I was very disappointed with myself at my pipe lesson. The piobaireachd material, Struan Robertson's Salute, went fairly well. But when we got to the strathspey I've been working on for a year now, Bob of Fettercairn, I just couldn't do it. I was no better than I was a year ago, and worse than I was six months ago.

"Musically, it's clear you know what you're trying to do", my instructor told me. "But executionally, you're all over the place". So I'm going back to basics on this tune.

But that speaks to a general trend on my piping. My execution has sagged in a lot of ways. I've been so obsessed with competition and band repertoire and mindless repetition and getting time in on the pipes to build endurance that I've let my technique on non-competition tunes go to crap.

On the other hand, I'm much better when it comes to public performance, and playing in the band, and my blowing is somewhat steadier, and I now better how to tune the pipes. So it's not like I wasn't developing any skills at all in the last 18 months.

But I've got to go back to execution. And that means two things. First, I really need to stop gabbing with my instructor during the lessons; I'm there to work on technique and material, not chit-chat. More importantly, I need to reduce my bag-time. I need to drop back to an hour a day on the full pipes, and spend the rest of my practice on practice/electronic chanter. That's where I developed my (once) precocious technique, and that's where I need to go back to rebuild it.