Hi, all. I’ve been lurking on the forum for a few weeks, and finally have something to write about, so I’ll make this my introduction:
I’ve been away from piping for a very long time. Seven years learning, seven years forgetting, and seven years forgetting even more, as they say. On January 1st of this year I dug my pipes out of the closet, started cleaning them up, and started trying to get my fingers to come back to life. The wrappings on all the tenons and tuning slides needed to be replaced and the drone and regulator reeds were history. Fortunately, the chanter reed I made in 1980 is still serviceable. It’s a little quiet, but at this stage of the game that’s a blessing. I put a cork in the stock cup and have been using the pipes as a practice set.
Yesterday, I strapped on the bellows and sat down for another session of torturing the dogs’ ears when, mercy!, a couple of jigs came out! The first music I’ve made on the pipes in years! Nothing complicated, “Haste to the Wedding” and “Geese in the Bog” but they were real double jigs, with lift and everything. Of course my fingers didn’t last long, but while the music lasted even the dogs appeared to enjoy themselves.
I don’t expect that my fingers will ever be what they were–and I was not by any stretch a great piper, but I could play in public without shame and even won a competition once. Perhaps I’ll get back to where I can play for people again.
The second part of my subject line came up when I was digging through a folder of old pipe-related stuff. I came across David Quinn’s price list from 1980. Practice sets in ‘d’ for $250, with a four to six week wait or, if you wanted to wait eight to nine months, a full set for $1,500. Yep, those were the days.
I’ve been enjoying the forum and will probably occasionally chime in if I have something to contribute.
Welcome aboard and good on ya for dusting off your pipes and giving them a new life. There is nothing better than getting back in the swing of things on an instrument you’ve neglected for whatever the reasons.
Great to hear you getting your chops back, Ken! And thanks for the nostalgic glimpse of yesteryear. Hard to believe, now. My brother and I got our Quinn practice sets for 200 each. This with McHarg bags and handsewn Quinn bellows! Michael Cooney gave them a thorough looking over, and pronounced them very well made before he and Joe Burke got back on stage. Then they were upgraded with new drones by DQ for an additional 600 bucks. Shortly after that we paid 200 each for 2 more sets - a full Rowsome set and 3/4 Taylor!
Seems like there are a few or so species that get tagged with the name. Here’s one example:
Andira inermis. The above example would seem to be of a supposedly less common, curly variety; the other samples I found, not necessarily of the same taxon, tended to be pretty straight-grained.
Hi Ken! Do we know each other? I was one of the only people playing the uilleann pipes in “Greater Los Angeles” in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Welcome back!
Unlike then, when there was no community of pipers here, now we have the Southern California Piper’s Club that has regular monthly meetings, and an annual tionol.
I still play the David Quinn chanter I bought around 1978. I got all the bells and whistles: five keys, blackwood, fully mounted. I think it cost $375 which seemed like a fortune at that time. I’ve never regretted getting all those keys and I’ve used every one of them on some gig or other.
Here’s that old Quinn chanter as it sounds now, with a reed made by Dan O Dowd that I’ve been playing in it since 1982.
No, in the late 70s and early 80s I was the only person playing uilleann pipes in Sacramento. Hung out with the San Francisco Irish Pipers Club–was even an officer for a time. I didn’t move to the LA area until 1999. Back in the 70s there was an active piping community in San Francisco, but few other sources of information. When someone would find something in print about piping or reed making and make copies to hand around at the meetings. Things are so different now! The amount of information on piping and ITM in general on the web is astounding! And wonderful!
I’ve been trying to remember just why I put the pipes up. Nearest I can recollect is that in my other life as a GHB piper I was elected Pipe Major of the Sacramento band I was a member of in 1982. After a year of dealing with midnight calls from drunk drummers I took a break from the band and really never seriously played the GHB again. Being PM just sucked all the joy out of them for me. Even the uileann pipes became a struggle to keep up with. I played for the rest of the decade, but finally stopped around 1990.
Now I’m semi-retired and have some time on my hands, so it’s back to piping. This evening my chanter reed was terrible. Couldn’t hold the second octave to save my life. Put the pipes away and grabbed a whistle. Couldn’t play that either, so I guess I was having that most common of reed problems, sloppy fingers.
David Quinn made me a bellows in 1980 and I also have some of his reed tools. The bellows are quite nice, though you can tell it’s DQ’s earlier work. I was looking at some pictures of his pipes on Uilleann Obsession and am quite taken with the nifty air intake he now uses. Might drop him an email and see if he can retrofit mine.
I am enjoying these “Pipers’ Progress” posts very much.
Funny; I was just thinking about that “sloppy fingers/reed problem” connection last night – fingers finally got it together and the reed magically settled right down. Shocking! Thanks for sharing your experience, and experiences!
Shocking! Thanks for sharing your experience, and experiences!