double chanters

[pancelticpiper]

A bagpipe losing it's drone has, afaik, happened only once in musical history - the Cabrette - and is happening right now for the 2nd time - Djura-Gaida

Another possiblity is the Scots Highland pipes. It's odd that a number of early pipes seem to have two tenors only, and as I recall Joseph MacDonald wrote in the mid-18th century about a region of the Highlands where the pipers "laid aside the great drone". In this way, these pipes violate the common European pattern of bagpipes having a bass drone only, and other drone(s) when present being smaller drones to harmonically support the bass.

And having a redundant tenor drone, that is having two drones playing the same note, is rare also. People have speculated on a possible connexion with Danish pipes which might also have had two tenor drones only.

But in any case by the early 19th century Highland bagpipe competitions were requiring the use of three drones, so the bass returned to stay.

[ZdF]

Zampogna Molisana lost its highe bordone from makers in Scapoli. Once they made a modified low drone to has more notes, top drone is not always concording with harmonic motion. So that is now 4, at least, bagpipe that lost drone in history of pipe.

[Ciarameddaru]

Some pipers in the Sicilian "a paro" bagpipe tradition only play with one of the three (or in some cases two) drones. In the case of a 3 drone set up they play with the middle drone and plug the other two. The other two simply serve for decoration. Alan lomax noted this during his field recordings he made in 1954. This can be read about in the liner notes of the Sicily Collection CD. In fact there are several Italian traditions that have dummy drones on the pipes such as the Scapoli pipe mentioned above. The interesting thing about the Italians, is that when they "lose" a drone, they only abandon the functionality of the drone, but keep the physical pipe remaining as decoration.

This is how the piper who made my pipe plays. He plugs the bass and soprano drones from the inside with a piece of cane where the reed would normally go. I remember when I got the pipe I told him I planned on playing all three drones and we got in a debate about this. He seemed to think that was unnecessary. Regardless I play with all three drones . Sounds much better.

"There is a big bagpipe, made of the skin of a whole sheep - with four pipes - two of which are played - one is a drone and one is a dummy."
Alan Lomax, notebook, July 1954 Maletto (Catania)

[pancelticpiper]

In many Scottish piping circles, the middle tenor drone is also a dummy. It's an actual drone, but plugged off. Many good pipe bands do this. It's felt that it increases the bass sound and lets the chanters be heard better.

Since this is either against the rules or at least the ethos of competition, many bands will go through a ludicrous pantomime of pretending to tune that middle tenor when they're having their drones tuned up, so as not to arouse suspicion if anyone is watching. Funny how quickly those middle tenors are brought into tune!

[Dominic Allan]

Eric Montbel told us at a talk at the Blowout that French piping was dieing out during the 1960's and 70's the last few players (and early revivalists) played with plugged drones.

[Ciarameddaru]

Not really sure where to post this, but this is a short chapter about the Sicilian pipes from a book on Sicily. I love the story of the guy eloping with the city girl at the end!
http://books.google.com/books?id=pDUXtS ... pe&f=false

[Yuri]

Nice story. A bit of musicology background there.

[Ciarameddaru]

Interestingly, in 2007 when I bought my first zampogna, I was staying with my relatives in Sicily and they were helping me try to find a pipe maker. My cousin knew a guy in Maletto, the town mentioned in the chapter above. To make a long story short, the people in Maletto, who knew I was American, asked a ridiculous price for the pipes. We knew of no other place to get one. Eventually we found another pipe maker in another town who asked a fair price and I bought that pipe instead. My cousin then called the people in Maletto and told them that I had decided that I did not want to buy a pipe (and didnt tell them I had already bought one at a fair price). The guy in Maletto got really mad at my cousin over the phone. He told him that he had already spent 200 euros getting the reeds ready for me attempting to guilt us into buying the pipe. They thought they were going to profit off of me as a foreigner. If they would have asked a fair price I would have bought the pipe from them, but instead I bought nothing and fortunately found another pipe maker. I am lucky that my cousins were willing to help me find a pipe for a reasonable price. Maletto is also the town where Alan Lomax recorded the ciaramedda in 1954. I have never been there. It worked out best that I didn't get the pipe in Maletto because the pipe maker that I did end up going with became a good friend of mine and the next summer ended up being one of the main subjects of my documentary film.

[pancelticpiper]

Thanks to Yuri I've got my Double Scottish Smallpipes prototype thingy up and running.

It sounds fantastic. I haven't had this much fun playing pipes in a long time, and it's hard to put these things down.

I learned some hard lessons with the Julian Goodacre Cornish pipes I used to have. I found that with a double chanter bagpipe of that type (the "virtual drone" setup where a fixed drone switches back and forth between the chanters if normal fingering is used) that getting two chanter reeds exactly matched is crucial.

No matter how I tried to adjust them, the two Goodacre reeds were different. The weaker one was also louder, so that if I got them balanced for strength (so that the two chanters would stay in tune) one chanter was far louder than the other. If I got them balanced for volume, the pitch was unstable because one reed was far weaker than the other.

So I decided to begin with a sort of chanter that had a plentiful and local reed supply. I got two "long" practice chanters from Jerry Gibson. His practice chanters are quite different from traditional Highland practice chanters, which are nasal and stuffy and sound like kazoos. Gibson's are in effect mouthblown smallpipe chanters, with a smallpipe bore and reed design. They're louder, clearer, and more musical-sounding than practice chanters. What's best is that a local shop carries the Gibson reeds.

So with the chanters in hand I went to the shop and blew around 40 reeds in them until I found a pair exactly matched in strength, volume, pitch, and timbre.

But what to play these chanters in? That's where Yuri helped me out, making a lovely bichambered stock plus a blowpipe and custom bag.

From the get-go these things played like a million bucks, amazingly stable and always in tune. (I can blow harder or softer and the two chanters go up and down in pitch in lockstep, so they're very forgiving.)

Now the scary part: My plan is to ship these things to Jerry Gibson and try to get him to make a pair of actual Smallpipe chanters in A with some of the holes missing, out of cocobolo or some such wood. The risk is that I won't be able to get them properly reeded

I'm planning on making some YouTube videos where I demonstrate this beast.

[Ciarameddaru]

Sounds Interesting Panceltic. So I'm imagining two conical bore chanters of equal length coming out of a stock, basically like a zampogna? Looking toward to the youtube demonstrations.

[Ciarameddaru]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tncjZh_BqMo

In the above clip a group from Siderno in Southern Calabria plays a tarantella on the Lira, Chitarra battante, and double friscaletti (cane whistles). I actually have a pair of whistles tuned similarly to the ones in the video that my friend Gianluca Zammarelli made me. They are slightly different in that the bass one has 4 holes and I'm only seeing 3 on the one in the video. Just fiddling around here I'm able to play effectively the same tune on my whistles.

Anyway, thought the clip would be interesting for this double chanter forum. There is obviously a connection between the double chantered reed pipes and whistles in south Italy.

[Yuri]

I thought I revive this topic. That's because after a year or so of sitting on some clips, I finally got around to uploading them onto youtube. There will be more, with time. There are three at the moment, and some more double recorder clips, all sharing the same music, as the fingering of these particular models is identical. Here's one, the rest can be found under my username.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oloqj8svAw

[pancelticpiper]

Amazing stuff there Yuri! Those pipes sound great.

and here's the Scottish double smallpipe Yuri helped me create. I love these things

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4lw8-3Jf9w

I have four or five videos up now of those things. The response has been great.

After hearing Yuri's pipes there with two chanters and two drones, I'm starting to question my "less is more" ethos. Maybe I'll get a drone for those things... but I do like it when the virtual drone switches from A to B, something that would be interfered with if I had a drone or two.

I'm going to put a Gregorian Chant, played in parallel organum, on those Scottish doublepipes, up on YouTube sometime soon. Tunes like that are very much helped by not having drones.

Thanks! Richard

[Goran]

belatedly adding to the many posts about double-chantered pipes, I don't remember anyone mentioning the droneless 2-chanter mih played on the [Croatian] Dalmatian coast and in Bosnia (inland, across the mountains). There are some mouth-blown versions of same, too (very similar to those that are mounted in goatskin or sheepskin bags). I've seen them played by a couple of young guys in the revival or folk dance group bands, and have a couple of samples on some old recordings. The playing technique relies on covering + uncovering the holes simultaneously (that's a no-brainer), although some players will also close or open one the the side-by-side holes to use the dissonant (yes, I know that's a relative term, a shortcut, perhaps) second. It can resemble the sound that players can get from the side-by-side "dvojnice" -- double fipple flutes common in the Balkans and the sopile playing along the Dalmatian coast (sounds a bit like zurna in timbre, though with rather different repertoire and rhythms).

OK, enough said. I just thought we should give a moment's attention to the mih, which I happen to think is pretty cool.

PS This a quick post-posting edit. I checked my copy of Baines and found illustration of mih --see illustration No. 15 and Plate XIV, b; pp. 71 & 72, discussion under the heading "Diple Group."

[sean an piobaire]

Hello Goran, Yes the MIH (which means BAG). I have have one that was bought by an American Tourist on the Dalmatian Coast back in 1980. I was given this Bagpipe as a present in 1986, and You can see it on the Diple page at 3w.hotpipes.com
2 years later, in 1988, I was playing it for the Croatian Dancers in San Francisco for their Poklada Festival, and the dance and the tune for it was from the Island of Olib (Olibski Tanec) a very nice Polka tune that was played by the 2 Pipers on the Island back in the 1920s, although it was said by the Olib Islanders living in California, that the Dance and the Tune were much older than that. After the 2 Pipers passed away in the 1960s, the Dance was accompanied by the Tune being played on a Piano Accordion. I was the one who "Put It Back" on the Bagpipe, and the whole Dance was filmed for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Depending on the maker there can be a number of finger hole combinations on the Double Bore Chanter, from just one hole on
the accompaniment side to having equal holes all the way from the top of the Chanter to the last 2 holes on both bores, just before the open end. Some of the most extensive videos on You Tube are by my friend Ernesto Fischer in Holland. "Ernesto" is a Balkan Bagpipe Enthusiast with a fairly large collection of Bagpipes from the Balkans, and he has made numerous trips to Croatia to record the Pipers there. Please look for Ernesto Fischer's Videos of MIH / DIPLE players and their Music on You Tube.
Another Croatian Piper and Pipe maker is Slobodan Hajikhan who had a Croatian Dance Troop in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,
but now lives in a town near Zagreb. "Dan" has supplied me with the North Croatian SURLE, the 2 Sopile, and the Podrine Dude from the Drava River area of East Croatia with 4 bores in the Chanter. A number of Ernesto's videos are with Slobodan.