Chiff and Fipple Forums

WARBL ordered!
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png

I'm going to ask on the forums there which is the best option for most realistic Uilleann and other pipe playing, because I'm not sure whats the best. If epiper or one of the others is the most legit I'll drop the extra. Still much cheaper than buying any decent bagpipe.

I'm excited because now I can try out multiple other pipe types, and learn Uilleann (because I play whistle, is just the most logical). Where my big issue with normal Uilleann pipes are just that it cost an arm and a leg to play. And while I mostly just want to play the chanter, I'd still need to own at least a half set for the drones if I wanted them and because they look awesome. But the drones are the most expensive part, so I'd then be shelling out even more $ for drones I don't truly need. And then, I can only play with a D chanter. So this was probobly my best option. If I still play it in a year or two I can budget for a Uilleann starter set or other bagpipe type that I got to experiment with virtually.

How's your WARBL working out so far? I'm about to order mine shortly, was just waiting on the maker to add Swedish bagpipes to the coding.

For those going down the MIDI route note that it can be just as obsessive as whistles, but more dangerous to the pocketbook.

I've gone kind of off the deep end and got an Akai EWI, which is wind controller that allows you to play chromatically over 8 octaves. It also supports a lot of non-standard fingerings*, which can be fun to discover. They can make playing things a lot easier after you work them out.

But it doesn't use whistle fingering--it will play a minor scale instead of major, which took a bit of getting used to. But at least six fingers down is D, lol.

*each sensor adds or subtracts a certain number of half-steps and you can combine them any way you like. For example if you want to play D, Eb, F you could go:
xxx xxx
xxx 'xxx
xxx xoo

where ' is the "key" next to r1

But you can also play
xxx xxx
xxo xxx
xoo xxx

which is a lot easier.

My understanding is that some of the MIDI wind controllers have programmable fingerings, the user can program in any fingering system desired.

The problem I had when trying to play trad on a MIDI wind controller is they didn't have quick enough response time, so they would either ignore a gracenote, or turn the gracenote into a full-length note.

So it would be impossible for a piper or whistleplayer to play them using their normal playing style.

WARBL is pretty good for grace notes. You can set a number of the parameters such that it gets very close to whistle or chanter performance. Eg you can manually input overblow pressures, how many milliseconds the pressure is required to be above/below that threshold for a jump/drop, and a multitude of other things. And you can have 3 different sets of settings at a time.

I stripped the mouthpiece off of a whistle I didn’t like, covered most of the window with cloth tape so it wouldn’t sound, and put that on the body of the controller. Then I played with the settings for a good while. Now it plays a lot like a Susato D whistle - Except that much of the time I set the midi app that I use to sound like a concertina when I play it, because why not?

pancelticpiper wrote:My understanding is that some of the MIDI wind controllers have programmable fingerings, the user can program in any fingering system desired.

The problem I had when trying to play trad on a MIDI wind controller is they didn't have quick enough response time, so they would either ignore a gracenote, or turn the gracenote into a full-length note.

So it would be impossible for a piper or whistleplayer to play them using their normal playing style.

The Akai EWI has several fingerings: EWI native, Sax, Flute, Oboe, Trumpet.

It's amazingly responsive. There's an adjustable setting so the player can change how large the window is to capture a note. I don't know what the scale means but it goes from 1 to 25, with 1 being the most responsive. I've got mine on 7 and that makes it about the same as my technopipes. If I take my finger and swipe it quickly down the contacts it will register each one as a note.

I guess what it can't do though is register them as not-notes, and maybe that's what you're getting at. As quickly as you play them they synth engine is going to play them as notes, so you can't ever get the non-note type of "gracenote" you can get on whistle or pipes.

TapTheForwardAssist wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:48 am How's your WARBL working out so far? I'm about to order mine shortly, was just waiting on the maker to add Swedish bagpipes to the coding.

YES They fixed the forum so I can open my thread and see all the replies I missed haha. I like it, its pretty cool. I currently only have the Uilleann app that I have to borrow my moms Ipad for. I wasn't able to get it to work on the computer.

My issue with it isnt a real issue with it. Its just that because I'm not an actual piper of any sort I have no idea what realistic settings are. There's so many settings you can change, which is great because that means someone could fine tune it to actually play quite realistically. So over time I've tried to tweak it to make it as realistic feeling as possible but that doesnt mean much because I dont know what realistic is. But overall I do like it and think its a very good piece of tech. Eventually I'm going to get other types of pipes to try on it, I just havent used it a ton yet because I'm trying to improve my whistling more to get that more solid before I focus on more piping stuff.

By now you may have got yours, if so what do you think? And if you have been able to dial in realistic settings, I'd love a screenshot of them so I can copy them haha.