How to leard to blow the bag

[Glenarley]

The Myth of Hard Chanter Reeds

As I supply custom set pressure, synthetic chanter reeds, the idea is to have a piper play with a reed that suits the pressure they are comfortable playing. Mostly mature aged pipers that can no longer muster the will or energy to play hard and sometimes temperamental cane chanter reeds.

When I get requests for harder chanter reeds I always ask why? I usually get some confusing reply like, “I always play a hard reed”. This doesn’t answer why? It also seems to me this piper does not have the skills or bag control to play a more moderate reed.

I recently spent some time with an old PM from the 60’s era (Jock, yes, that's his name) and after yapping for an hour or so I started to understand this hard reed philosophy. He went on to explain that as a PM, he wanted to avoid any of his pipers’ overblowing notes and autocranning (squeaking) as this could affect their judging results. The harder the reed, the harder to over blow the reed was the universal answer.

The down side of playing hard chanter reeds was the higher probability of chokes but as Jock stated, he would rather have a no sound than an unwanted sound (autocran), so the myth of the hard chanter reed was created.

The other unwanted down side of hard chanter reeds was the need to have drones that would not shut off when they had to be set to the same higher operating pressure to match the chanter reed. This gave us the options of a sporran hair under the drone reed blade or a bent paper clip up the reed to keep it from closing off. Both bad practices as they effected the sound by making the reeds more buzzy and less harmonic, effectively using a bodgie fix for a poor technique issue.

This issue was addressed when the synthetic drone reeds appeared on the scene as they could be made to operate at high pressures, something I have covered in an earlier post.

As I see it, based on what I have been told and observed, when PMs insist on hard chanter reeds, they are basically trying to take poor playing ability and bag control out of the equation. Using the reed to compensate for poor playing ability. Now you all know who you are.

Most half decent pipers that come to see me like to play moderate strength reeds and they have the ability to operate the bag at the appropriate pressure so over blowing is not an issue for them. Most of the older pipers that see me have been playing for many years and generally have developed good bag control technique and this is why they have no issue with playing softer reeds.

We call the softer reeds players reeds for a good reason.

The panacea for poor bag control should not be harder chanter reeds as the best answer is good technique and wood shedding.

Cheers

-G

[pancelticpiper]

...mature aged pipers that can no longer muster the will or energy to play hard cane chanter reeds.

When a Grade One Worlds-winning tonemeister/reedmaker was setting up our band he asked one of our older pipers "what strength do you blow?"

Our mature gent replied "I'm a musician, not an athlete."

...an old PM from the 1960’s stated that he would rather have no sound than an unwanted sound.

...when PMs insist on hard chanter reeds, they are basically trying to take poor playing ability and bag control out of the equation...

That's only the second time I've ever heard that philosophy stated. The first time was my old PM from the 1980s who said

"Hard reeds solve unsteady blowing: the reed's too hard for the pipers to overblow, and if they underblow the chanter just cuts out."

Personally my blowing is MORE steady on a reed that's a comfortable strength.

There's a magic middle ground, where the reed has a satisfying amount of backpressure and gives a full tone yet isn't too tiring to play.

It's a sad day when your perfect comfortable steady reliable reed has suddenly got thin and unsteady.

[Glenarley]

Unsteady Blowing

As a reed maker, the bane of my craft is unsteady blowing pipers.

I tailor reeds to blowing pressures and many of my clients want to have easy reeds, reeds in the 22 – 26” H2O range, 26 - 28” being the most asked for pressure.

The biggest problem is that the pipers asking for low pressure reeds are doing so because they struggle with the harder cane reeds they are playing, but they sound like a bag of old roosters because they are not steady with their bag pressure and somehow believe a softer synthetic reed will resolve their problems.

Soft reeds are not the panacea for poor bag control, something I am continually having to state to perspective clients.

While I have mentioned figures in previous posts, the numbers are the only way I can represent the problems.

If you want to play at 26”, the chanter reed will crow at about 24” and will overblow (autocran or squeak) on low A at about 36-38”. This is a pretty reasonable pressure range for a piper.

A cane reed looses between 15-25% blowing pressure once it is moisture normalised. The harder the cane (more fiber – less pith) the less the pressure drops. The pitch also varies with pressure differential but this is difficult to quantify because cane can vary so much.

Most half decent pipers will only vary up to about 5-6” pressure differential and really good pipers are so steady, the needle hardly moves more than one or two inches.

Some of the pipers I see are not able to stay under 10” variation, some are even more extreme. The reed has not yet been made, synthetic or cane, that will operate well with such a wide pressure variations so the only option is to give them a reed so high in pressure that it is impossible to get it to autocran or, teach them bag control. For PM’s the easy option is a hard reed.

Most tutors I have seen in recent time do not teach bag control as a necessary skill and seem to focus mostly on fingering the chanter. It is very common to hear the critique “good fingers – poor phrasing and tone”. This is because the piper is not steady and the tone is up and down so much that the chanter and drones are constantly out of wack with each other.

Last week I had a piper see me about a synthetic reed and while this piper would be welcomed in most grade two bands, he could only play at one pressure, around 33”. He was not Robinson Crusoe as this is a commonly found issue. He has never been taught bag control as a specific skill so he could not adjust his blowing pressure to suit a lower pressure bag configuration. This piper will never be a pibroch piper if he cannot play down to a more manageable pressure.

Drone only bag control is mutually exclusive to controlling the bag when it comes to learning sound technique. Adding the chanter should be the last step in the learning process.

No equipment will be the panacea for poor technique so practically all the gimmicks being marketed are a scam substitute for poor technique and that’s why so many pipers sound like a bag of old roosters.

I will address this technique issue in another post.

Cheers

-G