Other overblown bagpipes

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

There was a technique of Borders pipers for overblowing a few notes into the 2nd octave - we don't have a monopoly on it! - involving half-holing the thumb note. Their term for this was "pinching the back lee," as I recall. Recorder players do something similiar to obtain really high notes of some ilk I think.
Denis Brooks wrote about certain French pipes being able to overblow a few notes too. Hrmm, online translation of "pinching the back lee" is "pincement de la lie arrière." Probably is insulting/obscene/punchline like most of those translator's results!
Anyways howzabout it? Any more data about this overblownness? I always wondered if there were other parallels between the pastoral pipes and continental tech - turnings, tonehole shapes, wood and metal work.

[BigDavy]

Hi Kevin

Shivering the back lil also applies.

Gaita can be overblown as well.

David

[Gabriel]

The french bagpipes overblow up to the 2nd octave's c (on G/C tuned pipes). That means, the range is from (f)g1 to c3, mostly chromatical. You can play in g, a, h and d minor and f, g, a, c, d major on those pipes (partly with massive crossfingering of course).
To reach the high octave, you often must play a g2 first, and on most instruments you first have to overblow to a2 before playing any other note of the overblown octave. Quite tricky.

[Ross]

The Sutherland manuscript (about 1790) has tunes for the Highland and pastoral ("Irish") pipes, with fingering scales for each. The former shows two overblown notes with a pinched thumbhole; the latter is much the same as in Geoghegan.

I believe it's all really down to the reed. With a modern highland chanter and a moderately soft reed, you can overblow one note if you know what you're doing; once the reed is about to expire you can get two (but the price is that your seven-finger first-octave note becomes unsteady). I expect that with a narrower reed you could get two second octave notes reliably, and thus play Frahar's jig on the warpipe.

Many pipes - the French cornemuse, the border pipes made by Jon Swayne, and the Flemish pipe - get three second-octave notes, and often a fourth as a gracenote. This basic design appears to have been around for at least 400 years. The bagpipe was the shawm in a bag. Shawms generally overblew a few notes, but it varied from one instrument to another. The same undoubtedly applied to medieval pipes.

It is sometimes possible to get to the high octave without running up. For example, in the pastoral pipe - as in the uilleann pipe off the knee - you can get from a low octave G to a high octave g by playing a ghost D gracenote - basically, you slap down three bottom-hand fingers as you increase the bag pressure and up you go.

Ross

[WireHarp]

Ross,

I noticed in the Advocates MS that there is a mention of 'pinching' in the fingering chart at the beginning. Is that what is involved here, half-holing the back? I didn't see the same mentioned in Geoghagan.


Robert Mouland
www.wireharp.com

[Pekkos]

Swedsh bagpipes can somtimes overblow one or two notes by halfholing the thumbhole, this with a parallell bore and a single blade reed. More interesting is that on very dry days and a happy reed you can "underblow"; by releasing the pressure on a D-chanter, fingering low C, you can get a hard sounding low A

/Anders

[Tim Hall]

And Northumbrian smallpipes - this is not "textbook" technique, but is used to good effect by some pipers. Dave Shaw comes to mind.

Tim

[oleorezinator]

at the 1990 pittsburgh tylenol at which the much touted plastic up chanter reed was revealed, there was chat about a highland pipe reed that could play up to a highland d in the second octave. hughes and mcleod were the brains behind both of these.

[Donald E Baltus]

I personally think those plastic GHB practice-chanter-based "smallpipes" are the most overblown pipes in the world. Or would that be the most "over-rated" bagpipes in the world? Either way works.

[AaronMalcomb]

at the 1990 pittsburgh tylenol at which the much touted plastic up chanter reed was revealed, there was chat about a highland pipe reed that could play up to a highland d in the second octave. hughes and mcleod were the brains behind both of these.

Is that the Clanrye chanter reed? I think the scale on those reeds starts at second octave D.

I personally think those plastic GHB practice-chanter-based "smallpipes" are the most overblown pipes in the world.

*rimshot*

I have to agree with you Donald.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Donald E Baltus]

at the 1990 pittsburgh tylenol at which the much touted plastic up chanter reed was revealed, there was chat about a highland pipe reed that could play up to a highland d in the second octave. hughes and mcleod were the brains behind both of these.

Is that the Clanrye chanter reed? I think the scale on those reeds starts at second octave D.

Aaron

If you have an old Hardie Mark IV or something pitched below Bb those reeds did play half-musically in terms of scale--with the exception of bizarre high G and F behavior the second they got wet, which they did immediately in any sort of outdoor moderate weather. Or in other words, the sort of conditions under which they are usually played. The tone on the other hand, was not as bad as it could be at best.

[sean an piobaire]

The Scots Lowland Pipe term for the half-holed (the lower half of the hole) thumb note was/is: "shivering the back Lil" Have a seance, and ask Robbie Burns' ghost, " do ye thin' tha' phrase cam' frae th' deil hissel?"...I suspect it had something to do with ***! There was even a horizontal groove, sliced across the thumb hole, to catch the thumbnail of the piper's thumb. This was found on some of the old chanters, and it is a common "historical" fingering for the second octave on the recorder (blockflote, flute a bec, etc.) Without the Scottish groove though!
Until recently the Gaita Galega (with one L, ala the Galego language) fingered one note over the octave, with the top index finger left off, and the thumb, middle, and ring of the Left Hand on, and the index and middle fingers of the Right hand on. On a C chanter, this would be a second octave "D". Now, in response to the Asturian competion, some Galician makers are changing the bore design, and weakening the reed to get up to the thumb and 3 finger note over the octave. This is without any special fingering, just an increase of pressure. It does change the sound, and I think it makes it more wimpy! It's just been discovered that some of the old Galician chanters fingered closed as well! Hmmm! The Asturian chanters (in B flat and C) do finger completely closed, with the bottom keynote or the bottom lead tone popping out between the notes of the melody. You take off one or more fingers, for the sharps and flats, instead of forked fingerings for the minor 3rd, the minor 6th,and 7th etc. of the Galician pipes. The Vee shaped chanter reed on the Asturian pipes is very small, and has a cane (2 tiny strips)bridle tied on at the base of the reed head, that slides ,just little bit, up the Vee, to open up the reed. The staple has a very small I. D. diameter tube, with a thick winding of cotton thread around it, and is plugged deep into the reed seat. Lastly, the throat below the reed seat is very narrow. Because the reed is so sharp in pitch, the thumb and 3 upper hand finger holes are of a tiny diameter to compensate. The lower hand holes are just the same size as the lower holes on the Galician pipe chanter.
So this chanter is overblown with just a slight air pressure increase, without any special fingerings. I believe that the size of the Asturian reed makes it easier to hit that 3rd tier harmonic. But it does have some problems with reed stability...well you can't have an extra 3 notes over the octave for free! Especialy on the short, high pitched chanters of Spain!
Siempre problemas con las Gaitas y los palettas! No? Xuan el gaitero

[sean an piobaire]

Addendum to the above post: I just got through reeding up a Gaita chanter last night! It's stamped B.Carril of Santiago ( de Campostella, Galicia) the B is hard to read and it could be an F. The oval name stamp is further ornamented, with a surround of the "arrows to the 4 directions", carved in the wood and "picked out" with red aniline dye, or paint. The chanter belongs to a Canadian Musician, who has owned it for the last 20 years. It could have been made in the 1960s....?
The very first (and most marvelous introduction to the Gaita) recording I ever had, was a tape cassette of Francisco Carril (RIP). The full color photo on the "J" card, has him standing in front of the Roman Lighthouse at La Coruna, in full costume. I think it was a very popular cassette and was widely distributed, back in the 1970s. I got my copy in 1978, along with my 1st Gaita Galega made from Ash wood, and fitted with one of those flea-shaped, rubber bags, pieced together from strips of car tire inner tubes! Note: Rubber bags rot -out the wood stocks in no time, especialy with daily playing! I've got my old boxwood, 2 droner set tied into a sewn leather bag.
The Carril chanter is made from boxwood, in the key of "B" (but I found it sounds consistantly 20 cents flat, on the Korg tuner A=440 ref.) I made 2 cane reeds, and one #6 plastic reed. I found that this chanter overblows the octave with the thumb completely off the hole, and with the best reed, it plays right up to the 3 fingernote, (the 4th degree of the scale of B major) an E!
I think it is an excellent chanter, as the tone has that "punch"! It is definately not "wimpy" Come on you modern makers, copy < los productos de Carril! Por favor!> Sean Folsom

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

You'd want to save that rubber bag anyway. Makes a good conversation piece. I wish I'd saved the four foot long blue naughahide bag I used to have. Looked like they skinned Casper or something...
So overblowing is a West Coast thing? Atlantic. I always wonder about parallels in bagpipe tech - isin't the Bock the one with the one-piece first section bass drone, with three bores in the one piece? Which is like how the Taylors built their bass drones - did they know someone from Hungary, hmm? Or was it done on earlier British pipes?

[bradhurley]

So what about harmonics on the uilleann pipes? I remember a good piper once showing me a fingering that would produce the third-octave D using harmonics, and I wonder if it's possible to go higher than that using alternative fingerings and bag pressure?

On the flute you can play an entire scale in the second octave by using just the fingers of your right hand (corresponding to the bottom hand on the pipes) using harmonics for the notes above G. Is something like that possible on the pipes?

I have one of those Swedish willow flutes that's just a tube with no toneholes and it's amazing the music you can play on it by overblowing notes; I can play some simple tunes but there are virtuosos out there who can do the most amazingly complex melodies.