Ok my Twins go to bed early… and my wife is watching “Law and Order” … and the Dog is resting… So I make my way to the sunroom and open up my shotgun cases (whistle cases) and just shake my head…then I satrted counting and figuring the money invested ($$$$.$$).
I have one Low D that gets the majority of playing time…Chieftain Gold, but then you look in my cases and I have 5 more Low D’s.
The question I am asking myself at this point is why do I have these extra Low D’s?
I think it depends on if a person is collecting them or playing. But then it could be both also. I only have a Howard low d and an Overton low d.
I also have several that I made from pvc, and they are fun to exsperiment with.
My question is : Is one too many? I hesitate to buy one. I keep planning to buy one but I am not sure that even with a lot of practice I could play it well enough to justify the expense. After all for the same price I could buy a Syn Eb/D/C set and a Humphreys wide bore C/D set.
Five low D’s isn’t a ton of money for a middle class American person. That amount of money might pay for a decent vacation or buy a moderately nice flute.
The question to ask is what else would you do with the money?
There is the question of finding good homes for unplayed instruments. Unfortunately, some times they don’t get any more playing time in the new home, despite the best of intentions.
There seem to be three main types with many mixes:
those that like to play their instruments
those that like to buy instruments
those that like to talk or write about them
If one low D gives you exactly the sound you want and you only ever want that sound, one is enough. I have four: Overton, Copeland, a pre-Syn Erle Bartlett and a Reyburn with offset holes. They all have their merits but the first two get played the most these days. Erle’s whistle was extremely helpful in the learning stage; it was the easiest low D to play quickly. Getting up to pace on it gave me the confidence to think I could do the same on the Overton.
The Copeland and Overton have different personalities and I wouldn’t want to have to choose between them although, in all honesty, either one would do any job I require of the other. It’s much the same with low F where I have a Grinter and Overton, both wonderful instruments but not suffiently different to fully justify keeping both. With low G I have Copeland, Overton and Burke. Here the Burke gives me a pure sound, the Overton and Copleand a complex sound but, again, I love the Overton and the Copeland too much to part with either. In the event of being forced to sell, I don’t know which I’d choose to keep. In low C and Eb I don’t have a choice.
I think it is good for those who are so inclined and who aren’t endangering their finances to collect musical instruments. Museums are wonderful places and I think a lot of the things in them have come from the collections of people. So if you can’t decide what to do, then just take care of them properly. You are are the curator of your own museum. Why do you have them? Perhaps because you love them, they are beautiful, you might want to play one of them in the future----heck, I don’t know.
Not a point that applies to low whistles (which as far as i am concerned can be sold to collectors never to be heard again) but wouldn’t you agree that musical instruments should be played by those who can play them well?
I know I have made this point a few times in the past but with the WIllie Clancy week just over I have seen it all in full operation again so:
In irish music there a tremendous problem has developed especially where concertinas and pipes are concerned. Too few good makers, and a big influx of wannabees insisting on having toprange isntrument, people who ‘collect’ nice instruments which bear no relation to their playing abilities just to have them and to noodle with them a bit while the ‘real’ market: Irish children who will need to carry the music into the future, are deprived of good instruments. Last week I bought my son a very nice, higher mid range, vintage concertina. because he’s ready for such an instrument. You wouldn’t believe the price hike that has taken place over the past few years and I had to fork out an almost obscene (to me anyway) amount of money. At the concertina concert at WCSS Noel Hill referred to the scarcity of cocnertinas as a major problem. Same applies to the pipes. it won’t be long before the players that really matter won’t be able to get a decent instrument because too many are sitting on shelves in ‘private musea’. Too often you hear about people with nice jobs going for their second or third 6-8K Jeffries concertina after less than a year of playing. I think my own thoughts about that sort of behaviour, especially when I see people barely able to string a tune together buy instruments wholesale (do you really need five flutes before you reach even the intermediate stages of playing?).
I see the same happening with whistles but the upside is nobody will feel deprived no matter how many Burkes you put in your displaycase or whistlestand.
Nevertheless, there is a harmful side to this ‘collecting’ (to use the friendly term).
So I make my way to the sunroom and open up my shotgun cases (whistle cases) and just shake my head…then I satrted counting and figuring the money invested ($$$$.$$).
Clue #1
I have one Low D that gets the majority of playing time…> Chieftain Gold> , but then you look in my cases and I have 5 more Low D’s.
Clue #2
The question I am asking myself at this point is why do I have these extra Low D’s?
So I am asking you, is one Low D enough?
Clue #3
I think you are the only one that can really answer your question. Perhaps, you have
Well this is something that didn’t occur to me. I can see that there are instruments whose complexity and quality causes them to be in relatively short supply in the first place and then when they get popular or hoarding occurs the price will become astronomical or they become unavailable. Certainly it would be absurd for museums to have instruments and for people to have none. There would be no music. I guess I was thinking more in terms of a few collectors just to make sure there were some instruments in their original state, but not to the “tulipmania” extent which it sounds as though perhaps has happened.
Naturally a beginner would want a decent instrument if possible and it seems the best thing is to ask around and find out what instrument would be good for learning on (not junky so as to actually make learning more difficult) without having attributes that the beginner can’t make use of. Then as you make actual progress, you get better instruments that your technique allows you to take advantage of. Because, yes, an instrument can be wasted.
I think some people think it works the other way. If you sound bad, a better instrument will make you sound better. This would only be true if you had made all the progress you could on a given instrument. Mostly it isn’t true.
So, yes, I would agree that just buying instrument after instrument because you like them and can afford them is wrong when it means that others are actually not going to be able to afford or even get them if they can afford them. Perhaps your comment will cause people to give this some thought. I know I was unaware of the problem. Have any organizations given thought to trying to buy instruments and then perhaps having people audition in order to buy them, perhaps paying what they can afford?
Perhaps instrument makers could do this! Surely they’re victims of this rampant consumerism the same as anyone.
Perhaps we should have some kind of world scale to make sure that everyone (including the impoverished) can afford a good instrument. Say perhaps pipe makers should charge no more than say $100 US for their work. Concertina makers maybe $125. flute makers maybe $65, whistle makers $10 (US Prices). Something like that, you get the idea.
Perhaps these prices may be too high, though. $100-125 US is a lot of money to some people. Maybe we can set a flat fee of like $10.00 US for all instruments. Then when you want an instrument, you can fly out to the instrument maker’s house, play for them, and if they like your playing, then, and only then, will an instrument be sold to you. Perhaps Peter can be on hand to act as arbiter in case of a disagreement. And if you don’t qualify, maybe you can go to Pakistan or something, where they’re a little less picky about who gets to own an instrument.
Once you’ve labored for years with a crap pakistani instrument, perhaps you’ll have the skill (and more importantly, a shaolin-like depth of character) to prove that you truly deserve that $100 set of pipes. And once these stupid newbies learn that pipe makers aren’t going to stand for them paying too much for an instrument any longer, they’ll all take up low whistle, and leave all the pipes to the people who really deserve them: people who already know how to play and probably already have pipes.
I’m really excited about this! I think it could work!
No. I am not suggesting that the instrument makers participate. They are not victims, they benefit from higher demand and prices. I am not saying they benefit unfairly. I am definitely a capitalist. What I wondered is if any organizations like The Irish Concertina Foundation (I made that up for example) had considered paying current market price for instruments, same as everyone else, and then selling them to people who need instruments at anything from full price paid to a discounted price. In other words, I am asking whether there are any charitable organizations interested in this sort of thing. People would have to donate money to these organizations obviously. The money has to come from somewhere. It would be something like scholarships, except it would be musical instruments.
That is not the same as the ridiculous idea you propose, not seriously I realize, but clearly you did not understand what I was asking about. Or you chose not to. Absurd!
In addition, you deliberately ignored my whole paragraph talking about a beginner needing a decent instrument to learn on. Obviously, this would not be a set of pipes from Pakistan. You purposely distorted everything I said.
The auditioning I mentioned would be done by people who cannot afford or find an instrument due to hoarding or shortages. The idea was that the charitable organization would at least see that promising musicians without enough money had an instrument that was appropriate for their level.
This is all a moot point anyway as I doubt there are or ever will be organizations of this sort as they would depend on private donations to fund them. Although they may exist for classical music instruments.
I disagree. In my opinion, the instruments should go to those who can pay for them, whether they have the talent or time or not. The long term solution is for the experienced makers to take on more apprentices and increase the supply of decent instruments and their own incomes by many multiples. I think it is great that some idle people with money to toss around are patronizing the good instrument makers. In my opinion, lowering the demand would only bring short term relief and make things worse in the long term.
Besides, who is going to judge? Are the makers going to sit and test potential customers? If things become extreme then the talented musicians will have to seek patrons like talented violin players do when they are deemed worthy of a top instrument.
Sorry, Cynth…I wasn’t dogging you specifically, really. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone (not speaking of you) say something along the lines of “all these crap players with good instruments, making it hard for all of the good musicians (by my standard) to get one at a good price”. Along with that goes the implied but unspoken snobbery of “I really wish all of these guys who can’t play yet would just go home and stay out of my Irish music”
So, yes, I purposely distorted everything you said, in order to exaggerate what I percieve to be the silliness of the initial premise. Really had nothing to do with you really..your message just provided a good springboard for my own soapboxing Bill Chin pretty much said the same thing I did, but without all of the hyperbole.
I didn’t take what Peter was saying to be snobbish. I think he does have a reason to lament the scarcity of instruments that have been traditional instruments where he lives and apparently pretty commonly available and the difficulty parents now have in buying them for their children who are coming along nicely.
My impression is that he wasn’t talking about people who “can’t play yet” but people that just plain aren’t going to be playing—they don’t practice----collecting instruments. And his remark was in response to my remark about it being good to be an instrument collector, to buy instruments and not intend to play them.
Yeah..but I think that whole idea of there being these reams of people buying “shelf instruments” is just a myth.
Really, who pays $1000-2000 for a set of pipes that they have no intention of playing? I’d grant that there may be a few..but I’d also wager that most folks who get on a waiting list and stuff really intend on playing. That’s just common sense.
So, to me, what it appears is that there’s a guy lamenting that there are all of these people that just aren’t “good enough” buying all of the quality instruments and somehow “infecting” (which is the impression I get) traditional music venues. And that takes those instruments away from the people he thinks ARE good enough, and really, they should just stay home and not ruin these music things in Ireland too.
Really, when you boil down his post to the bare essentials, what he’s said is: “You don’t need a top range instrument. The irish children do. Oh, and my own kid too, even though I’m not from Ireland. Oh, and you’re probably a wannabe anyway, and your playing is crap compared to the quality of instrument you want, so quit making it all cost so much for us, to boot”.
and my wife is watching “Law and Order” … 
