Re: Flat C#, every other note seems good
Posted: Sat May 02, 2020 6:00 am
Largely agreeing with the points made by Pancelticpiper. The figures quoted from the Dave Hergarty book I find rather pedantic and only usefull for the mathematicians. These figures rounded to the nearest Cent would be MORE that sufficient for our purposes.
The one major problem is that we want several notes to issue from that top front tone hole , C# and a C natural at the very least but hopefully several expressive variations of C natural. My approach on the old style flat sets , where the chanter tone holes are largely all of a similar size is to try to achieve C# at around 10-12cents flat of drone pitch and the double forked fingered C natural ( two middle fingers of the lower hand raised) to sit close to 29 cents flat.
Not only the size of the C# hole but also the size of the F# and E holes need to be taken into consideration as to how they affect the cross fingering pitch alteration. On the modern Concert chanters , where the size of the F# hole approaches the diameter of the bore at that point, it is probably only necessary to vent that hole to provide enough crossfingering to achieve a C natural... a little more venting is preferable on the old Flat chanters. Other fingerings will bring C natural to different tone heights making it a most expressive note.
As I have suggested in articles for An Piobaire and probably on this forum at some stage the 29 cent flat C natural equates to the position of the 7th harmonic of the bass drone note and is the one deviation from what might be a Just intonation scale. I prefer to think of the scale on these Pipes as being Harmonic, each chanter note making a sweet harmony to the drones. However, compromises need to be made for musical and artistic reasons and perfection is not always possible.
The one major problem is that we want several notes to issue from that top front tone hole , C# and a C natural at the very least but hopefully several expressive variations of C natural. My approach on the old style flat sets , where the chanter tone holes are largely all of a similar size is to try to achieve C# at around 10-12cents flat of drone pitch and the double forked fingered C natural ( two middle fingers of the lower hand raised) to sit close to 29 cents flat.
Not only the size of the C# hole but also the size of the F# and E holes need to be taken into consideration as to how they affect the cross fingering pitch alteration. On the modern Concert chanters , where the size of the F# hole approaches the diameter of the bore at that point, it is probably only necessary to vent that hole to provide enough crossfingering to achieve a C natural... a little more venting is preferable on the old Flat chanters. Other fingerings will bring C natural to different tone heights making it a most expressive note.
As I have suggested in articles for An Piobaire and probably on this forum at some stage the 29 cent flat C natural equates to the position of the 7th harmonic of the bass drone note and is the one deviation from what might be a Just intonation scale. I prefer to think of the scale on these Pipes as being Harmonic, each chanter note making a sweet harmony to the drones. However, compromises need to be made for musical and artistic reasons and perfection is not always possible.