New double chanter?

[ennischanter]

Are there makers who bake new double bored chanters? let alone anyone here who has tried one?


I'm just curious, because I would love to know what they sound like with new recording technology.

[geoff wooff]

I'm trying not to 'Bake' any more chanters!

[JR]

Ask Chris Bayley. He makes double & quad bored regulators too, if you fancy.

[Mike Hulme]

Chris certainly makes double chanters. I was over at his workshop a few weeks ago and there were a couple of double blanks on his shelf awaiting the reamer. His health is getting better and it shouldn't be too long before one surfaces. The reeds for these things are tiny, and the sound certainly carries.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Brad Angus has turned out a few doubles over the years. Recently he's figured out how to make them out of the one piece of wood, too.

I like to tell people that accordions - which I also play, btw - in their simple folk form were/are inspired by/a ripoff of the Union pipes. I mean, think about it, diatonic melody with simple homophonic accompaniment going on at the same time provided by the player, bellows, "vamping," etc. Absolutely no evidence for this of course but hey, who knows? And accordions also often have two middle voices speaking at the same time on the treble side, whether tuned exactly to each other ("dry) or slightly off ("wet"). Which, inadvertently or not, is also what you get with double chanters.

Some accordion feature 3 middle voices speaking at once, with one of them tuned exactly on pitch, the others up to 30 cents flat and sharp of that one - what they call "musette" tuning. The musette of course was a bagpipe itself, this came to mean the genre of Parisian accordion playing - the musettes in question were actually cornemuse players who were largely put out of business a century ago by accordions.

So a musette style chanter would be a triple. Hafta have one of those after I get a mere double.

[Tjones]

I’ve seen smallpipes double chanters like this one from Julian Goodacre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJisKPjCEXA but are you talking about an uillieann double pipe chanter? Wouldn’t fingering be an issue, let alone playing off the knee?

[an seanduine]

Nah. The Rowsome chanter I saw and handled was fine. Loud. But fine.

[pancelticpiper]

are you talking about an uillieann double pipe chanter? Wouldn’t fingering be an issue, let alone playing off the knee?

Taylor used to make those. Yes they sound much like an accordion, due to having two reeds play the same thing.

There are two narrow bores in the same piece of wood, with pairs of small holes close together, so you finger two holes just the same as if you were fingering one.

About off the knee, the Taylor ones had a popping valve, so it worked the same as an ordinary Taylor chanter.

There was an old Highland piper here, now deceased, who had a large collection of old pipes, all in special pipe-box-shaped drawers... a dedicated room in his house had walls of these special drawers with untold numbers of vintage pipes. I was there one day, back in the late 70s, and he let me explore for a while. In one drawer was, all in pieces, a four-reg Taylor (or Taylor-style) set with a double chanter. The chanter still had its original reeds in place, and a quick mouth-blow showed that everything still worked. Not difficult to finger at all.

Leo Rowsome made some recordings on a double chanter.

The set in the drawer pretty much looked like this (the Joe Shannon set)

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Richard - was that John Rosenberger? 4 years ago Sean Folsom recounted all the non-GHBs PM Rosenberger owned. John lived in San Diego. I notice you missed that thread from 2011.

The main hassle with double chanters is getting the 2 reeds to work properly. Fingering's a minor quibble in comparison. Lots of pipers in the old days played them, one, George McCarthy, can even be heard playing his on a wax cylinder. It's curious that the Irish would persist with making them instead of a louder chanter, the two voices speaking once were considered invaluable, it seems. Taylor pioneered louder single chanters of course, but made many doubles as well. The Taylor type of chanter also allowed making fully keyed models, note. Early makers didn't put keys on at all, or just the one; there's an Egan double with a single block mounted C natural key, for instance, you can only key a note or two with blocks, but Taylor style keys allow you to have all 4 - or more; some Taylors have extra keys to extend the range in the third octave, such as Joe Shannon's - that's what all the metalwork above the C# tonehole is - keys for E and F# up in the stratosphere.

[pancelticpiper]

Thanks for that link, yes I did miss that thread.

So when Sean visited John in 1993 he only had the chanter? How odd. I used to visit John fairly regularly, because back in the 70s and early 80s he was the only local place to buy Highland piping supplies.

He had French pipes- his wife was French- and who knows what all.

But I was most taken with that magnificent Taylor (or Taylor-style) set, four regs, the huge contrabass reg, double chanter, as best I can recall more or less like the Joe Shannon set. John said that he was constantly hounded by people wanting to buy and restore that set, but he politely refused them. He was odd that way, he seemed to take delight in the mere ownership of old pipes, though they sat forever in a box never played. If they were my instruments I'd want them all put in working order and in the hands of musicians.

The person who probably know that set's current whereabouts would be our member Jeff Cullen. I think one of John's sons currently owns it, I could be wrong.

[rorybbellows]

Just curious , would you be able to reproduce the sound of a double chanter (live) with some sort of technological gizmo? Some kind of instant looping thing maybe.

RORY

[misterpatrick]

Also note the tuning pins on Joe's Taylor set. It has individual reeds for each regulator note. Quite a beast!

[Tjones]

Were they able to play the chanters independently, or always the same notes together? Callum with his smallpipe chanter will play them independent of each other as to achieve cords and counter melodies.

[misterpatrick]

I don't believe independent playing would be possible. I can't imagine how that would work even work other than playing the top hand notes.

In any case, I believe this is Leo Rowsome playing a double-chanter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwUcxBf ... llCalvillo

[An Draighean]

In any case, I believe this is Leo Rowsome playing a double-chanter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwUcxBf ... llCalvillo

Yes, that's from his Piper's Choice record, also reproduced on The Drones and the Chanters vol. 1.

Personally I don't care for the sound of a double chanter at all.