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Hello!
Finally I'm at the end of a crazily busy summer and find myself with two weeks of creative time. I have lots to fill it with! So what's new on the site this week?

I've added the lesson for one of the tunes I taught at Halsway: Vals efter Johan Henrik Petterson.
I've also added the ensemble tune by Jonny that we played called Found Trio.
I added the bowing and fingering for Hälleforsnäspolskan, Polska efter Johan Skedin från Tärnsjö and Skålarna.

We had Symmetry on Tuesday and the video is ready for listening again/playing along with.
And the Jane Austen 250 Ball at St Swithin’s Church is also ready for watching/listening/playing along with! We have a break from balls for a little while now! But there are still a couple left this year.
I started a new Collections Lesson. This is for Thompson Country Dance Tunes. Currently only the one dance, but you never know when we're going to play more Thompson! Here's Lady of the Manor

I added Chevy Chase to Chapter 5 of the Scottish Smallpipe Tutor too.

It's already Monday - so the sooner I send this off, the sooner I can go and film some flute!
More soon!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
Despite being on the road again this week I managed to do a day of filming and two days of editing! So new things are coming!

I have added The Government Alert Polska lesson now so it's ready to be played by everyone! I've added the next trio to the Ensemble section and that's Found Tune by Jonny Dyer. I've performed this twice now and both versions are added to the page for you to watch and even play along with!

The next ball is uploaded and ready to watch/play-along with: The Hunsford Parsonage Assembly from the Jane Austen Festival on the 13th September 2025. We played The Thousandth in that ball and we've also played it at Symmetry so I've added links to these in that lesson and updated the articulations too. We also played Tuzzimuzzy - a nice simple tune that I taught at Halsway! It was a very pretty tune and Jonny felt inspired to write a tune to go with it and so we have The Bunch.

We had Symmetry last week and the video is now edited and up online to watch again. We also have Symmetry this coming Tuesday - so come on in!
I added March of the Daffodils to the tagelharpa course.
We added A Little Dance in the Night to Neil Stuart's dance page.

I'm now really late on sharing this update - so it's time for me to hit send. This particular update has been with me on many road trips as I process and upload and add grace notes too. Hopefully I'll get the next update out a little sooner!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
Today's update is from the M1 (avoiding the A1M - which is currently shut). We've had a wonderful Jane Austen Regency week this week with three balls in Bath. We only filmed two of them as the third and final ball included an amazing Steinway grand piano, but not our mixing desk (which is how we capture the sound). More about that ball later. We've had a couple of nights this week of touching base at home and heading straight out 6 hours later!

Even though we've not really been home since my last update, I have been working hard. Finally I have been able to edit and upload the Symmetry dance from the 26th August 25. I was also able to edit and upload the Winchester Regency Ball from the 16th August 25. Both of these have the music fro you to play along with. So far for all the balls this year I've been "cleaning up" the sound to remove the caller. But for the sake of speed, I'll only do that for specific tracks if callers need a particular dance.

Our third ball for the Jane Austen Festival this week was called The Rose Ball and everyone was asked to wear pink. (I only have one Regency dress and it isn't pink!) We thought that the theme of this was good enough that we should record these tracks properly. So you'll find all about the album on its own page here. We released it as a limited edited CD and onto BandCamp. I will be doing lessons and videos for this album in the near future.

On the Scottish Smallpipes we have the next lesson in Chapter 5: Theid Mi Dhachaigh.
In the ensemble section we have one of Jonny's trios - called Phylopolskan, it's from his lockdown album that isn't finished yet! This one is for two nyckelharpas and an oktavharpa.
We've added a tune to Neil Stuart's Dance page - A Chain of Dreams.
I added the articulations and a duo version of Vintage Puget.

Next week I hope to start work on the videos of the tunes I taught at Halsway and starting on the next batch of tunes for all the other instruments! Our next Symmetry dance is on the 28th September.
More next week!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
I'm still on the road! Today I am writing from the M5 (but by the time I'm ready to send this it might well be a completely different motorway!)

We had an incredible time at Halsway Manor. The concert is now available to watch in the Subscribers Extras section of the website. Enjoy! I came straight back and edited all the video footage. This is now all up on YouTube and added to the Resources page for the course. Next job is for me to film the lessons for the music I taught. The Government Alert happened on the Sunday at 3pm and one of our harpa players provided a very cool tune for the event which we filmed and released! It's called The Government Alert Polska by Ed Pritchard. I'll do the lesson just as soon as I can!

On the nyckelharpa I added a duo version of The Singi Sunset to the lesson page.

On the Scottish smallpipes we have Brudmarsh by Jonny. A lovely little tune - it might make a nice dance? I've also added the next lesson in the Scottish Smallpipe Tutor Chapter 5 added, Where Shall Our Goodman Lie.

I've made a new course called - Ensembles. I'll be putting ensemble music in there! Things that are for trios and more. I've started off by putting Barham Down and The Singi Sunset in there. We played this as part of the tutors concert last Saturday and I was asked for the music. So here it is! I'll be adding more ensembles as time goes on!

Rather than wait to add more to this page I'm going to hit publish right now! More next week when I'll be back on the A1 heading north! Hopefully I'll have had time to edit the Symmetry dance from last month by then! But we do have three balls and a medieval event to go to before then!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
This summer has been one long one on the road with very few days at home. A few random guests staying means that the recording/filming space get de-rigged. Things don't calm down again for a little while.So I'll try to clear the backlog of old videos that I never finished, so for a couple of weeks there is going to be a random trickle of odd things going up!

It is now less than a week until the epic weekend that is Harpas at Halsway - so full on preparations are in swing. There will be new videos going up from the weekend and as usual I am teaching some tunes from Småland, so watch out for the next batch of those!

I filmed quite a bit of the Scottish Smallpipe tutor back before we hit the road so we have Chapter 5 511 The Community Brawl added to the site. I also added the next section which is Chapter 5 Part 6.

We've added two more of the Alan Winston dance tunes: Dokis Island by Kendall Rogers and Spring Thaw by Patti Cobb. I also added a page for dances written by Neil Stuart. We play enough of Neil's dances at Symmetry to warrant making a dedicated page. I've started by adding his minor variation of Sheebeg Sheemore to it. (Thank you Neil!) A while back three more tracks got added to the Kitty Bridges dance page. (I forgot to put those into the weekly updates)

I added The Nudge (change tune to The Slip) and Prince Rupert's Socks (change tune to Prince Rupert's March) to the website. Cotton Cottage now has a duo video added to it.

I finally managed to get the Symmetry Dance edited from the 17th August, so that is up and ready to watch. (I still have one ball and one Symmetry left to edit, so hopefully one of those will turn up next week!)
More soon!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
We had an amazing time at Sidmouth last week. But our schedule was totally filled with dances and concerts, so there was absolutely no time for updates to the website. However I did do a daily #tunecam. I ended up with 10 during the week and then a bonus 2 once we got home. I've added them to a special blog entry so I don't clutter this entry up too much. You'll find that here.

One of the TuneCam videos was of Silence in the Rain - I have now updated that lesson to include a proper duo version and articulations as well as the live video (with dancers!)
New Ambient Waltz now also has a duo version and a TuneCam from Sidmouth added to it.
On the Moraharpa we have the final tune from Praetorius - Gilotte.
For the Scottish Smallpipes I've added lesson 506 The Partridge and the next lesson 508-510!

This week we're being medieval in the week, then playing for Contra on Friday, a Regency Ball on Saturday and then Symmetry on Sunday!
Hopefully another update soon!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
We had Symmetry this week and the video is ready for watching! It's been a busy week where I've recorded all the audio for a little Regency dance CD that we are going to have out for the Rose Ball in September. It's going to be quite a simple CD with no layering on - just me on flute/nyckelharpa and Jonny on piano. That was quite an intense three days of hyper focus on recording!

So what's new on the site this week?
On the flute we have Salamanca Castanets - I love this tune so much!
On the Scottish Smallpipes we have Chapter 5 No. 507 The Fancy Fool. I accidentally uploaded the wrong video - so next week I'll fix this and have uploaded 506!
On the Moraharpa we have Gavotte No 4!
On the nyckelharpa we have The Stranger Companion
We had some request tunes to be recorded for dance, so here are a couple of bonus videos: "Dance Tune #2" by Debbie Jackson for the dance Baggage and "Mando #3" by Larry Unger for the dance Open Skies.

That's all for this week! I suspect next week's update will either be late or merged with the week after as we'll be at Sidmouth all week and internet might be patchy!
Enjoy the summer!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
Last week was totally nuts! So of course I'm late again this week. We can't talk about what we did last Wednesday just yet - but as soon as it's released (September hopefully) I will absolutely spill all the beans. It was big!

So what is new? We filmed and recorded January Girl by Brian Jenkins and New Dawn New Day by David Kaynor and added them to the Dance Video Resources section of the site.

We had Symmetry last week and the video is now up and ready for watching and playing along to.
I added Zephyrs and Flora for the Nyckelharpa. I added a duo version to Find the Mole.
On Moraharpa we have Gavotte No. 3 from Praetorius!
On the Scottish Smallpipes we have a tune called The Whimsey.
On the flute we have The Bath Waltz - a nice little Regency Waltz.

We've just had Symmetry, so the video will come out in the next update - which hopefully will be this week!
Enjoy the summer!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
It's been so hot! We've been away in Stockholm, so this week we have another bi-weekly update! We went to the exhibition at the Nation Museum by Ernst Bilgren. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen, so I definitely recommend going to see it if you find yourself in Stockholm before the 4th October. Make sure you watch out for the tiny little paintings on the chairs too! And see if you can find the little musician in the picture above!

We have a lovely little waltz on the nyckelharpa - Linnéavalsen and also a Playford style tune called Always Love Thee More. We now also have a duo version of The Little Pard and I've added articulations to the waltz. I wrote that tune to go with the Dood Night Kiss.
I've started a little five part video series on some Gavotte's by Praetorius on the moraharpa and this is number two - Gavotte No. 2 Praetorius.
On the flute we have a lovely tune called Turning by Threes. It's a modern dance tune, but it's lovely and we're asked to play it quite a lot, so now we have the lesson with articulations and grace notes for it.
I have finally started work on chapter 5 for the Scottish Smallpipe tutor book. My first job is to turn it from the CDrom version into lessons on this site and then the second job is to re-film it. So here is Chapter 5 Part 1. (It's going to take me some time to get to the second job).

I am working on a summer of scales - I'm preparing it at the moment, so if you're up for a challenge buckle up - scales are coming!

That's all for this week! We have Symmetry on Tuesday at 7pm UK time. Hope to see you there!
:))
Vicki