While I played the highland pipes for about 6 years… its been many years since I’ve done anything musical. Liking the sound of the uilleann pipes better I’ve been thinking about learning to play.
That leaves me with all sorts of questions that, due to my experience with the highland pipes, may or may not be relevant, a few of the top ones to come to mind are:
With the highland pipes, most of my learning was done on a simple practice chanter. There doesn’t seem to be anything similar with the uileann pipes - just the practice set which seems to be comparable to playing the highland pipes without the drones… is that more or less correct? Are there “practice chanters” for uileaann pipes?
Assuming I were to buy a set, how tricky is it to get good reeds? I remember going through boxes of drone and chanter reeds at the store trying to find one that was good. How reliable is it to get reeds online?
When I was piping I didn’t have access to many different kinds of bags (whether they weren’t available or whether my pipe master was a purist of some sort, I only remember having elk hide). They were a fair amount of trouble to maintain and keep conditioned. Are the synthetic bags available now any good?
Yes, but you don’t want one. There are a variety of reasons, but the primary one being that it doesn’t have a bag and bellows.
Reeds are custom made to the specific maker’s chanter, so you can get them either from the original maker or from someone who makes reeds and is familiar with how to make reeds for your specific chanter.
Yes, but it’s not as big an issue with UPipes as they are dry (not mouth blown), so leather bags last virtually forever.