vPipes Update

[Torrin Riáin]

Cillian Vallely's Rowsome and Froment chanters are "pretty crap" ? I'd be scared of whoever makes your pipes then

I definitely agree however with the "Play the instrument, not the batteries and soundchip" part of the post.

[stew]

They loaded with reverb their not reproducing a true sound of a chanter with a reed, the piper is playing a recorded sampled notes its a speaker that makes the sound, for goodness sake.
I don't even know why there even allowed to call them pipes when its a digital recorded sound from a speaker. just because they sound and look like pipes dos not mean they are pipes

by the way I play my own pipes & and I reed my own pipes and chanters.

Listen to a true chanter and drones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqlpPyJm ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqJvCHyB ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekeIv2Hz ... re=related

[ferris54]

You dont have to use the reverb setting, there is a sample of clean d and c pipes which you cannot tell apart from real pipes. The buzzing in the background is sound samples of real drones, perfectly in tune, but if you want to they too can be set a few cents off to give added realism.
I would love to play a full set of pipes but my frozen shoulder precludes it so i have bought these vpipes which i allow me to carry on practising. I think that i would still have bought these vpipes had my shoulder been ok as when it was too hot to sleep last week i was playing away on the vpipes at 3am in the morning and i also take them with me to work and have a play at lunchtimes. I`ll be taking them on holiday and weather permitting, be playing them in the caravan and beach in cornwall in two weeks.

So i`m happy with them, each to thier own

[Uilliam]

Peace and goodwill to ye all etc etc...
Uilliam

[Nanohedron]

Good sleeping weather.

[eskin]

I'd love to see someone post a video of "The Humours of Ballyloughlin" on the vPipes set to the key of B to compare with my Uilleann-B iPad app:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jJrCQmnBo

[Uilliam]

Nano I think it is a question of interpretation on how ye read it.However it is of no import whatsoever and for the sake of clarity,one view will remain.That which ye intended.I therefore delete ma post.Wi no regrets and in the interests of World harmony etc etc....
Uilliam

[Nanohedron]

And I edited mine. Honor is served, and now let everyone else scratch their heads and wonder what the hell just happened here.

[Uilliam]

As in all relationships some things are best left unsaid...
Uilliam

[Nanohedron]

True...one's bookie's address comes to mind, for example.

[Black Rose]

And bouzoukis! So, seven.

I play a cittern, so I'm off the hook. *whew*

Which reminds me, you can see and hear our Nanohedron perform on the mighty Cittern of the Upper Midwest on Saturday, 10 July--soon upon us--at 7PM, where he will be performing with Roisin Dubh, our fabulous, much-heralded pub band at the Celtic Junction, 836 Prior Avenue in Saint Paul Minnesota USA. It's a free, family friendly, all-ages concert and party followed by an open Irish session. BYOB etc. I hesitate to mention in this crowd, but some free beer, cider, wine and whatnot will be present to prime the pump. You will also be able to hear me prostitute the uilleann pipes in shameless music hall fashion. A little preview:

http://www.myspace.com/blackroseroisindubh
http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id= ... 591&ref=mf

[Nanohedron]

Y'know, BR, since you haven't said you'll be prostituting the vPipes at that event, I should charge you not only with brazenly prostituting our hardly-good name - and yourself - but also with being OT. Except coming from me that's, you know, like, "Hello, Pot. Meet Kettle."

But to continue the spirit of drift, a good part of the album is easily as hallucinatory as its cover, and you don't have to worry about urine tests or tar in the lungs.

You're getting a set of those devil's own vPipes yourself, aren't you?

[ferris54]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRbVwQn1 ... tube_gdata

Vpipes through a small homemade amp

[liraman]

And here's another one with on of the constructadores:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dhd0hY059A
Note the special WHITE edition...

[Black Rose]

Y'know, BR, since you haven't said you'll be prostituting the vPipes at that event, I should charge you not only with brazenly prostituting our hardly-good name - and yourself - but also with being OT. Except coming from me that's, you know, like, "Hello, Pot. Meet Kettle."

But to continue the spirit of drift, a good part of the album is easily as hallucinatory as its cover, and you don't have to worry about urine tests or tar in the lungs.

You're getting a set of those devil's own vPipes yourself, aren't you?

It's a lot less off-topic than badmouthing boxes and bouzoukies, but the fact is in this context I do have a set of vPipes allegedly on the way. As a matter of fact, when I arrived at the gig last night not only was the external weather tropically muggy with severe thunderstorms headed in, but the interior environment was such that apparently the air conditioning was indeed cooling well enough, but the system seemed to be ventilating with the outside intake dampers too open for the season. In short it was coolish enough, but it was extremely humid still because it was taking in hot muggy air from outside and dropping temp, which actually raises the dewpoint. It's a science thing.

Anyway...

Only two days earlier I actually had two out of three regulators going with the evil plastic reeds sent with the pipes, two sets later, except for a couple of notes on the treble, but the drones were brilliant and the chanter, though light for my tastes, was quite compliant. At the gig however, I pulled them out of the box to find the chanter so weak the drones would barely stay steady, and the bass had to be tuned so short I ran out of tenon and had to move the bass bridle. The choice then was, start rebuilding, or just do the gig on a touchy chanter with a flat and wonkly low D. I opted to just do the gig, because it's with a band and the drones and regulators, as if I ever had regulators going, were entirely optional. I discovered through casual conversation that another piper attending who had a set of pipes that put me to shame in the spring at the local tionol, found that his were now entirely disfunctional and he hadn't been capable of playing them at all for some weeks. And his were major maker pipes at twice the price as mine with major reedmaker custom reeds. Compared to that I count myself a reed genius or just really lucky.

I had a conversation also last night, with the Great Cormac O'Se, proprietor of the Celtic Junction, or Cormac the Mighty as I'm going to call him henceforth because of his Mighty piano box, and you and some of the other band mates while packing up, along the lines of this is why they invented the box. You press a button and get the same note every single time. Wouldn't that be neat with the pipes, instead of having to have a reed for every weather or temperature change or gig environment. Also we discussed picking up a song we'd dropped because it really needed to be in F, so I'd need a C chanter, and yours was disfunctional for the last year so I couldn't even borrow that.

Enter the vPipes. In a band situation, it's all a plus, and no negatives folks. You play the gig or you don't play the gig. You get a noise out of them no noise. You lift a finger and a note comes out, or you lift a finger and an annoying squeal comes out. Those are the choices you get in real life with a real set of uillean pipes, and when you've committed to a performance and people are sitting out there waiting to hear it, well, I'll go with the instrument that actually plays at that moment in the key you need it and in tune.

Now, great pipers play in a wild variety of gigs and climates and climate changes, but they do so by spending huge sums on reeds to get one or two that work, constantly swap them around, send their pipes to master reed makers for custom fitted reeds, and still end up out of luck now and then. Or, some of them make hundreds of reeds, some of them almost every day, and have whole boxes to try at any given moment.

And then there's the issue of key changes and implementation of the R-20 Rotary Ensemble...