first, do you flat chanter players call your notes by the same name?
For instance, would you be more inclined to call your ‘off-the-knee-all-fingers-down’ note ‘D’ or ‘C’ ?
(thereby making us perfect-pitch people nuts.. but thats another story…)
second, (maybe for concert/flat ‘doublers’ only)
If you had a gig on concert pipes, but there was a couple selections you had to play what really only worked on flat chanter, (sans drones + regs, of course)
Would you hesitate at all before plugging your flat chanter into your concert set in order to play these couple selections?
There is a long standing tradition in UPs that all scores are written in D or G. This allows players to transpose anything from one chanter to anther. So while a player may or may not know all the “correct” notes on a flat chanter, they can use the common scores and documentation for D on the flat chanter without much effort.
A C chanter sits very nicely on a D set. A few keys help.
At this year’s piping recital during Willie Week, Tiarnan O’Duinnchinn played most of his pieces on his wonderful sounding concert D set.
However for one set of tunes, the names of which escape me, he plugged in a B chanter. Interestingly he hit the (D set’s) regs a couple of times when playing the B chanter. I have seen him do this before- probably in a previous Miltown recital as well.
As for your first question, I refer to the bottom note on flat chanters as “D”, but my knowledge of the theory of music is paltry.
I’d think you could play some really nice tunes beginning on note “E” of a conceret chanter with drones (this would usually clash a bit with D drones) by plugging a C chanter into a D set of drones, and then playing the tune (since E would then be D). I don’t think I explained this really well, do you know what I’m talking about? My mind is blanking on a good tune example…maybe Cooley’s starting on E (at least how I play it)?
What lordofthestings writes works basically. Keep in mind that the notes on a C chanter are tuned to play nicely with C drones. Some notes on a C chanter might cause annoying dissonances when played with D drones. Second E (or second D on a C chanter, whatever you want to call it) comes to mind.
There was a thread about this topic some weeks ago.
When playing my instruments, I always think of D fingering, regardless of the instrument I play (Bb pipes, Eb whistle etc.). When playing Cooley’s reel on a Eb whistle, I play it in (sounding) F minor but still think of it as an Emin tune and play it like I would play it on any other instrument: B natural flute, D flute, Bb pipes, piano, mandolin…
Yes, pipers always refer to their bottom note as D, regardless of pitch. Think of it as tonic solfa with a moveable do, except we use letter names instead of do-re-mi. Ie, in terms of pitch the tradition is a relative one, not absolute.
Going back a few posts, when playing a B chanter one can use a few of the concert regs for a bit of fun. You get a D, A, another D, a Fnat, 3 C’s and a low Bb which are all usable. I tend to find that this is (in my case) because one is too lazy to finish one’s own B set and just ends up sticking the chanter in the concert set.
This does not tend to work so well with a C# chanter . . . just a G available.
if this is the same Ted I’m thinking it is, you + I can personally testify to that ‘in-between-pitch’ problem on zampogne…
Thanks for your input , everyone.
if this is the same Ted I’m thinking it is, you + I can personally testify to that ‘in-between-pitch’ problem on zampogne… 
