Your chanter...
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Joseph E. Smith
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Re: junk on the trunk
I'm not certain if you would be in violation of cpoyright or not (something tells me it would be OK), but I would love to have a copy of that article in my PM box.Piobairi Uilleann Inis Fa wrote:
I can post the whole article if anyone is interested.
Neil
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billh
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We're not just talking about rushes here Peter. Absolutism in either direction strikes me as wrong. Like you, I tend to think rushing a chanter is an act of desperation (unless, like a Froment, the chanter was designed "rush-in"), and would be taken aback by tape on a new narrow bore chanter; nonetheless I think some minor tweaks such as tonehole wax or a small bell constriction are acceptable even on the very best of chanters. I would be leery of selling a customer a new chanter with more than the faintest smudge of wax, but that doesn't mean customers should shy away from judicious use of such aids if they work for them.Peter Laban wrote:The fact some unrushed chanters were out doesn't mean ALL unrushed chanters are necessarily out.'m with BK on this one. I've heard a number of chanters with no tuning aids that the owners believed to be in tune. They weren't. I think to some degree it depends whether you're playing the chanter alone, with drones, or regs.
Bill
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Piobairi Uilleann Inis Fa
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Irish Times Story
It is copyrighted, but newspaper articles (this one on the wire as well) are in the public domain, and reprintable as long as given attribution.
The article, most is off topic, makes pipers and pipe makers sound like musical versions of a gladiator.
This is the full article:
Create the pipes and call the tunes
Source: THE IRISH TIMES
Date: January 29, 2007
Uilleann pipe makers are a rare breed, but the future is looking bright, with talk of a full-time course, writes Siobhan Long.
Dying breed or burgeoning art? Plaything of the chosen few or object of
affection of an audience on the increase exponentially? At various times, the uilleann pipes have both lain victim and basked in the benefits of the ebb and flow of listening fashion - in much the same way, though admittedly in a slower lane, as modish notions have influenced the role of the bouzouki and guitar in folk music.
As recently as 1968, Na PIobairI Uilleann (NPU) or the Pipers' Club - whose headquarters on Dublin's Henrietta Street has been refurbished and reopens today - could count the number of uilleann pipers worldwide as fewer than three score and 10, while the number of pipe makers could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Now, some four decades later, Irish pipers number over 3,000, with some 6,000-7,000 players worldwide, and although they still belong to an elite community, the population of pipe makers has multiplied to over 50 (with only
25 of those carving a full-time living from pipe making, and a significant
number of them resident in Europe and the US).
Master pipers such as the late Leo Rowsome, Seamus Ennis, Paddy Moloney, Paddy Keenan, Davy Spillane and Liam O Floinn have contributed in no small way to the rapid rehabilitation of the pipes as a listening instrument. The majestic sweep of Shaun Davey's The Brendan Voyage, composed specifically for Liam O Floinn, lured further listeners to an instrument that's as complex as a combustion engine and as temperamental as any A-list movie star. Not an instrument for the
faint-hearted, or for mortals with less than Olympian levels of motor
co-ordination, the uilleann pipes make short work of the casual player, and
frivolously dispose of the musician who fails to afford them a quantum of
attention equivalent to the rearing of a particularly obstreperous teenager.
Add to that the fact that there's a 15-year waiting list for a good set of
pipes, and it would seem that piping isn't so much an art as a vocation, worthy only of the most vociferous novitiates, prepared to devote much of their waking life to the instrument. Far from basking in the perceived elitism of such lengthy waiting periods, Na PIobairI Uilleann are keen to remedy this situation so that any budding piper in need of a decent set of pipes can lay his or her hands on them in, at the very least, slow air, if not quite jig time.
Piper and NPU chief executive Gay McKeon (himself the father of TG4's 2001 and 2005 Young Traditional Musicians Of The Year, pipers Conor and Sean McKeon) is a pragmatist, and knows the dangers of stewarding the future of an instrument that's more difficult to source than vintage poitIn. Despite NPU's own healthy loan library, whereby they loan sets of pipes to young players for a minimum of a year, both his sons had a wait of five and six years before sourcing a decent set, and he knows how lucky they were to hang on to their passion for the instrument during their teen years when every other sound and instrument vied for their attention.
"It'd take a master pipe maker a minimum of four to six weeks to make a set of pipes," McKeon explains, "and that's before they're commissioned by the player who might request adjustments to be made." Hardly a job for the casual labourer.
Tales abound of pipers coaxing and cossetting their pipes back into tune for a plethora of reasons, ranging from the horrors of humidity and how that impacts on the reeds of the pipes, to the varying condition of the keys, the drone, the chanter, the bellows and the bag. Uilleann pipes appear to have more moving parts than a clock, and more sweet spots than a corner shop. Small wonder then that the skills required to create and repair such a demanding instrument are in short supply, in an age of increasing built-in obsolescence.
McKeon and one of NPU's board members, Dave Hegarty of the Institute of
Technology, Tralee, have put much thought and attention into finding a solution to our shortage of pipe makers.
With weekly classes in music practice, theory, transcription and reed making, and a comprehensive five-DVD series on The Art of Piping, NPU are keepers of a flame that once flickered meekly but now glows with newfound confidence. McKeon and NPU have already identified, though a worldwide survey, more than 50 pipers eager to enrol in a full-time pipe-making course (if one were available). Hegarty, a piper and engineer on conversational terms with the navigational curiosities of academic course design, sees a future where anyone with an appetite and an ear for piping can enter the fray.
"We have to set up a course that will tackle basic manufacturing techniques, alternative methods and materials," he says, fresh from the intensive preparations he and McKeon have been making to design the first pipe makers' course in the world. Add to that the wood crafting, engineering, leatherwork and tuning artistry inherent in the art of pipe making, and it seems that it's as eclectic a skill mix as you'll encounter anywhere outside of NASA. And there's more.
"The science of metrology (or precise measurement) is crucial too," Hegarty continues, "to reproducing or modifying particular sounds. We've sought agreement from prominent pipe makers about what should be included, and ultimately, the course must fulfil the function of enabling students to theoretically and practically create a set of pipes. The pipes have to function well in session after session, year after year. Our job is to reassure the players of the future that they can lay their hands on a decent set of pipes when they need them."
Pipe making is not just an act of design and engineering, though, and McKeon is adamant that any training course must ensure the future of the soul of the instrument. "A lot of pipe makers have come from engineering backgrounds," he explains. "It doesn't work, funnily enough, to simply be an engineer, and not play the pipes. You need to understand the instrument. If you try to make a set of pipes in a purely mechanical way, the end result is a machine, it's not an instrument."
John Lawlor, head of the school of manufacturing and design engineering at DIT, has rowed in behind this initiative with verve. Far from worrying that a pipe making course might render this art form into some conveyor belt qualification, Lawlor views the marriage of past and present as a challenge to be relished, rather than vanquished. "DIT's conservatory of music is already involved in Irish traditional music studies", Lawlor enthuses, with a passion equalled only by his love of the music itself.
"We don't view education as a business. Education is about personal and
cultural growth, and as a consequence society as a whole benefits. As someone who's loved the sound of the pipes ever since I heard the great Liam Og O Floinn play with Planxty, I see this as a great opportunity to marry ancient skills dating back to the 17th century with modern manufacturing processes. Then we can digitise the music, compare signals and accurately measure and recreate sounds.
"What will maintain this ancient craft is the fusion of the modern with the
traditional."
Pipe types
Practice set: Beginners' set of pipes, with bag, bellows and chanter
Half set: Practice set with the addition of three drones: tenor, bass and
baritone, tuned to bottom note on the chanter
Concert set: Half set, with the addition of three regulators for playing chords
to accompany the melody
Flat set: Pitched below the key of D, generally easier to tune and to fit with
reeds
Na PIobairI Uilleann's magnificently restored headquarters at 15 Henrietta
Street, Dublin 1, will reopen at 6.30pm today.
See also www.pipers.ie
The article, most is off topic, makes pipers and pipe makers sound like musical versions of a gladiator.
This is the full article:
Create the pipes and call the tunes
Source: THE IRISH TIMES
Date: January 29, 2007
Uilleann pipe makers are a rare breed, but the future is looking bright, with talk of a full-time course, writes Siobhan Long.
Dying breed or burgeoning art? Plaything of the chosen few or object of
affection of an audience on the increase exponentially? At various times, the uilleann pipes have both lain victim and basked in the benefits of the ebb and flow of listening fashion - in much the same way, though admittedly in a slower lane, as modish notions have influenced the role of the bouzouki and guitar in folk music.
As recently as 1968, Na PIobairI Uilleann (NPU) or the Pipers' Club - whose headquarters on Dublin's Henrietta Street has been refurbished and reopens today - could count the number of uilleann pipers worldwide as fewer than three score and 10, while the number of pipe makers could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Now, some four decades later, Irish pipers number over 3,000, with some 6,000-7,000 players worldwide, and although they still belong to an elite community, the population of pipe makers has multiplied to over 50 (with only
25 of those carving a full-time living from pipe making, and a significant
number of them resident in Europe and the US).
Master pipers such as the late Leo Rowsome, Seamus Ennis, Paddy Moloney, Paddy Keenan, Davy Spillane and Liam O Floinn have contributed in no small way to the rapid rehabilitation of the pipes as a listening instrument. The majestic sweep of Shaun Davey's The Brendan Voyage, composed specifically for Liam O Floinn, lured further listeners to an instrument that's as complex as a combustion engine and as temperamental as any A-list movie star. Not an instrument for the
faint-hearted, or for mortals with less than Olympian levels of motor
co-ordination, the uilleann pipes make short work of the casual player, and
frivolously dispose of the musician who fails to afford them a quantum of
attention equivalent to the rearing of a particularly obstreperous teenager.
Add to that the fact that there's a 15-year waiting list for a good set of
pipes, and it would seem that piping isn't so much an art as a vocation, worthy only of the most vociferous novitiates, prepared to devote much of their waking life to the instrument. Far from basking in the perceived elitism of such lengthy waiting periods, Na PIobairI Uilleann are keen to remedy this situation so that any budding piper in need of a decent set of pipes can lay his or her hands on them in, at the very least, slow air, if not quite jig time.
Piper and NPU chief executive Gay McKeon (himself the father of TG4's 2001 and 2005 Young Traditional Musicians Of The Year, pipers Conor and Sean McKeon) is a pragmatist, and knows the dangers of stewarding the future of an instrument that's more difficult to source than vintage poitIn. Despite NPU's own healthy loan library, whereby they loan sets of pipes to young players for a minimum of a year, both his sons had a wait of five and six years before sourcing a decent set, and he knows how lucky they were to hang on to their passion for the instrument during their teen years when every other sound and instrument vied for their attention.
"It'd take a master pipe maker a minimum of four to six weeks to make a set of pipes," McKeon explains, "and that's before they're commissioned by the player who might request adjustments to be made." Hardly a job for the casual labourer.
Tales abound of pipers coaxing and cossetting their pipes back into tune for a plethora of reasons, ranging from the horrors of humidity and how that impacts on the reeds of the pipes, to the varying condition of the keys, the drone, the chanter, the bellows and the bag. Uilleann pipes appear to have more moving parts than a clock, and more sweet spots than a corner shop. Small wonder then that the skills required to create and repair such a demanding instrument are in short supply, in an age of increasing built-in obsolescence.
McKeon and one of NPU's board members, Dave Hegarty of the Institute of
Technology, Tralee, have put much thought and attention into finding a solution to our shortage of pipe makers.
With weekly classes in music practice, theory, transcription and reed making, and a comprehensive five-DVD series on The Art of Piping, NPU are keepers of a flame that once flickered meekly but now glows with newfound confidence. McKeon and NPU have already identified, though a worldwide survey, more than 50 pipers eager to enrol in a full-time pipe-making course (if one were available). Hegarty, a piper and engineer on conversational terms with the navigational curiosities of academic course design, sees a future where anyone with an appetite and an ear for piping can enter the fray.
"We have to set up a course that will tackle basic manufacturing techniques, alternative methods and materials," he says, fresh from the intensive preparations he and McKeon have been making to design the first pipe makers' course in the world. Add to that the wood crafting, engineering, leatherwork and tuning artistry inherent in the art of pipe making, and it seems that it's as eclectic a skill mix as you'll encounter anywhere outside of NASA. And there's more.
"The science of metrology (or precise measurement) is crucial too," Hegarty continues, "to reproducing or modifying particular sounds. We've sought agreement from prominent pipe makers about what should be included, and ultimately, the course must fulfil the function of enabling students to theoretically and practically create a set of pipes. The pipes have to function well in session after session, year after year. Our job is to reassure the players of the future that they can lay their hands on a decent set of pipes when they need them."
Pipe making is not just an act of design and engineering, though, and McKeon is adamant that any training course must ensure the future of the soul of the instrument. "A lot of pipe makers have come from engineering backgrounds," he explains. "It doesn't work, funnily enough, to simply be an engineer, and not play the pipes. You need to understand the instrument. If you try to make a set of pipes in a purely mechanical way, the end result is a machine, it's not an instrument."
John Lawlor, head of the school of manufacturing and design engineering at DIT, has rowed in behind this initiative with verve. Far from worrying that a pipe making course might render this art form into some conveyor belt qualification, Lawlor views the marriage of past and present as a challenge to be relished, rather than vanquished. "DIT's conservatory of music is already involved in Irish traditional music studies", Lawlor enthuses, with a passion equalled only by his love of the music itself.
"We don't view education as a business. Education is about personal and
cultural growth, and as a consequence society as a whole benefits. As someone who's loved the sound of the pipes ever since I heard the great Liam Og O Floinn play with Planxty, I see this as a great opportunity to marry ancient skills dating back to the 17th century with modern manufacturing processes. Then we can digitise the music, compare signals and accurately measure and recreate sounds.
"What will maintain this ancient craft is the fusion of the modern with the
traditional."
Pipe types
Practice set: Beginners' set of pipes, with bag, bellows and chanter
Half set: Practice set with the addition of three drones: tenor, bass and
baritone, tuned to bottom note on the chanter
Concert set: Half set, with the addition of three regulators for playing chords
to accompany the melody
Flat set: Pitched below the key of D, generally easier to tune and to fit with
reeds
Na PIobairI Uilleann's magnificently restored headquarters at 15 Henrietta
Street, Dublin 1, will reopen at 6.30pm today.
See also www.pipers.ie
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simonknight
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I'm not referring only to rushes and my comments apply to mainly large bore stuff. I'd be surprised to find many chanters without the slightest piece of wax or tape that are perfectly in tune with good response in all humidities.
My experience with narrow bore has been different - much less tuning help needed.
There are many trade-offs here. I now play my gallagher chanter with a rush. The reed will play in tune without it at higher humidities but response in the 2nd 8ve is more difficult and bottom hand, lower 8ve triplets are tricky. With the rush, I close the reed down a little and it stays fairly stable down to 30% humidity.
My experience with narrow bore has been different - much less tuning help needed.
There are many trade-offs here. I now play my gallagher chanter with a rush. The reed will play in tune without it at higher humidities but response in the 2nd 8ve is more difficult and bottom hand, lower 8ve triplets are tricky. With the rush, I close the reed down a little and it stays fairly stable down to 30% humidity.
Simon
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Cayden
I know Bill, things move with the environment but a pipemaker should have his reed/chanter combination set up in such a way that tuning is manageable without too much sticky tape and rushes. Any adjustment will eventually muffle and affect tone and setting up a chanter that will work well in a majority of circumstances IS doable.billh wrote:We're not just talking about rushes here Peter. Absolutism in either direction strikes me as wrong. Like you, I tend to think rushing a chanter is an act of desperation (unless, like a Froment, the chanter was designed "rush-in"), and would be taken aback by tape on a new narrow bore chanter; nonetheless I think some minor tweaks such as tonehole wax or a small bell constriction are acceptable even on the very best of chanters. I would be leery of selling a customer a new chanter with more than the faintest smudge of wax, but that doesn't mean customers should shy away from judicious use of such aids if they work for them.Peter Laban wrote:The fact some unrushed chanters were out doesn't mean ALL unrushed chanters are necessarily out.'m with BK on this one. I've heard a number of chanters with no tuning aids that the owners believed to be in tune. They weren't. I think to some degree it depends whether you're playing the chanter alone, with drones, or regs.
Bill
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Paul Reid
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One of the absolute craziest reed/rush/tape situations I ever saw was on Cillian Vallely's Froment chanter. In fact the reed was so tacked up it was, frankly, almost unrecognizable as a reed. Hilarious. But I recorded him that day and my gosh did it ever sound beautiful!
PR
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billh
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I am pretty sure we are in agreement... I just wanted to point out the difference between very subtle adjustments to a chanter that "works well" without them, and radical adjustments required to get an ill-behaved chanter to some semblance of playability. The question was originally asked as though this was an all-or-nothing issue, but I think that is misleading.Peter Laban wrote:...
I know Bill, things move with the environment but a pipemaker should have his reed/chanter combination set up in such a way that tuning is manageable without too much sticky tape and rushes. Any adjustment will eventually muffle and affect tone and setting up a chanter that will work well in a majority of circumstances IS doable.
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Uilliam
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Neil I must be doubly lucky twice then I must be trebly lucky living in a climate that the pipes are quite happy to play in and given that I tend to play indoors and don't bother with stuff like central heating. .My D and C chanters have never had anything done to them other than minor reed adjustments.My B has a rush.But I have seen some folk with more tape on than Alans 
Minor and aesthetically sympathetic tweaks are fine .
It must be a real pain working out humidity levels
and then tweaking the chanter 
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
Minor and aesthetically sympathetic tweaks are fine .
It must be a real pain working out humidity levels
and then tweaking the chanter
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
If ye are intersted in helping our cause to cure leprosy feel free to PM me.
Copyrighted Stuff, Blood Sausage, and Meat Helmets
It is copyrighted, but newspaper articles (this one on the wire as well) are in the public domain, and reprintable as long as given attribution.
Sorry to be the dickhead guy with the pencil neck and the duct tape on the glasses, but I don't want folks to fall into this trap and end up getting a nasty letter . . . .
Any author's work, whether published in newspaper or other medium, is ONLY in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may generally be used freely without the permission of the former copyright holder or licensee. As such, by definition, if a work has copyright protection it is NOT in the public domain. The end result is that the Irish Times article is copyright protected, and as far as I know the Times doesn't waive its copyrights willy-nilly. Now, the Times is clearly NOT going to file a lawsuit or even send a letter demanding the statutory damages and attorneys' fees for violation of their copyright, but I think its important to point out that the posting does indeed violate their copyright (and the good old Berne convention extends that protection to a buttload of countries). Incidentally, the concept of "copyright" was first legally recognized by the U.K.'s Statute of Anne of 1709. Damn limeys.
I promise I'm not trying to be a jackass (although my wife will tell you, emphatically, that I've got a hell of a lot of practice at being a jackass). I just don't want folks to get the wrong impression about copyrights and all of that crapola.
edited to add: In other words, I would suggest removing the post containing the article and posting a link to the online version of the same.
Also, attribution is meaningless in the intellectual property world. its important in academia, but so are pizza delivery and contraceptives. in reverse order of importance, of course.
And the oft uttered "fair use" defense is super great, but probably doesn't work in this context; and damnit, as I am heard muttering several times a day: "The goal is to never have to need to explain anything or assert a defense to a claim, however meritless the claim is and however effective the defense may be. Its WAY frickin' better to avoid a problem than to have to fix one."
cheers
P.S. I have one piece of tape on my back D hole (can I say that in mixed company?).
Last edited by Pazziato on Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Nilihism is best left to the Professionals.
aka Justification for a pipemaker to stick a chanter full of crap and say it's supposed to be that way.billh wrote:Benedict Koehler (whose own chanters are very well regarded) is occasionally quoted as saying "show me a piper without any wax or tape [on his chanter], and I'll show you a piper who is out of tune."[*]
I know a pipemaker that would reply "Ever see a bassoon or clarinet with rushes and tape?"
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Cayden
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Joseph E. Smith
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Steampacket
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My Williams D chanter has a bit of tape on the A and E notes and also a paper clip in the bell during the winter as it gets very dry here (Sweden). Around April time I can remove the tape.
The Wooff C chanter I own has no tape, rushes or stuff in the bell, just the chanter and a reed fitted by Geoff in 2003. It plays fine, and stays in tune all through the year. Even the dry winter air doesn't seem to affect the tuning, or the reed significantly. It only needs a micro adjustment of the bridle to keep it playing correctly. So far it's been a problem free chanter and it's just to play it. So I wouldn't agree with Benedict's statement. There are chanter/reed combinations that don't appear to need rushes, and/or tape all over the place. I can't be the only one with such a chanter, or have I been blessed?
"I think some minor tweaks such as tonehole wax or a small bell constriction are acceptable even on the very best of chanters. " Bill.
Aye, I agree with that, as Peter also mentioned, the environment makes demands on organic materials such as wood, cane.
"With chanters made by some of the worlds best living and deceased makers, aided to keep them in tune, I think that tells you something that we all know, and that something is that this is a difficult and sensitive instrument..." Neil.
Definitely
The Wooff C chanter I own has no tape, rushes or stuff in the bell, just the chanter and a reed fitted by Geoff in 2003. It plays fine, and stays in tune all through the year. Even the dry winter air doesn't seem to affect the tuning, or the reed significantly. It only needs a micro adjustment of the bridle to keep it playing correctly. So far it's been a problem free chanter and it's just to play it. So I wouldn't agree with Benedict's statement. There are chanter/reed combinations that don't appear to need rushes, and/or tape all over the place. I can't be the only one with such a chanter, or have I been blessed?
"I think some minor tweaks such as tonehole wax or a small bell constriction are acceptable even on the very best of chanters. " Bill.
Aye, I agree with that, as Peter also mentioned, the environment makes demands on organic materials such as wood, cane.
"With chanters made by some of the worlds best living and deceased makers, aided to keep them in tune, I think that tells you something that we all know, and that something is that this is a difficult and sensitive instrument..." Neil.
Definitely
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simonknight
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I think that's the whole point.itisi wrote:
I know a pipemaker that would reply "Ever see a bassoon or clarinet with rushes and tape?"
The boehm clarinet is a parallel bore, single reed instrument that was designed with the holes in the acoustically correct position.
The bassoon is a monster. I am lucky enough to own a really good quality instrument that would be considered to have a very even scale (by bassoon standards). But some notes are up to 30 cents off an even tempered tuning due to unavoidable design compromises, and require significant breath and embouchure changes to bring into to tune. This also varies based on temperature and atmospheric pressure.
Also the instruments change over their lifetime due to changes in the wood. It's common for an instrument to be re-voiced (tuned) by the maker or highly qualified repairer at points during its lifetime.
With that background, I'm not surprised that a conical bore instrument with a dry reed, and where you can only control pressure, requires a bit of tape or wax to play perfectly in tune.
Simon