This Weekend

Another smashing success with the Maine Pipes and Fiddle Workshop. Ellen MacPhee and Ward MacDonald met us all in Mariaville and Blue Hill Maine to teach us the glory and honor of PEI and Cape Breton Style "good scotch music".

I showed up on friday night for some late night fun. Then Saturday was classes, then getting my car stuck in two feet of Mud (ah, I miss Maine). Then we had a great house concert.
Which finished with some lovely tunes had by all.

Sunday was more classes, a quick bite to eat with Ellen and Ward and then the weekend was over! Next one is scheduled for the weekend of october 23rd.

Future Piper Liam Pearson.

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.

Pastoral Pipes

Just wanted to post this interesting talk about Pastoral Pipes. I've been working on offering pastoral pipes for some time. Unfortunately I've had very little direct contact with any sets. If anyone has a set they'd like me to reed for them for free I'd much appreciate the chance to spend time with one.

chalumeaux

The idea of regulators for smallpipes came up again on Bobdunsire.com. The idea has spent a lot of time in my mind over the years. But I've long been against the idea of simply using uilleann style regulators, but with smallpipe bores, with a set of smallpipes. It would mean changing too much of the fundamental essence of smallpipes for it to work (for me). But this time when the idea came up, I thought about the Musette De Cour and it's "petite chalumeau". The Musette De Cour is a baroque (I think?) bagpipe of the french court. Basically a smallpipe for playing classical music with. And the petite chalumeau is kind of like a little northumbrian chanter, in that the pipe is stopped, which sits next to the chanter, and is activated by the free right thumb, and left pinkie. It usually plays about six notes, but apparently they are all very high pitched notes, most of them going above the range of the chanter.

With this sort of set-up in mind, it would be fairly simple to make a stopped second smallpipe chanter, the same length as the first (or not, it could be a D with an A or vice versa), that sat next to the first, that could play two or three notes activated by the thumb, and two or three activated by the pinkie. It would allow a smallpipe player to add simple regulator-like harmony to his or her playing. I think it would work very nicely. Imagine playing Hector the Hero, with baritone drone a-blazing, and throwing in seconds, all by yourself.

Unfortunately, this is one of those thoughts I have that makes me wish I had a rich patron that encouraged me to pursue this wild ideas. For now, I'll file this away for things to do when I retire. ;)

The Set That Got Away

I've posted four new pictures of a set of border pipes to the Old Pipes Gallery. Paul Roberts sent them along. They were a set of pipes being offered for sale some years ago, possibly in Australia. Apparently Paul just missed purchasing them, and never saw them in person. They appear to be 18th century. If anyone has any information about these pipes. Pipe up.