Is it all pipers, or just the ones I come across,who seem to spend 5mins every 2 tunes, tuning various drones and regulators.
Surely they could at least get their instrument roughly in tune at home, like everybody else or are their squeaks and squawks
something we just have to live with.
Maybe with a name like big mouth you don't have to bother giving a personal description of yourself.
Apart from that, the subject of your discussion is impossible to take seriously, as I suspect you've not been round too many pipers. I've found most good ones at good sessions tune up once at the beginning, then maybe the odd tweak, and that's it....off they go.
So your discussion lacks the basics. We don't know who you are, where you're from, what you play, what level you're at, and so on, yet you feel it's ok to attack players of THE indigenous instrument of the tradition to which we adhere, so it wouldn't be appropriate for anyone to respond seriously. I suspect it's another Will Harmon wind-up, anyway.
Firstly.There was no personal description because when I submitted it it didnt work.That has now been rectified.
Secondly.My discussion might well lack the basics but it certainly seemed to attract a rapid response in defence of THE indigenous instrument.Surely the objective is to encourage discussion.
Good girl yerself, BM. I presume you won't be taking up the pipes then, unless this thread was a pre-emptive apology.
The rapid response is something I'm sure you'd be used to by playing Ladies Cricket, a very British tradition to uphold.
Bless
Lord, Lord...round in Denver, tuning the pipes are like hitting a moving target. Dirk starts off, and then as he goes it goes sharper, then it settles off. Our joke is: how long does it take to tune a set of pipes? A: Nobody knows.
Pipers hate playing here. Their reeds do the weirdest stuff. One piper literally poured a cup of water into his bellows before a concert. Another actually apologized in the middle of a concert because the weather was getting to his pipes.
But it's always worth it. I love playing with a piper. I love how the fiddle and the pipes sound together. The only thing that drives me up a tree is when he's showing someone how to cran, over and over and over again...
I play fiddleand have been known to fiddle with tuning at various intervals when playing... aside from that... Instruments with reeds... are the devil to tune! Esp. when the seasons change, the weather turns or when pigs fly... love the pipers because there job (in just playing the pipes) is way harder than anyone elses!
I remember reading some book about emmigrant pipers in the States in the 1930s (I think) who purposefully used to put their regulators out of tune so they could spend more time telling the tale/singing and generally hogging the limelight.
In the same book was a piper who played the mouth-blown variety, took the valve out of the blowpipe, but had the knack of stopping it with his tongue/cheek so no one else could play his pipes.
There is nothing inherent in the bag pipes that makes them difficult to tune. The double reed is a very stable device. Why do think every one in an orchestra tunes to the oboe. This thing about not being able to tune your instrument is yet another example of expectation in traditional music. It's expected to be hard, so it is.
An excelent piper freind of mine tunes his things back stage (two or three mins, inc regulators etc.), takes 'em on stage, has them sat on a chair for ages while he plays other stuff, pickes 'em up an hour later, straps 'em on and, voila, perfect.
"The double reed is a very stable device. "
Not in the uillean pipes I've heard - they seem to be quite sensitive to temperature. I would guess that the temperature and humidity in an orchestral hall would be much more uniform than in a smokey pub. It could also be something to do with the fact that more and more uilleann pipers are making their own reeds, and their standard of craftmanship isn't yet sufficient.
Paddy Keenan puts two long grass stems inside his chanter - you can sometimes see them poking out - which help to keep the top octave in tune. Apparently he got that trick from Leo Rowsome.
I agree with Conan. The reed in our piper's instrument is very temperamental and he gets his made by a top craftsmen. The humidity and temperature plays a very big part in how long it takes him to get in tune (or not).
I'll mention the grass stem trick to him and see what he says.
That's the point. It's expectation, not just in the musicians, but the "so called" top craftsmen also. (Listen to how out of tune Leo Rowsome was). Next time you get a chance, take a look at a well built oboe and compare it to your chanter. Can you imagine an orchestral oboe player asking if he could borrow your grass? (Ha Ha)
And the same is true of fiddles of course. We play cheep factory made strad copies and expect them to behave as such.
Paddy Keenan is using old wound guitar strings now, according to Tim O'Brien. The oboe is a wet reed instrument. The uilleann pipes are a dry reed instrument. They cannot be compared with each other in any useful manner.
the oboe players i've seen tend to spend a lot of time fiddling about with bits of rizzla papers (maybe you're right about the grass,michael!) and pocket knives/razor blades etc
god knows why orchestras tune to them but it could be because of the piercing tone that tends to cut through your skull like a knife through butter.
anyway,i like the sound of the pipes so i don't really care what strange rites accompany them.so there
In the course of an orchestral concert it's not uncommon for the brass and woodwind to go out of tune, sometimes quite noticeably, so a general re-tuning is often done after the first item on the programme. Another reason for the orchestra taking its pitch from the oboe is that it has a focused penetrating tone.
Trevor
You can't compare the oboe to u.p. The oboe player in the orchestra has his mouth on the reed (so she can adjust the tuning realtime) and also has an electronic tuner on his music stand, to get that one note (A=440) right. The uillean piper has several sets of reeds to worry about and is trying to get all of them to be in tune over a wide range (2 octaves for the chanter).
Someone told me once that the oboe is not an instrument, it's a religion. The uillean pipes are a cult.
Well, Eoin O Riabaigh told me that he thinks there's two kinds of pipers: the ones who tinker and toy and adjust, and the ones who just want to play the things. Somehow, I think it's within the realm of possibility that there are pipers who can just pick up the pipes and tune them once and have them be all right the rest of the night (maybe there's one, actually, I've never met any and Gill's is the first one I've ever heard of), and pipers who adjust all night long, and everything in between.
Oh, and there's no way to tune a pipe at home and have it be still in tune at the pub, as BM facetiously suggests. You have to take them apart to move them, and the reeds always move a little, meaning a re-tune wll shortly be necessary.
The wet and dry reed thing is not as distinct as you make out.
"Cold wind pipes", as they say in Scotland, don't behave that much differently than the highland pipes. And Irish pipes still get a certain ammount of moisture through the reeds from the atmosphere. Besides, one of the points of a dry reed is to make it more stable.
But the reel point is still that it is a combination of a lack of players skills together with poorly made instruments and reeds that are at fault.
A couple of years ago I was at the piping recital at the Willie Clancy Week. Paddy Keenan was listed on the schedule, but his flight in form the States had been delayed and he had not yet arrived. At the very last minute, he turned up with his pipes, straight from Shannon airport. Needless to say, he had little choice but to take to the stage. He apologised to the audience that he had not yet had a chance to tune his pipes, and set about tuning them there and then. Having half tuned one of the drones, he decided that he would not waste any more precious time and announced that he would play his pipes as they were. The result was somewhere between a vacuum cleaner and a cat being throttled with outstanding dexterity. But the audience loved it, because he was Paddy Keenan.
The moral of the story is, unless you're Paddy Keenan, tune your pipes before you play them.
I was talking to him after that performance, David. His excuse for sounding bad was the fact that the smell of his feet was putting him off! You can just imagine being stuck on that flight all day without a chance to "freshen up".
Actually to give him credit, he played some tunes with the drones switched off and they were great.
Maybe the moral of the story should be "change your socks before every concert"
I didn't write that poor piping was "a combination of a lack of .... etc". I wrote that poor pipers intonation was "a combination of a lack of .... etc".
And Zina, what do your wet and dry piping pals tell you differently? That pipes are inherantly difficult to tune? This seems to go back to what I said earlier, that it's down to expectation both in the makers and the players. Maybe the makers should take a lead on this and make (wet and dry) pipes that will stay in tune. Then the players will have to up their anty.
And then there is the expectation of the audiences, forgiving Keenan for sounding like a vacume cleaning cat just because he's Keeenan.
They tell me that you can't compare instruments with dry reeds to instruments with wet reeds, Michael, re: comparing a set of pipes to the oboe. They're two different instruments with two different sets of problems.
A guitar is different to a fiddle but they share the same tuning problems. And there is no inherent difference between a wet and dry reed, only that of degree. A dry reed is never completely bone dry or it would crack, and a wet reed is never saturated or it wouldn't vibrate.
And oboes and irish chanters are amazingly similar, and share all the same tuning problems:
The size, shape and position of the reed is critical, as is the little metal bit round the pipe reed that mimics the lips of an oboe player.
The possitions and size of the holes, obviously, but more important is the shape of the conical bore. It is this that makes the thing play true in the second (or higher) octave. Get this wrong and you have to alter the shape artificialy with a bit of straw or something.
You hear pipe makers talk about having to make their own reemers, and this is the problem. Their tolereneces are generally just not up to it.
I'll agree that some pipes/chanters are made better than others, that's pretty obvious, and all pipers don't play at the same level, as all oboe players do not play at the same level. However, I believe that it *is* inherent within the design of the pipes to be more difficult to tune -- an oboe player simply moves the lips (sometimes a fraction) about to get the result they want. The piper is stuck with the design on the chanter. And the differences between wet and dry reeds are a matter of whose looking at the problem -- to a piper or oboe player, there would be an enormous amount of difference between the reeds. To me, a fiddler, there's little to no difference. I still hold that you can't compare the two and come up with a reasonable similarity in order to make the statements you've been spouting, Michael.
Now if all the instruments were pretty much exactly the same, sure. Then we could whinge all we like about lousy pipers who can't keep an instrument in tune.
I suppose we could spread the word that Michael Gill thinks that pipemakers should regulate and standardize how they make the pipes, like oboe makers -- that'll make 'em sit up and take notice. Let's see if we can get them to agree on a standard, why don't we? That would be fun to watch.
But part of the charm of this stuff is that there are few set standards and strict rules. Otherwise, you'd have to abandon your position that this stuff is easy, Michael. You wouldn't want that now, would you? *grin*
Trying to make reeds, more like, Danny. *grin* Although Dirk always whines that he has a choice: he can practise as much as he feels he needs to in order to be the piper he wants to be, OR he can have a job and be able to afford a great set of pipes, but have no time to play them. Heh.
There is no standard shape for an oboe, like there is no standard shape for a fiddle. But each design of oboe is very carefully worked out, to a much greater tolerance than the vast majority of Irish pipes I've seen. I admit that there is a degree of fine tuning in an oboe players lips, but this should make the shape of a bagpipe bore more critical, not less. It's not a standard chanter that we need, it's greater standards in pipe making.
And I agree that one of the charms of diddly is that there are few standards. But over the past thirty or so years, one of the few "standards" in diddly music to develope is a greater sense of intonation. If you are one of those who are happy to listen to Paddy Keenan horribly out of tune, then I am quite happy to leave you dwelling in the past.
OK, diddly music is easy, and playing diddly music out of tune is even easier. But come on, allow us this one standard
... but I accept you meant and I accept as well a difference between poor intonation and poor playing (although tmo the first thing is a subset of the second) - and you might be more of an oboe expert than me, but I don
easy,get a good reed.i get mine from allen moller.my pipes always start of flat but after 10 mins they become true or thereabouts.learning to tune pipes is a science in itself.i spent about 2yrs of my life torturing myself dicking around with my reeds trying to put them in tune until i learned that the best thing to do was to leave them alone.reed cane has a memory and usually regains its original shape,its not a good idea to force something into a shape thats not natural for it.a good reed will always come true.the problem alas is that there are too many variables,but generally i think the rule should be if the piper is experiencing too many problems,get it checked by an expert so lets not menton regulators.hello conan.
"There is no standard shape for an oboe, like there is no standard shape for a fiddle. But each design of oboe is very carefully worked out, to a much greater tolerance than the vast majority of Irish pipes I've seen. I admit that there is a degree of fine tuning in an oboe players lips, but this should make the shape of a bagpipe bore more critical, not less. It's not a standard chanter that we need, it's greater standards in pipe making."
As they say in the southern parts of the USA, "them's fighting words, Michael!" I really don't know, and maybe you're really an expert in oboe making, pipe making and tollerances (). I hope you are, because it really sounds like you're making a grandiose statement about something you don't understand. Oh no, this never happens in an Internet discussion board!
Allright, let's see your instrument-making credentials, Michael! Go ahead, dazzle us!
In my humble three years of pipering, I'd say that the wet reed of an oboe and the dry reed of an uilleann pipes-chanter are very different, at least in what is required of them and how they react to their own unique environments.
Some uilleann pipes have problems with tuning in general, or remaining in tune once the piper has achieved such. The better-made uilleann pipes tend to remain in tune fairly well once achieved. However, with a sizeable humidity change (or even a slight one), the reeds will most likely be affected, requiring the piper to adjust them minutely in order to remain playing in tune. This is fairly common I think, and once I have my pipes in tune, if they go out of such, it takes me about 1-2 minutes to fix that -- and I tend to go *away* from the session when I need to do that so I don't disturb the other musicians.
Pipers
Pipers
Is it all pipers, or just the ones I come across,who seem to spend 5mins every 2 tunes, tuning various drones and regulators.
Surely they could at least get their instrument roughly in tune at home, like everybody else or are their squeaks and squawks
something we just have to live with.
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by B
Re: Pipers
Maybe with a name like big mouth you don't have to bother giving a personal description of yourself.
Apart from that, the subject of your discussion is impossible to take seriously, as I suspect you've not been round too many pipers. I've found most good ones at good sessions tune up once at the beginning, then maybe the odd tweak, and that's it....off they go.
So your discussion lacks the basics. We don't know who you are, where you're from, what you play, what level you're at, and so on, yet you feel it's ok to attack players of THE indigenous instrument of the tradition to which we adhere, so it wouldn't be appropriate for anyone to respond seriously. I suspect it's another Will Harmon wind-up, anyway.
Good Luck
Danny.
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Pipers
Firstly.There was no personal description because when I submitted it it didnt work.That has now been rectified.
Secondly.My discussion might well lack the basics but it certainly seemed to attract a rapid response in defence of THE indigenous instrument.Surely the objective is to encourage discussion.
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by B
Re: Pipers
Woooow!
Good girl yerself, BM. I presume you won't be taking up the pipes then, unless this thread was a pre-emptive apology.
The rapid response is something I'm sure you'd be used to by playing Ladies Cricket, a very British tradition to uphold.
Bless
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Pipers
Hmm, interesting thread you've got going here. Hey BM if you want to play a real instrument, forget the bouzouki, why not take up the saxophone?
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by Noah Treeman
Re: Pipers
Lord, Lord...round in Denver, tuning the pipes are like hitting a moving target. Dirk starts off, and then as he goes it goes sharper, then it settles off. Our joke is: how long does it take to tune a set of pipes? A: Nobody knows.
Pipers hate playing here. Their reeds do the weirdest stuff. One piper literally poured a cup of water into his bellows before a concert. Another actually apologized in the middle of a concert because the weather was getting to his pipes.
But it's always worth it. I love playing with a piper. I love how the fiddle and the pipes sound together. The only thing that drives me up a tree is when he's showing someone how to cran, over and over and over again...
Zina
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
I play fiddleand have been known to fiddle with tuning at various intervals when playing... aside from that... Instruments with reeds... are the devil to tune! Esp. when the seasons change, the weather turns or when pigs fly... love the pipers because there job (in just playing the pipes) is way harder than anyone elses!
lish
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by scaryakgrl
Re: Pipers
B
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Pipers
I remember reading some book about emmigrant pipers in the States in the 1930s (I think) who purposefully used to put their regulators out of tune so they could spend more time telling the tale/singing and generally hogging the limelight.
In the same book was a piper who played the mouth-blown variety, took the valve out of the blowpipe, but had the knack of stopping it with his tongue/cheek so no one else could play his pipes.
# Posted on May 11th 2003 by geoffwright
Re: Pipers
There is nothing inherent in the bag pipes that makes them difficult to tune. The double reed is a very stable device. Why do think every one in an orchestra tunes to the oboe. This thing about not being able to tune your instrument is yet another example of expectation in traditional music. It's expected to be hard, so it is.
An excelent piper freind of mine tunes his things back stage (two or three mins, inc regulators etc.), takes 'em on stage, has them sat on a chair for ages while he plays other stuff, pickes 'em up an hour later, straps 'em on and, voila, perfect.
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by ...
Re: Pipers
"The double reed is a very stable device. "
Not in the uillean pipes I've heard - they seem to be quite sensitive to temperature. I would guess that the temperature and humidity in an orchestral hall would be much more uniform than in a smokey pub. It could also be something to do with the fact that more and more uilleann pipers are making their own reeds, and their standard of craftmanship isn't yet sufficient.
Paddy Keenan puts two long grass stems inside his chanter - you can sometimes see them poking out - which help to keep the top octave in tune. Apparently he got that trick from Leo Rowsome.
Con
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Pipers
I agree with Conan. The reed in our piper's instrument is very temperamental and he gets his made by a top craftsmen. The humidity and temperature plays a very big part in how long it takes him to get in tune (or not).
I'll mention the grass stem trick to him and see what he says.
Geoff
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Geoff Pollitt
Re: Pipers
That's the point. It's expectation, not just in the musicians, but the "so called" top craftsmen also. (Listen to how out of tune Leo Rowsome was). Next time you get a chance, take a look at a well built oboe and compare it to your chanter. Can you imagine an orchestral oboe player asking if he could borrow your grass? (Ha Ha)
And the same is true of fiddles of course. We play cheep factory made strad copies and expect them to behave as such.
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by ...
Re: Pipers
Paddy Keenan is using old wound guitar strings now, according to Tim O'Brien. The oboe is a wet reed instrument. The uilleann pipes are a dry reed instrument. They cannot be compared with each other in any useful manner.
zls
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: brass from your oboe
the oboe players i've seen tend to spend a lot of time fiddling about with bits of rizzla papers (maybe you're right about the grass,michael!) and pocket knives/razor blades etc
god knows why orchestras tune to them but it could be because of the piercing tone that tends to cut through your skull like a knife through butter.
anyway,i like the sound of the pipes so i don't really care what strange rites accompany them.so there
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by biggus dave
Re: Pipers
In the course of an orchestral concert it's not uncommon for the brass and woodwind to go out of tune, sometimes quite noticeably, so a general re-tuning is often done after the first item on the programme. Another reason for the orchestra taking its pitch from the oboe is that it has a focused penetrating tone.
Trevor
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Pipers
You can't compare the oboe to u.p. The oboe player in the orchestra has his mouth on the reed (so she can adjust the tuning realtime) and also has an electronic tuner on his music stand, to get that one note (A=440) right. The uillean piper has several sets of reeds to worry about and is trying to get all of them to be in tune over a wide range (2 octaves for the chanter).
Someone told me once that the oboe is not an instrument, it's a religion. The uillean pipes are a cult.
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by glauber
Re: Pipers
Well,that seemed to put the cat among the pigeons
Danny, I dont have to play ladies cricket as I have a note from my mammy.
Con
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by B
Re: Pipers
Oh, was this one of those ever so friendly windup threads? Well, now we're warned, then, and will adjust our opinions accordingly. *grin*
zls
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
I knew it! Trouble is, BM is probably right, after all!
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Pipers
Well, Eoin O Riabaigh told me that he thinks there's two kinds of pipers: the ones who tinker and toy and adjust, and the ones who just want to play the things. Somehow, I think it's within the realm of possibility that there are pipers who can just pick up the pipes and tune them once and have them be all right the rest of the night (maybe there's one, actually, I've never met any and Gill's is the first one I've ever heard of), and pipers who adjust all night long, and everything in between.
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Zina Lee
P.S.
Oh, and there's no way to tune a pipe at home and have it be still in tune at the pub, as BM facetiously suggests. You have to take them apart to move them, and the reeds always move a little, meaning a re-tune wll shortly be necessary.
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
Anyway, What about these Piano Accordians...
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by B
Re: Pipers
They're usually in tune!
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Pipers
haha! love being in Asia... you never get to follow a thread in real time asam usually asleep!! haha...
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by scaryakgrl
Re: Pipers
B
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Pipers
The wet and dry reed thing is not as distinct as you make out.
"Cold wind pipes", as they say in Scotland, don't behave that much differently than the highland pipes. And Irish pipes still get a certain ammount of moisture through the reeds from the atmosphere. Besides, one of the points of a dry reed is to make it more stable.
But the reel point is still that it is a combination of a lack of players skills together with poorly made instruments and reeds that are at fault.
# Posted on May 12th 2003 by ...
Re: Pipers
A couple of years ago I was at the piping recital at the Willie Clancy Week. Paddy Keenan was listed on the schedule, but his flight in form the States had been delayed and he had not yet arrived. At the very last minute, he turned up with his pipes, straight from Shannon airport. Needless to say, he had little choice but to take to the stage. He apologised to the audience that he had not yet had a chance to tune his pipes, and set about tuning them there and then. Having half tuned one of the drones, he decided that he would not waste any more precious time and announced that he would play his pipes as they were. The result was somewhere between a vacuum cleaner and a cat being throttled with outstanding dexterity. But the audience loved it, because he was Paddy Keenan.
The moral of the story is, unless you're Paddy Keenan, tune your pipes before you play them.
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Pipers
So you say, Michael, however pipers and others have told me different, including those who play both wet and dry.
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
I was talking to him after that performance, David. His excuse for sounding bad was the fact that the smell of his feet was putting him off! You can just imagine being stuck on that flight all day without a chance to "freshen up".
Actually to give him credit, he played some tunes with the drones switched off and they were great.
Maybe the moral of the story should be "change your socks before every concert"
Con
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Pipers
Or fly in the day before, just in case? BTW, David, what a *very* graphic description, I laughed first and then knew exactly how it sounded...
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
Michael
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by crannog
Re: Pipers
I didn't write that poor piping was "a combination of a lack of .... etc". I wrote that poor pipers intonation was "a combination of a lack of .... etc".
And Zina, what do your wet and dry piping pals tell you differently? That pipes are inherantly difficult to tune? This seems to go back to what I said earlier, that it's down to expectation both in the makers and the players. Maybe the makers should take a lead on this and make (wet and dry) pipes that will stay in tune. Then the players will have to up their anty.
And then there is the expectation of the audiences, forgiving Keenan for sounding like a vacume cleaning cat just because he's Keeenan.
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by ...
Re: Pipers
They tell me that you can't compare instruments with dry reeds to instruments with wet reeds, Michael, re: comparing a set of pipes to the oboe. They're two different instruments with two different sets of problems.
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
You might try synthetic reeds... I hear they aren't as supceptible to the vagaries of the weather...
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by Pádraig
Re: Pipers
If p
# Posted on May 13th 2003 by Pádraig
Re: Pipers
A guitar is different to a fiddle but they share the same tuning problems. And there is no inherent difference between a wet and dry reed, only that of degree. A dry reed is never completely bone dry or it would crack, and a wet reed is never saturated or it wouldn't vibrate.
And oboes and irish chanters are amazingly similar, and share all the same tuning problems:
The size, shape and position of the reed is critical, as is the little metal bit round the pipe reed that mimics the lips of an oboe player.
The possitions and size of the holes, obviously, but more important is the shape of the conical bore. It is this that makes the thing play true in the second (or higher) octave. Get this wrong and you have to alter the shape artificialy with a bit of straw or something.
You hear pipe makers talk about having to make their own reemers, and this is the problem. Their tolereneces are generally just not up to it.
# Posted on May 14th 2003 by ...
Re: Pipers
I'll agree that some pipes/chanters are made better than others, that's pretty obvious, and all pipers don't play at the same level, as all oboe players do not play at the same level. However, I believe that it *is* inherent within the design of the pipes to be more difficult to tune -- an oboe player simply moves the lips (sometimes a fraction) about to get the result they want. The piper is stuck with the design on the chanter. And the differences between wet and dry reeds are a matter of whose looking at the problem -- to a piper or oboe player, there would be an enormous amount of difference between the reeds. To me, a fiddler, there's little to no difference. I still hold that you can't compare the two and come up with a reasonable similarity in order to make the statements you've been spouting, Michael.
Now if all the instruments were pretty much exactly the same, sure. Then we could whinge all we like about lousy pipers who can't keep an instrument in tune.
I suppose we could spread the word that Michael Gill thinks that pipemakers should regulate and standardize how they make the pipes, like oboe makers -- that'll make 'em sit up and take notice. Let's see if we can get them to agree on a standard, why don't we? That would be fun to watch.
But part of the charm of this stuff is that there are few set standards and strict rules. Otherwise, you'd have to abandon your position that this stuff is easy, Michael. You wouldn't want that now, would you? *grin*
Zina
# Posted on May 14th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
Why are there next to no pipers here to give us what they think....too busy practicing, maybe?
# Posted on May 14th 2003 by Rudall the time
Re: Pipers
Trying to make reeds, more like, Danny. *grin* Although Dirk always whines that he has a choice: he can practise as much as he feels he needs to in order to be the piper he wants to be, OR he can have a job and be able to afford a great set of pipes, but have no time to play them. Heh.
zls
# Posted on May 14th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: Pipers
There is no standard shape for an oboe, like there is no standard shape for a fiddle. But each design of oboe is very carefully worked out, to a much greater tolerance than the vast majority of Irish pipes I've seen. I admit that there is a degree of fine tuning in an oboe players lips, but this should make the shape of a bagpipe bore more critical, not less. It's not a standard chanter that we need, it's greater standards in pipe making.
And I agree that one of the charms of diddly is that there are few standards. But over the past thirty or so years, one of the few "standards" in diddly music to develope is a greater sense of intonation. If you are one of those who are happy to listen to Paddy Keenan horribly out of tune, then I am quite happy to leave you dwelling in the past.
OK, diddly music is easy, and playing diddly music out of tune is even easier. But come on, allow us this one standard
# Posted on May 14th 2003 by ...
Re: Pipers
You definitely wrote not, Michael ....
... but I accept you meant and I accept as well a difference between poor intonation and poor playing (although tmo the first thing is a subset of the second) - and you might be more of an oboe expert than me, but I don
# Posted on May 14th 2003 by crannog
Re: Pipers
easy,get a good reed.i get mine from allen moller.my pipes always start of flat but after 10 mins they become true or thereabouts.learning to tune pipes is a science in itself.i spent about 2yrs of my life torturing myself dicking around with my reeds trying to put them in tune until i learned that the best thing to do was to leave them alone.reed cane has a memory and usually regains its original shape,its not a good idea to force something into a shape thats not natural for it.a good reed will always come true.the problem alas is that there are too many variables,but generally i think the rule should be if the piper is experiencing too many problems,get it checked by an expert so lets not menton regulators.hello conan.
# Posted on May 17th 2003 by buzz
Re: Pipers
Ahhh, Michael, the old 'diddley is easy' thing. I almost thought you'd forgotten...
# Posted on May 17th 2003 by Nell
Re: Pipers
"There is no standard shape for an oboe, like there is no standard shape for a fiddle. But each design of oboe is very carefully worked out, to a much greater tolerance than the vast majority of Irish pipes I've seen. I admit that there is a degree of fine tuning in an oboe players lips, but this should make the shape of a bagpipe bore more critical, not less. It's not a standard chanter that we need, it's greater standards in pipe making."
). I hope you are, because it really sounds like you're making a grandiose statement about something you don't understand. Oh no, this never happens in an Internet discussion board!
Go ahead, dazzle us!
As they say in the southern parts of the USA, "them's fighting words, Michael!" I really don't know, and maybe you're really an expert in oboe making, pipe making and tollerances (
Allright, let's see your instrument-making credentials, Michael!
g
# Posted on May 17th 2003 by glauber
Re: Pipers
yeah discussion is great so could you stop whining and just play a few tunes.
# Posted on May 18th 2003 by buzz
Re: Pipers
In my humble three years of pipering, I'd say that the wet reed of an oboe and the dry reed of an uilleann pipes-chanter are very different, at least in what is required of them and how they react to their own unique environments.
Some uilleann pipes have problems with tuning in general, or remaining in tune once the piper has achieved such. The better-made uilleann pipes tend to remain in tune fairly well once achieved. However, with a sizeable humidity change (or even a slight one), the reeds will most likely be affected, requiring the piper to adjust them minutely in order to remain playing in tune. This is fairly common I think, and once I have my pipes in tune, if they go out of such, it takes me about 1-2 minutes to fix that -- and I tend to go *away* from the session when I need to do that so I don't disturb the other musicians.
*Jonathan*
# Posted on May 19th 2003 by j.hohl.kennedy