Jori heaped a bunch of new tunes on me before the holidays.

Two marches and two Jigs!

Colin's Cattle is a nice little retreat march in 3/4 time and Mairi's Wedding is a simple 2/4 march.  I'll need to start working on my birl's though, ugh.  I've managed to skate by with birl-less tunes, but now I'm going to have to suck it up and jump in.

The Jigs are; Cutting Bracken, a very nice and lively 6/8 Jig, I really like the rhythm in this tune I can't wait to get going with it!  The other Jig is "The Glasgow City Police Pipers" another snappy tune and I'm looking forward to it as well.

I'm off to do 10,000 birls (it's a tricky operation!)

Have you ever seen the movie by Steve Martin called "The Jerk" ? If you have seen the movie then you may recall one of the early scenes with Steve sitting on the porch with his "family" and him trying to clap to the beat of the music they were making.  He was a total spaz and definitely had "no rhythm".

Some times I feel like that.  My instructor Jori assures me that EVERYONE has a built in rhythm and you just have to find it within yourself.  I sure hope so, because I'm more than just a bit spastic when it comes to rhythm, it takes me a while to pick it up but once I do get it, it is fairly solid.

One of the techniques Jori has me doing now is to clap out the rhythm as I'm listening to the tune and reading the sheet music.  When I do that process over and over and then transition to the practice chanter I seem to get a grasp of the tune much quicker.

My hope is that over time that my internal rhythm machine will be more natural and automatic than it is now, I'm pretty confident that it will, as long as I keep working at it.