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 . . . .