single reed design question

[jemtheflute]

Love the Welsh Orchestra music. I've never seen so many hearts assembled in one place before. Also, the Welsh language was so unusually beautiful to here spoken. It must be a very old language. The pibgorn reminded a bit of the crummhorn. But I like the pibhorn better. It almost reminded me of a bagpipe sound. You seemed to be doing rolls and other ornamentations.

Thanks! And thanks for looking. Re the Clerorfa clip, you meant "harps", I guess, not "hearts"?

Modern Welsh is a modern language with ancient antecedents just like any other tongue. The Welsh are given to claiming it as "the oldest language in Europe" - wrongly - that is unarguably (by serious authorities on linguistic history) Basque/Euskeria. Welsh/Cymraeg is the longest still living language in Britain with direct descent and and unbroken development, yes, but is nearly as different from the Brythonic dialects spoken after the Romans left as modern English is from the Anglo-Saxon that arrived here at about that time.

As for the pibgorn, yes it is not dissimilar to crumhorns, kortholts and other similar mediaeval/renaissance wind-cap woodwinds, though maybe a bit louder and more open-throated in sound than those tend to be. There is no continuous playing tradition, so we do not know what style of playing would have been used, but the range limited to one octave and the wind pressure required make bagpipe type articulation and ornamentation as well as tune arrangement seem likely/natural, though one can tongue or simply stop or start blowing too.

[MTGuru]

that is unarguably (by serious authorities on linguistic history) Basque/Euskeria.

Actually, serious authorities on linguistic history are happy to argue about anything. One conventional view is that Basque is a survival of a Pre-Indo-European neolithic substrate language. Another (Paleolithic Continuity Theory) posits that it developed alongside Indo-European in the Iberian glacial refuge during the Younger Dryas glaciation. Which would make it co-eval. Recent genetics suggest strong haplogroup affinity between Britain/Ireland and Iberia and all along Atlantic Europe. Uralic Continuity makes a good case that the roots of Finnish and Estonian in Europe are at least as deep.

I kind of like the 1) Atlantis refugees 2) lost tribe of Israel 3) pre-Babel language of Eden 4) extraterrestrial theories myself.

Sorry, back now to your horny pipes.

[tin-titan]

Thanks! And thanks for looking. Re the Clerorfa clip, you meant "harps", I guess, not "hearts"?

Yes meant the harps. The harp is the most soothing instrument to listen to I think.

[jemtheflute]

Actually, serious authorities on linguistic history are happy to argue about anything.

Well, yes, sure. Now, of whom does that remind me?

As for the rest of your post. MTGuru, yes, I read Colin Renfrew's book on linguistic Archaeology and more recently that thing about post-glacial gene distribution and migration, and various other stuff........ all fascinating and with, as always in academia, shifting theorisation and debunking of older orthodoxies (kinky!) etc. etc. fair enough. I always think that thing about "it is a very ancient language" is a nonsense in the sense in which it is usually intended. Caesar's Latin, the Sanskrit of the Vedas, Classical Greek and so on are ancient (and dead) languages. Old English, Old Welsh, Middle English and Middle Welsh are old languages, and our current forms are descended from them and we might, if we had time travel, be able at least partially to communicate with our ancestors who spoke those earlier versions more easily than we could with someone modern or historic who spoke a different language entirely. Welsh has probably changed less than English and (allowing for possible differences of accent) a modern Welsh speaker would "get" more of say, Aneurin or Dafydd ap Gwilym than a modern English speaker would of the Beowulf poet, or even of Chaucer. Yes, the ancestral forms of Welsh have been in Britain much longer than the equivalent roots of English, but it is still a false argument and unfortunately one oft repeated and commonly heard from the less-than-well-informed and misguidedly nationalistic to say modern Welsh is "older" than English (which has equally old traceable roots, just not in Britain) or anything else.

[MTGuru]

Ah, excellent, Jem. Yes, Renfrew's Anatolian neolithic diffusion theory is interesting, and a step forward from the Kurgan orthodoxy that reigned when I was at uni. As a linguist, I was always seriously bothered by the implied shallow time depth of IE development, and Renfrew and/or PCT seem much more plausible to me.

And I agree completely about language ages; your comments are spot-on.

[Thomas-Hastay]

Sardinian "Launeddas" use your "reversed reeds" as well as many other types of small reed pipes, like the Zummara and Shepherd's Pipes. Here is a close up of Launeddas reeds. Look closely and you will see that some reed tips have been sanded and one has wax added to its tip. This makes tuning much easier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laune ... %BCeta.JPG

[Ciarameddaru]

I play the sicilian bagpipe which has single cane reeds in both chanters and in all 3 drones. I make and use "inverted reeds." It was originally mounted with inverted reeds by the Sicilian guy that made the pipe and then I was subsequently taught how to make both regular and inverted. I prefer inverted because I don't have to pull the reed out of the reedseat to access the bridal. Also if you are using the node of the cane as a back stop to prevent further splitting, I think inverted works best because you dont have to bore out any nodes in the cane or plug any ends up. Another reason is because I have found that sometimes with the regular cut reeds, when you shove them tightly into the reedseat the pressure on the cane can effect the reed vibration or prevent it from vibrating all together.

[tansy]

I have come to the conclusion that the reed does better if left unscraped. perhaps less water-enzyme absorption. it is hard to get that certain tube that won't need scraping, I have 2 so far. they are less harsh sounding and after some months of playing in are approaching a sweet sound on my Hornpipe.
one of them is sweet using arundo donax
Tansy

[Kypfer]

Wasn't sure whether to start a new thread or not ... so here goes.

I've been taken by the idea of making a pibgorn

I've found a nice length of naturally seasoned elder, stripped off the bark and cleaned the bore with a plastic scouring pad, so it's dimensionally "natural" but quite smooth, and drilled a series of 4mm holes using the measurements on Gerald Kikbride's web-pages. With a whistle-head fitted it plays a scale (more or less, plenty of scope for tuning) but with a home-made reed I can only get the lower three notes before it does a good impersonation of a duck in distress.

I'm using an 8mm bore plastic tube for the reed, wih a plastic blade, as described elsewhere on the web. With a little twine whipping this fits in the bore of the elder nicely. I've tried several grades (thicknesses) of plastic blade but end up with either no noise at all or very similar symptoms, albeit in varying pitches, depending on the thickness of the plastic.

I've no experience with reed instruments, and only a few weeks with woodwind, so this is all new to me. If these symptoms are recognised, perhaps someone could suggest what measures I might try to achieve a full eight notes.

Thanks in advance
Chris

[jemtheflute]

Try a hair or thin thread under the reed near the clamping O-ring. This will hold the tongue up a little and free it to vibrate rather than block. You can adjust tuning and response by movements of the O-ring and thread - but it will drive you crazy! I've had little joy with plastic tube or tongue reeds, not that I've given them a huge amount of effort. I've done best with elder reeds, though they're of course very hygroscopic. It's easy enough to make a cane or elder (or even pen-tube and yoghurt pot) reed that sounds readily out of the pibgorn; getting one to sound in the instrument, in tune across the range and at a regulated pitch is another matter entirely - not too bad if you just want it in tune with itself, but if it needs to be at a set pitch to play with others.......

[Kypfer]

Jem,
Thanks for the encouragement ... at least I know it's supposed to be difficult

I'd also tried with a couple of lengths of seemingly appropriate diameter bamboo with no sound at all, and the local phragmites reed-bed didn't seem to have any material large enough to be useful, so perhaps that leaves an elder reed.

Is it possible you might publish a set of dimensions for a reed that works, so I might scour the countryside for some suitable material?

It did occur to me that my naturally-bored elder may be of unsuitable dimension, in that the hole down the middle is slightly tapered, going from 11mm to 9mm diameter, whereas Gerald Kikbride's web-page quotes 7mm bore ... is this likely to be an issue?

Thanks again,
Chris

[jemtheflute]

I can't honestly even start to try to answer the last Q from any practical experience, sorry - though in the general nature of these things I wouldn't expect it to be a make-or-break issue - just might affect tuning or response through the scale etc.... but shouldn't make it impossible to sound.

As for elder reeds, just cut some this year's long shoots and experiment with c 5cm lengths with on OD of about 6-8mm and wood about 1mm or less thick once de-barked and de-pithed. It's free, so you can make as many as it takes to get the hang of it! I stop up the outer end with sealing wax and slip a bit of cotton sewing thread under the tongue, and on some I have used a neoprene o-ring as a bridle too - including the one (and only) I currently play with - though as the o-ring tends to go into the reed socket of the body bore on my John Glenydd, keeping all in correct place/making adjustments can be tricky! I made many dozens of both cane (arundo donax) and elder ones before I got one that more-or-less works tolerably consistently once wetted and played in at concert D in the pibgorn.