Silly Question?

[juanito]

Just finished watching an episode of the program Coppers and Brass (great schtuff) here:
http://vimeo.com/74838389
About 15 min. in there is some footage of Martin Nolan playing with some lads in the Cobblestone. Martin’s chanter top looks like it has a pin similar to a tuning pin of a regulator. I have never seen a chanter with a tuning pin and was wondering if it was, and if not has anyone ever heard of such a thing as a chanter tuning pin?

[DjUntzUntz]

Hi Juanito.

No question is silly. Just ask if you wonder something.

looking at the pipes in question, they are made by Andreas Rogge in Germany. Lovely sounding set. Andreas has a regulator tuning system (two pins in the tenor and baritone regulators) and he is also able to make a tuning system device for the chanter making you able to tune the reed without taking off the chanter top. So yes, there are chanters (I don't know if other people than Andreas make it) with a tuning system device that offer you the ability to tune with a small pin.

Kind regards

[juanito]

Cheers DjUntzUntz : )

[RLines]

Martin is a great trad player, but also performs a lot outside the trad idiom. Jazz. Orchestral. Etc. So fine tuning of the chanter is pretty critical to playing in those kinds of ensembles.

R

[interbernd]

I´m not absolutely shure, but I think, I remember the pipes, Martin Nolan is playing on the video. The set was made by Andreas Rogge around ~1995 ??. Andreas brought it to one of our german piper gatherings. So I had the possibility to see the set, the chanter, and also the chantertop. And indeed, this top had a mechanism to change the internal volume. I can´t remember all the details or if it was to handle with a pin, but the idea of Andreas was, to change the tuning of the back D on stage or in sessions without working on the reed and with less effort. It was similar to some regulator end caps with screw mechanisms nowadays.
If I want to change the internal volume of my chantertop, I pull the top a little bit off the chanter. With my old Cilliain O´Briain chanter the back-D became a little bit flat, also the upper octave. On my Tom Aebi chanter I have the effect, that the back D becomes sharper and the sounding of the whole chanter is more mellow, than before.

[Cathy Wilde]

Interesting idea. I wonder if it works like a flute stopper, which can be adjusted by means of a screw to change tuning (& tone somewhat) by changing the sounding length between the top of the flute and the blowhole. It effectively shortens or lengthens the tone chamber.

Hmmm. Worth a try, I suppose!

Hard to imagine how you could get an adjustable stopper to stay in under all that pressure, though. I've blown my chanter top off a couple of times over the years!

[benhall.1]

Interesting idea. I wonder if it works like a flute stopper, which can be adjusted by means of a screw to change tuning (& tone somewhat) by changing the sounding length between the top of the flute and the blowhole. It effectively shortens or lengthens the tone chamber.

Now ... I'm by no means an expert, but people who are assure me that the position of the flute stopper does not and cannot affect the overall pitch of a flute. But maybe that's not what you meant. Maybe you're thinking relative tuning? I think (although I know even less about pipes than about flutes) that the pipes thing works more like the regulator pins. Aren't pipes technically closed ended tubes? As opposed to open ended like flutes? Or have I got that wrong? Also, for those who do know (unlike me, who is just interested) do the pins on regs actually move the reeds?

Sorry for the ignorance displayed in this post of mine. Still, at least it shows I'm interested in learning ...

[Steampacket]

"Now ... I'm by no means an expert, but people who are assure me that the position of the flute stopper does not and cannot affect the overall pitch of a flute." Ben.

Moving the flute stopper/cork in or out does affect the tuning of the notes. I have the cork 19 mm from the middle of the embouchure hole on my Wilkes and it brings the second octave notes in tune. The regulator pins fine tune the regulator by moving the rush in the regulator bore up or down, and if present, the blue tac on the pin above or under the regulator tone holes, flatening or sharpening the sounding note. The regulator reed stays where it is

[dunnp]

Ben said overall pitch. Different from the relationship between octaves.

[dunnp]

Here is a relevant flute thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=86903&hilit=Cubitt

But this is ot for here.

[rorybbellows]

When playing the flute does the volume of your mouth make any difference to the pitch or the tone ? This would be more relative to the OP's question than the position of the flute stopper..

RORY

[MTGuru]

When playing the flute does the volume of your mouth make any difference to the pitch or the tone ? This would be more relative to the OP's question than the position of the flute stopper..

Interesting point, Rory. And no, not really, because the flute is an open tube as Ben said.

[dunnp]

I don't know when I burp the note flattens on pitch.

[MTGuru]

I don't know when I burp the note flattens on pitch.

That's because the speed of sound in carbon dioxide (259 m/s) is less than in air (331 m/s). By injecting CO2 into the embouchure hole you're effectively increasing the virtual length of the flute tube and ... wait, why are you burping? Is the "gastric stop" the latest thing in flute articulation? Why am I always the last to learn about these fancy new techniques?

[Cathy Wilde]

Sorry for tripping over a can of worms, there. I'm still not sure exactly what term I was aiming for, I guess, but the wisdom when I was a young music-school whippersnapper was that you pushed the tuning cork toward the crown a trifle (so the mark on the tuning rod was slightly "upstream" of the blowhole center) for a slightly "better" bottom octave ("better" to us meant better tone, better volume, better ease of playing -- basically, an easier way to achieve a bigger, darker tone, which is what we were all after 30 years ago).

Doing this did affect your tuning, but you compensated for that by "lipping" up or down. And more than a few of us experimental (emphasis on the "mental") types agreed that tightening the crown (i.e., lowering the ceiling on the headjoint airspace) would brighten the sound a bit, though nobody really wanted that at the time!

If you pushed things too far either way you definitely went out of tune, and relative tuning (tuning between the notes) went bonkers.

That's truly old-school thinking, I guess. But when I mentally laid a pipe chanter alongside my flute, it seemed like it could be a somewhat analagous situation. Ah well. Thanks for letting me ponder!