Now for a Reed . . .

Here she is. Robert Moulard's Pastoral chanter made by Chris Bayley. Supposedly this bad boy can be reeded to be fully Chromatic and get two full octaves, AND go from low A STRAIGHT to high A. We'll see what we can do. I should have a reed next week . . .



And here it is next to an A smallpipe chanter for comparison. The stretch is pretty BIG. But if you notice, the stretch from right ring finger note to the tonic (pinky finger note) is about the same as the smallpipe chanter.

First Step on the road to Pastoral Pipes

As I've mentioned before, I have an interest in making pastoral pipes. I'm now taking the first real step toward that goal. Robert Moulard has agreed to send me his pastoral chanter, for which he does not currently have a working reed, to see if I can successfully reed the thing. I won't be charging Robert of course. And hopefully he'll get a free reed or two out of the deal. This will be my first opportunity to examine a pastoral chanter. And my first opportunity to try my hand at making a reed (or twenty) for one.

It should be interesting. Although I have a fair amount of reedmaking experience, including making reeds for the pastoral pipes's offspring, the uilleann pipe, I will be working almost blind. I have never played a pastoral chanter before, and have only a vague-ish notion of how it's suppose to sound. Knowing how a chanter should behave is probably the most important thing to know when making reeds. Luckily, Ross Anderson has given me some tips on what sort of length and width the reeds that work in his pastoral set have. Apparently they're similar to a narrow bore D reed with a shortened staple.

The chanter's in the mail. We'll see what happens soon . . . .

Thanks to Andreas Hartmann-Virnich, for some great pictures of his ca. 1800 Border pipes. These pipes are up and running and being played. Here's what Andreas had to say about them, "They have very slender proportions, as slender as my David Glen miniature pipes, and they produce a somewhat thinnish drone sound with rich overtones. The tenors are both authentic but have different lengths (like several of my early GHB’s) and are difficult to reed. I believe that this difference was intended to produce a combination of two different sounds instead of a mere addition of two identical drones. Sadly this feature was disused after ca. 1850. I find the style of the ferrules particularly beautiful as they combine both bone and black horn. The button mounts and drone tops are marine and elephant ivory. Hugh Cheape suggested that it might be a Hugh Robertson set due to the tulip style of the bass. The difference in style to the tenors is intended."

The idea of two different tenors makes perfect sense to me, and is something I'll try out in the future. Also, the contrasting black and white "ferrules" is something I've never seen before, maybe worth a try on my pipes.