Firstly, hello all – I’ve been a frequent lurker and occasional contributor to the flute and whistle forums for a while now, but this is my first UP post. I’m a little nervous, but here goes..
The other day I was listening to John McSherry playing “Doinna” (on his record with Mike McGoldrick) with a synthesized E drone, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen or heard of a maker offering drones that are adjustable to sound on both D and E. I asked my local maker about this (Pat Stones – whose work, apropos of another recent thread, I would happily recommend to anyone) and he said that he’d never heard of anyone doing it either, but that there was no reason why it shouldn’t be done, and fairly easily at that (regs might be a different matter, of course..)
Now I have a strongly classical background and I’m aware that this heavily influences the way that I hear harmony. But, it would certainly make theoretical sense for tunes in E and A dorian to be accompanied by an E drone, and I’m pretty sure it would sound good too; after all, a guitarist would never accompany, say, Morrison’s jig with a D drone in the bass. I can see reasons why it might be impractical – a pain to retune between tunes, lot of sets consisting of 2 major and one minor tune, etc. I can also see that it wouldn’t be “authentic”, which might upset some people. But given that it would be a pretty straightforward thing to build-in (insofar as anything to do with building pipes is straightforward..) and would open up various possibilities, I just wondered if there is any reason why makers don’t offer it, at least as an option. It may be, of course, that lots of makers do and I’ve just never come across it.
Most uilleann drones are pitched only to the bell of the chanter, ie: a “D” chanter would normally have three drones all pitched to octaves of “D” as well. Sometimes you’ll find a maker who has added a fourth or fifth drone in another pitch, but usually strongly related to the bell. In this example, that might be an “A” drone.
But most drones aren’t made with the intent of being able to tune them up or down a whole step. I for one would think it very cool if there were some valve or similar device that could either me made with the drone itself or perhaps added later that could allow for the pitch to be shifted up or down a note. Usually shifting up would be what you’d need and this would be easier than shifting down.
Check with some makers - they may be able to engineer a longer tuning slide for this purpouse…who knows?
pipemakers have occasionally made drones that would play in different keys, holes up the drone that could be uncovered to make them rise a tone, separate A or g drones with seaparate switches. Eugene Lambe made a set he called the AC/DC set whihc could play several keys, Tommy Keane had a halfset once that could do C and D. And there are several other examples. Bottom line is, drone reeds don’t really fancy playing in different pitches. and for that, and other reasons the idea never caught on.
Writing this i realise this has been discussed before, try an archive search.
Hello, I havn’t introduced myself, my name is Anders and I live in Sweden, playing the swedish bagpipe(cylindrical bore chanter with single reed, deeply scalloped) and fiddle, and leaning to play french bagpipe.
I don’t play uilleann pipes, but on one of my swedish bagpipes I have three d-drones that I can remove a small plug to uncover a hole in each of them to tune them to e instead, works really nice. Really fun play some tunes in E-minor, even if I have some trouble with the intonation of the chanter playing in that scale.
Wanna try something wierd? On some sets, not all but some, if you remove the bottom joint from the base drone, all your drones will jump up to the 4th, e.g. on a D set, your drones will jump up to G. On my B set they want to jump to D for some odd reason.
There’s loads of Em tunes that sound great this way! A few weeks ago, i was playing uilleann pipes in a concert and did one set of tunes on my C chanter against D drones, which amounts to the same effect.
I get a lot of mileage out of this on my Scottish small pipes, and Northumbrian pipes often have tuning beads that open holes one tone higher up the drones. Something i’m looking forward to…
As Anders noted, you may have to make some adjustments or tradeoffs tuning-wise, though. A chanter that’s just-intonated in D might not sound as “in tune” against an E drone.
But well worth playing around with, if you’re not too hung up on beingtradtional. Who else but pipers would even think about playing in Em with a D drone?
Here is a picture of my set of pipes with retunable drones, currently with a french chanter i A , but with my swedish chanter in D/G next to it. I can use this bag and drones with my chanter in E/A as well. Note the plugs made of boxwood, . If I remove parts of my bass-drone it can be tuned to G.
My Roberts 1/2 set has a Bass G drone (I had it tuned to A originally) and a tenor drone that can play in A or G depending on which hole you open. Just got them all working last night with all brass reeds. Still trying to balance them and quiet them down.
I was watching a travel programme on Norway the other night on TV. Between the sheeps head, beer, cross country skiing, camping, base jumping scenes it showed Bergen at night (which looked like great fun altogether!) there was a piper in the street playing a set similar to your one Pekkos… it wasn’t one of you fellas was it?
Can’t think of who that may be, I think my maker only have made one set exactly like mine with three D-drones, but I have met one guy (Olle Gällmo, to the left in the picture) who has a similar set but with g d and G drones.
Alban Faust he has made other similar sets, also with drone switches, (a feature that I don’t have) that can be seen on his homepage http://www.albanfaust.com , but I don’t know who the owners are
