she has a very good ear, and to be complimented for my playing in a crowd by a musician of her caliber was very flattering.

After the dance was over, I scurried over to Elise Kress' house for an Irish slow session. Unfortunately, I missed the repertoire workshop because of the dance, but the session was a lot of fun. I'm getting better at picking out tunes from ear in the middle of a session, and the slow session format really helps. I also got to publicly debut my tenor banjo for the first time, and it was very well-received. I also got to try out some variations in my tunes, and though there were a few stinky ones, some went off fairly well.

I'm ironing out the timing on Lament for Mary MacLeod on pipes from the recording I have, and my version is pretty close. I'm definitely going to need to order more reeds for the A 440 Hz chanter soon, though. I'm not sure if this one will last, since I was having problems with F going flat.