Flett from Flotta

Not going too badly today. Flett from Flotta coming on slowly - played here with dots, but I can do chunks dotless. It's a bit slow... (the playing, not the learning. The learning seems to have speeded up. I play tunes over and over and I look at the dots and try to see patterns and break them down so I can see which sections repeat, which almost repeat). I still find that one tune will knock another out of my head, especially where the tunes are similar in some way, or share even very short note patterns. Flett keeps knocking Bonnie Galloway for six. They both begin with E... On the other hand something suddenly caused The Rowan Tree to crawl out of the woodwork. I'd forgotten I was ever learning it, haven't played it in ages, and there it suddenly was. I see I am still actually playing very simple tunes - the sort that you can find YouTube footage of 9 year olds playing, faster than me and altogether better than me. A while ago, when I was reading The Big Music, I got a bit distressed by one of the appendices. It shows a piping grading table, and it runs like this: complete beginner, learner, lower novice, novice. Yes - that's right - you get to the fourth stage and you're still only a novice. At the time it seemed very mean, but I suppose it actually expresses how slowly you learn (or how slowly I learn) and how much there is too learn.