It’s been nearly two months since my last post and I really do apologize to the folks that actually followed my blog.  I don’t know how many of you there are out there, but I do feel I let people down.  That three weeks without lessons and the loss of any sort of structure in my life that came with Summer break along with a lot going on in my life with financial issues and a bunch of other boring things took its toll and my practicing and blogging took most of the brunt of it.

So I stand at a precipice.  Right now it begins to feel like an impossible task and I am afraid it would be like starting over.  Finding the time to practice was difficult but I tried, but now I wonder if I was really cut out to begin with.  I am certainly not musically inclined and I suppose it’s better to find out now than after investing in expensive pipes.  I have had a few set backs in terms of support from my family as well, so maybe those doubts are part of it… nagging me in the back of my brain despite how cavalier I might be on the outside about their opinions of doing what I want with my life.

I am also a bit afraid to try going back to my lessons after such a long absence.  I know they would probably welcome me back with a little ribbing and well-meaning scolds, but it is still a difficult idea to wrap my head around.  School is starting up again tomorrow and I wonder if a schedule will help jolt me back into my bagpipes practice.  I recently watched Monty Python’s “Not the Messiah” and they had bagpipers march out during two numbers and the crowd went insane and I had that proud feeling of someone who is a part of something so I really think it’s still in me… I just need to step up and make it happen again.  It doesn’t make it any easier knowing that.

I’m just now finally getting over this cold and to the point where I feel like doing more than just being a vegetable at the computer or in bed all day.  I still have this annoying cough off and on, but I’m to the point of being able to focus on my practice again.  So just another quick post to say I’m still here and still learning, I just had a bit of a Summer break as it were.  I’m hoping to be able to pick up my chanter and have it all rush back at me as if I’d never neglected it but we shall see tomorrow.  It just goes to figure that I’d be motivated to play after everyone is in bed.

These last two weeks have been really bad in terms of me getting in a lot of practice.  First I was swamped with the last two weeks of my Spanish accelerated class with big assignments or quizzes just about every day and then the day before that ends I catch a cold or something that has me coughing until I see stars.  To say my practice time has suffered would be putting it lightly.  I almost worry that not having my lessons for the last two weeks to hold me accountable has made it easier for me to feel like I’m too sick or busy to practice and this should not be the case.

So starting tomorrow I am making myself practice -at least- 30 minutes a day even if I cough my way through it.  I was wanting to hold myself to an hour before, and did until this wall hit, but that’s too easy to consider too long of a time.  I will shoot for an hour for normal practicing, of course, but when I have a horrible day or am in bed sick I want to have that minimum to meet which is more doable when stress or illness rears its ugly head.  That is also why I haven’t been posting as much, so I hope that will change as well.  I really enjoy the blog and I know there are people who actually enjoy reading it so I am definitely not giving up on it.

I guess in some ways I’ve hit a bit of a wall, sort of like writer’s block, and I need to push through it and persevere.  I feel like I’ve made some pretty good headway since I’ve begun, but it seems like I’ve been on the same tune for a month or more now and I guess mentally it’s making me feel like I’m just spinning my wheels.  There’s nothing for it but to push past it and soldier on because I won’t get past this point without the determination and practice it requires, but it still lies there in the back of my mind threatening to insert itself in my life at times where I am in a physically or mentally weakened state.  Oh… and it’s been over a hundred degrees and muggy for like three days straight now!  Heat never motivated me to do anything but sit in front of a fan!

Just a quick post to let you all know I’m not dead, I’m just really sick and in my finals week trying to buckle down and make my flu-addled brain concentrate on conjugating imperfect subjunctives and pluscuamperfecto something-or-others.  I already botched my oral test by telling my professor that I would try to bring harmony to the people of the world by using less water and cloth bags when I go shopping.  I haven’t really done much more than that in the last couple days and am kind of struggling to get my fingers to work to type this out at the moment.  So here’s to hoping Spanish is over Thursday… and here’s to hoping I can stop coughing long enough to get some practice in once the final is over.  That’s Eeyore by the way.  I am a bit of an Eeyore nut.  I was going to try to integrate bagpipes somehow but maybe next time.

I haven’t had a lot of time to practice and have only been just able to reply to folks on the boards for the last couple of days so I apologize for that.  But thank you for all the comments on my first bagpipes purchase, it’s really helped me out though it’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride.  Today was my last day of my second to last week in Spanish purgatory with next week marking what I hope is my last time ever having to take an exam in another language.  The accelerated Summer course will be over Thursday for better or for worse and I will have my time back and be able to really leap into my practice again with both feet and maybe just one thumb.  It’s not the end of college for me but I’m getting close, four more classes over two semesters and I’ll be a graduate.

I’m still pretty worn from this week and next week won’t be much better.  Oral interviews Monday, a quiz and review Tuesday, an essay and review Wednesday and then the final on Thursday.  But enough about Spanish!  I have still tried to get my practice in despite it all and while I wouldn’t say I’ve made any progress or groundbreaking surges forward save for feeling more comfortable not gripping the chanter like it was a lifeline, I have at least kept myself competent to the point I was at my last lesson.  I really need to buckle down before this next week is over so I can feel I’ve accomplished something, but I knew this would be a rough two weeks.

So in lieu of having a whole lot to say in this post, I thought I’d try my first poll!  I have no idea how these work so bear with me.  I figures since so many of us probably have a dream set, a set that we own, and then a set that we began with and have a soft spot in our heart for that I would let ya’ll have three choices.  I know sometimes it’s hard to choose!  Please bear with me as I am still pretty new to the bagpipes world and have probably left off some important maker of pipes.  Please leave a comment if you choose “Other” to let us know who it is!  (Looks like it supplies an “Other” category automatically, so ignore my misplaced “Other” which is obviously not as good as the other “Other”.)

On the advice of several of my readers I took a leap feet into the wild world of online bagpipes retailers.  Now, I of course know that you don’t always get quality when you get something that looks pretty and costs less than something else that is a bit more plain and costs more.  But now I am looking at what I know are quality pipes and am a bit astounded at some of the price ranges and differences.  I am looking at three pipe makers pretty seriously right now:  Atherton, Naill and Kron.  Of course school just threw a big monkey wrench into my plans by not giving me the grant they said they were giving me for my Summer class which I now owe $756 for by July 6th.

Is the waiting list for Atherton’s really 16 months?  I had heard 6 months a lot, but 16 is a bit ridiculous.  I’m a bit confused by how this works.  There are sites that sell Atherton pipes or you can buy them from him directly.  Do the sites that sell them still go through him and have them custom built or do they keep a stock and sell from that?  Atherton is top on my list, but I really can’t wait 16 months for my first set of pipes and I kind of want to get a quality set so I don’t need to just turn around and buy another.

Another thing that confuses me on Atherton’s, and most pipes for that matter, is the price differences.  The lowest priced Atherton pipes are almost as pricey as a mid to high range set of Naills from what I can tell.  Are these basic Atherton pipes really going to compare to the higher range Naills or are you paying mostly for the handmade by one person exclusivity?  And how do the low range Atherton pipes compare to the higher priced models?  Are they all pretty much the same pipes made with more expensive materials?  If that were the case then would the “MD – nickel and imitation ivory” sound the same as the “MD7 – Full engraved sterling silver mounts”?  I certainly see why sterling silver, engravings, and mammoth ivory would cost a lot extra.

So Kron and Atherton may have to wait unless I stumble across an insanely good deal without a waiting period.  I guess I’m just still not certain what to look for in terms of the individual parts on the pipes.  It just seems to me like the price differences are for the embellishments, but I could be totally mistaken.  Starting to think the Atherton and Krons may have to wait until I’m a bit more proficient and already have a set of pipes so that the waiting period isn’t so bad.  I suppose time will tell.

I’ve been doing my practice without my thumb on my right hand grasping the chanter and it’s actually a bit difficult.  But at the same time it almost seems like the fingering is coming easier, though I do keep missing the holes.  I didn’t realize how much of my fingering was done in relation to where I held my thumb.  At any rate, it seems like just a few lessons without my thumb in play have made me appreciate being able to use it all the more.  Because of that it seems like it makes me more conscious when I do use it and I tend not to abuse the luxury of having my thumb on the chanter anymore, being much more careful about gripping too hard with it.  So I think a week or two playing without it may be just what I need.  I’ll need to get some tape for my High-A so I can do the same with my left hand.

So it’s been about a week since I did the comparison of the National Piping Centre Tutor CD with the one found in the College of Piping Green Book.  Someone from the National Piping Centre actually left a comment on my blog pointing out that there was a fix for the problem I was having with my CD.  This really impressed me, that they would stand behind their product like that, so I promised I would amend my comments once I checked out the fix.  It didn’t work for me, but I did find out some things while trying to get it to work.  I e-mailed them a week ago to be sure I had exhausted all of my options before doing this follow up, but as I’ve received no reply I will go ahead and do so now before this is all a distant memory and my addendum to it would be moot.

The CD has a patch which I installed and it did not make a difference.  They then have another patch on the National Piping Centre website which you really will not find unless you know to look for it.  Even then it took me nearly a half hour to track it down here.  Again, that they would even make these patches is something I like to see.  It means they’re trying to fix these problems rather than just letting them go.  I applied this second patch and there was still no change in the behavior.  From what I can tell it is Windows Vista/7 having issues with how locked down they both are in terms of giving software permission to access your computer.

I tried various things to get around this, even trying to look into the code to see if I could change it there but to no avail.  I moved it out of my Program Files directory since that can be like Fort Knox on Windows now-a-days and still it didn’t work.  But I did find the following work around that made it a bit easier than it was for me before.

First, I copied all of the video tutorials to the Tutor directory on my hard drive.  This made it so I didn’t have to keep bouncing back and forth between the CD and the location on my drive.  Secondly, there is a file called exercises.htm in the Tutor directory when you install the CD.  If you open this file rather than the TutorBook file that is meant to open it, then you can actually access the links without the permission errors.  This means you have to use the TutorBook file to use the PiobMaster files, but since the site said they didn’t work at all on Windows Vista/7 I am just glad that they do indeed work even if they do throw up some errors here and there.

This is probably all a bit confusing if you don’t have the CD, but hopefully if someone reading out there does have it and is experiencing the same issues then this will help.  Again, I tried to exhaust all of my options to get this to work as intended by the National Piping Centre before posting my findings, but after a week of no reply to the e-mail and me having done everything I could on my end I thought it was time to do so.  Again, I really do like the content on this CD and I think the PiobMaster tunes are the best thing since sliced bread.  It is worth working through these inconveniences to use it.

I’m on Chapter 15 of my new tutor and according to it, Chapter 20 has me playing bagpipes.  It’s a very simple introduction, just learning to blow into them without the drones, but that seems to be the chapter at which point they expect a student to have a set.  It seems pretty crazy to think I am that close to getting my pipes, and I do understand that this is a very rudimentary beginning lesson, but still.  It looks like the next lesson involving pipes is Chapter 27 when they go through playing the pipes with the drones.  How about you instructors out there?  Is this the point where you’d agree to someone buying a set of pipes or should it be further down the road?

Now I know not to get too excited about this, especially considering my slow progress lately, but I am hoping once my class ends that I will have time to really tackle these new lessons and get them down.  I also wouldn’t really have the money for a set until November or so, but if you think about it that really isn’t that far away.  So should I be looking at pipes and seeing what I want or is it still pretty early in my lessons to even be considering it?  It would certainly be exciting and motivating to have a set of pipes begging to be played in the corner of my room.

Then I have to decide if I want to brave eBay or get a new set.  Everything I’ve read seems to point toward the latter, but it looks like you could get some really exciting deals on vintage or even newer pipes on eBay.  Of course you also have the chance of getting taken or buying a bad set somehow.  Anyway, for now I realize it’s all pipe dreams but… still exciting!

I had my lesson today and it went a whole lot better than last week.  Mostly thanks to Kevin telling me there were no double C’s off of E in “The High Road to Gairloch.”  That’s why it was so difficult for me to do last week!  I was completely dropping the Low A that came between the E and the double C and my hands were just not used to that maneuver.  So when trying it during my lesson I just could not do it.  I continued beating my head against this problem until today.  Apparently I had it so ingrained in my mind that this was the way to do it that I just never realized I had that Low A missing all this time.

My instructor said I did a lot better this week, but said I am still having issues gripping the chanter too tightly which I am.  I know this is a problem but I just can’t get myself to stop.  He suggested I relax and play the tunes very slowly over and over until I can naturally speed up.  I tend to try to play them right away at speed and it apparently causes me to not only grip down really hard on the chanter, but I also take the bars in choppy bits instead of a smooth full measure.

He also suggested that I try removing my thumbs from the chanter, at least the thumb of my right hand.  With Gairloch I could remove my left thumb too and just tape up the High A because it’s not used at all in the tune.  It’s going to be really odd to play like that, but just messing around doing it tonight I also noticed it enforced keeping my fingers straight.  So this might be doubly good to try.  He even suggested laying the chanter against my chest and getting some sort of plastic tubing to blow through from the hardware store… I think I’d turn into an act worthy of Youtube with such a setup.

We had a young boy come in today for lessons.  He and his father were apparently attracted by their day in the park so it worked.  I got to be helpful and show them where to get their tutor book on the cheap.  If we get many more people in we’re going to have to make some arrangements on how the lessons are given, but the more the merrier I say.  All they really need to do is gauge how well you’re doing and show you how to not do the things you’re doing wrong, set you on the right path, then you get a week to go and practice that.  You can’t expect more for free and I certainly don’t.  I’m just thankful I have them.  Speaking of… no lessons for the next two weeks!  This might end up being a blessing seeing as how my accelerated Spanish Summer class will be wrapping up over the next two weeks and I’m sure it’ll get crazy toward the end.

I’m glad I don’t have that new chanter I wanted because I’d be tempted to snap one of them in half… okay, not really, but I’m frustrated a bit.  I just cannot, for the life of me, get this Double C from E to go smoothly at all.  I can do the Double C alone.  I can do the Double C from Low A.  But it’s like I just freeze when I try to execute the Double C that I need for “The High Road to Gairloch” and I don’t really understand why.  I feel like a deer in headlights.  I’m sure it’s all mental and I just need to let my fingers get used to the movement and lead my brain instead of trying to force it the other way, but it’s still disconcerting.  I haven’t had this problem before… though if this is the worst hurdle I have to jump then I’ll be lucky.

I’m going to try to just practice the movements for an entire practice and see if I can drill it into my head.  I’ve spent most of the week going back into the National Piping Centre manual so I am just getting back to my Double C work tonight.  For some reason my cheeks hurt almost right away tonight, but it could just be part of the frustration.  So I’m going to go ahead and practice just plain Double Cs, then move to adding the G grace note to the plain double Cs and tomorrow I’ll try moving to it from other notes.  I think that’s the only way I’ll be able to get past this.

On a side note about yesterday’s College of Piping vs. National Piping Centre post, I received a comment from the National Piping Centre saying they have a fix for the CD on their website.  I located one such fix and still no luck, but I’ve sent an email to make sure I’ve done everything right.  So I’ll keep folks abreast of that and update with a few workarounds I found in my attempts to fix it once I know I’ve exhausted all of my options to get it working as intended.