Chiff and Fipple Forums

I bought an inexpensive blood pressure gauge. They read in mm of Hg. The conversion is 54%. I.e. 100 mm/Hg = 54 in H2O. It cost $15, compared to $100 for a gauge marked in H20.

Wow... so we have an originally Highland Pipe tune transmitted through mouth-music and then arranged by neo-harpers, and somebody trying to learn the harp arrangement on whistle! What is a "neo-harper"? Gráinne Hambly has pretty solid "trad" credentials. I'm not sure why it matt...

I would have to see the sheet music or hear it played by an experienced Irish musician. We are approaching it more from the Scottish tradition (which is why I posted in the Whistle sub-forum and not the Irish Music sub-forum). Harp in particular seems to have a lot of cross politicization, especial...

Thanks Richard. I guess I'm trying to do either of these: G F# A (Willie Clancy's) A F# G Here's the tune (on D whistle). It's a reel so it goes about twice as fast as I have it at this point: https://soundcloud.com/piperbob/two-spoon-nets-in-the-loft It's called Da Thàbh Air an Fharaodh (Two Spoon ...

Thanks guys!

I was already using XXX XXX for the cuts. I found that on my conical bore whistles it sounds pretty crisp -- I just don't have one in C.

I don't object to tonguing, but I can't double-tongue fast enough for a quarter note in a reel Something to work on, right?

I'm learning a tune from a friend and it has triplets on the 2nd octave bell note (C in this case, on a Blackbird). I'm having difficulty playing them clearly. The fingering I've got that seems to work best is R1, R2, R3. Using any of the left hand fingers seems to want to make the note break. Oh, a...

For notes that have more than one open hole you can also vary the effect by fluttering other fingers or combinations of them. For example, if you are playing the note xxx ooo you can flutter the R1 finger, being sure not to touch the hole (as mentioned above), but you might also flutter R2 or R3, in...

Are often they written dotted in collections to look different to reels on the page ? I think they are probably written dotted because it more closely resembles the way they are played. Funny thing: in modern Highland piping, hornpipes are played pretty much straight, while the reels are played dot...

I saw Paddy Keenan up close as he played an air on a low-d whistle, and I was interested to observe he used half holed c naturals. I don't know if he always uses half holes, or if it depends on the tune and/or the whistle. I have found some of my whistles really don't work well with cross fingered c...

A couple of times at workshops I have heard it suggested to good readers unfamiliar with hornpipes that they look at a bar with 4 triplets, imagine it was a 12/8 bar, then think of the bars with 8 quavers as being in 12/8 with crotchet quaver pairs. It seemed to work as a starting point for getting...

This is just a guess, and I can provide no references for it, but I think the issue of which way to write hornpipes (and perhaps reels too) came from the traditional players who adhered to the "only crochets and quavers" rule. Most of the tunes in the irish tradition that are not in tripl...

There's tin whistle on a Paul Simon song -- You Can Call Me Al There's a Billy Joel song called Half a Mile Away with what sounds like a tin whistle to me, but it's credited as a piccolo on the album liner. The band Rathkeltair is an American celtic-rock band, but some of their music is just rock. L...

Thanks guys. I don't want to derail the thread though! I'll pass on that then --I had just seen them in the Yamaha Catalog near the recorders. The recorders are pretty nice, imo. It's hard to imagine any other instrument that plays as well for $3. ;-) I have one of Jem's plastic piccolos already. I ...

The DPA mic mentioned is great. Pricey though and personally I prefer not to use clip on mics. If you have a big budget, the Sennheiser 441 is fantastic and it doesn't need phantom power. :o I can't imagine anyone using a $900 mic on stage, no matter what their budget was. But I'm sure some people ...

Unfortunately, I have never found a properly bored fife that wasn't 5-10X the price of a decent stamped whistle like the Clarke that is unfinished (and I do not like those, but that is opinion, not cost value ratio.) Setting aside the reenacting, do you have an opinion on those $5 plastic Yamaha fi...