Check if the reed sits straight in its socket, it is possible the reed tongue touches the sides of the stock.
If you watch kaba gaida players you will notice they keep the end of the drone shut until there is enough pressure to get the chanter going, then they play the typical intro (B…-Gnat-F#-E) and release the drone.
Cheapo gaidas are not necessarily bad instruments, I have some of them myself and they play fine.
I have never had this problem, but I have never played the original reeds.
OK, I’ll check the reed again tonite. 
Where do you get your reeds Michael? BTW where are you located. I don’t think there are any Gaida players within 1000 miles of me. 
Bag still stinks 
I’m more than 1000 miles away - Germany, not far from Hanover.
I make my own reeds. Unfortunately, kaba gaida chanters, even if they are from the same maker, can vary a lot, so I haven’t yet succeded in making a standard reed which fits different chanters, unless by (very unlikely) coincidence. The drone, however, is usually not much of a problem. I use cane tongues on plastic bodies for the chanter reed, for the drone, I find plastic tongues absolutely satisfying soundwise (I’m sure you’ve read the discussion on the other forum about the sound of plastic vs cane, and I absolutely do second Ted’s opinion as long as we’re talking about narrow bores like UP, smallpipes or border pipes, but in my experience, the wider the bore of the drone, the lesser noticeable is the difference - in case of the kaba gaida, it can of course be heard it if you compare them directly, but I personally don’t perceive the sound of the plastic reed as inferior, just slightly different).
Many makers use naphtalene to prevent the bags being eaten by moths, so, are you sure the smell is goat, or might it be the naphtalene? If in doubt, bring it to a chemist for a quick smell… In case it’s naphtalene you can rub it with benzene which dissolves the naphtalene, but you should definitely do it outside and if possible, wear a gas mask.
If it is goat smell indeed, you can rub the bag with milk (never tried it myself) or with skin cream (doesn’t have to be Nivea, a cheaper product will do the same job). Both these methods will also make the bag more flexible, some of them can be very hard when dry. The alternative is, to wait and put up with the fact that after all, it is a dead animal… sooner or later the smell will go away.
Definitely goat… The dogs really want a piece of it too…
Hey Anima, where are you in the midwest. Here in Chicago we have a couple very good gaidar, one of which is a good friend of mine. I’d think that’s within a thousand miles.
I’m in Kansas City - maybe I’ll head up your way (still a 10 hour drive) and do the Gaita/Gaida thing.
Jeff
You’ll have to keep your dog away from the instrument… my own dog loves the kaba gaida but hates the djura gaida, but never cared for the smell, only for the sound. Luckily, all my gaidas are almost odourless.
I sent you a PM.
Jeff there is a guy in KC who plays the bulgarian Gaida (I’m like 98% sure) as well as a bunch of other world bagpipes. I talked to him on the phone about a year ago intending to meet up but never got around to it and now I can’t remember where his contact info is or how I even got a hold of him in the first place… I’ll try to remember.
Ok we really need to hook up with that guy - maybe set up the KC Alternative Bagpipe Society.
lemme know if you find his contact info.
Hey Dave, did you ever find that gaida guy here in KC?
Yes indeed you don’t “strike in” the drone of the gaida, instead you start the beast like this:
- stick a finger in the end of the drone
- finger the thumb note on the chanter with your upper hand
- blow the bag up. As the pressure increases the thumb note will play, at first flat, then it will “scoop” up to pitch. When the thumb note gets to the right pitch level off the bag pressure.
- go from the thumb note to the tonic (three finger) note with the typical ornament gaidari always do
- pop the finger out of the drone, thus starting the drone
- put your lower hand on the chanter and you’re ready to go
It’s strange to break it down into these steps. It makes it sound harder than it is. You just get used to it. As I mentioned above, they usually don’t use the drone at all when playing in bitov ensembles.
Here’s the ensemble Sto Gaidi in the process of starting their pipes:
About gaida learning materials in English, we English speakers are incredibly lucky that an Australian guy went to Bulgaria, became a very fine gaida player, and made an instructional DVD.
About the writing down of the gaida music, they teach courses in gaida playing in some Bulgarian universities and those professors and students all can read music, and they write out everything they play. The old time village musicians didn’t read or write music.
About Bulgarian “tunes”, yes “tunes” in the Irish sense don’t exist. Rather there are a large number of phrases that exist in each dance rythm idiom, for example dozens of phrases in the idiom of the rutchenitsa (7/8).
In the old days when the village gaidar would play for dancing he would keep stringing together phrases from his repertoire and keep playing as long as the dancers needed.
I have a wonderful cassette tape of a female Bulgarian gaida player and on it she plays for a solid 20 minutes or so in one of the dance rythms, pravo I think, just as she would if playing at a wedding. (Pravo by the way sounds like jigs, though oddly enough Bulgarians notate pravos in 2/4 time. I write them out in 6/8 to reflect their actual sound.)
The Bulgarian name for these phrases is kolyano.
I highly recommend the book May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music by Dr Timothy Rice.
It’s fantastic for putting Bulgarian music in its historical and social context, as the music evolved from extemporised playing by village musicians to the centralised formalised folk orchestras of the 1950s which changed nearly every aspect of the music and instruments.
On the topic of the structure of the “tunes” (kolena, singular kolyano) Dr Rice says, in talking of Kostadin Varimezov’s transition from village gaidar to orchestral player:
With musical notation and the orchestral training that required exact repeats, Kostadin became, as he says, “conscious” of musical form, in contrast to what was formerly “unconscious” and “accidental”, “whatever came into my head”. If in the old days variation was improvised and forgotten at the instant of performance, notation helped him create and manipulate variation and store the result in notation as well as memory. He conceded that notation created for him the idea of fixed melodic structures to be played identically each time, effectively wiping out the freedom and variation characterstic of village tradition (in which) a dance could last for an hour or more (and) the musicians strung together as many tunes as they knew, beginning with a ritually appropriate or requested tune and continuing with “whatever came into their heads” until the procession or dancers stopped.
Kolena are what in Irish music would be fragments of tunes, two measure bits or four measure bits.
Thanks Pancelt, you are a font of information. Good to know about how to start the drones - that was driving me crazy (a short drive). I bought a DVD from Bulgariana.com that Cory Dale made (Boyan Savov hosts) - is this the dvd you are referring to? It is rather short. I have the Rice book and am reading it at present - good accompanying CD but the clips are cut too short. Where are you located?
Jeff
I’m in the OC, California.
Yes indeed! Cory Dale is the guy.
I never got very good at the gaida, but spent a lot of time in lessons, listening, and practicing. It’s far more difficult that it appears, at least for me.
What made it difficult was that my teacher, Georgi Doichev, didn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Bulgarian.
I think I would have made more progress if I had understood more.
Anima
Don’t know if you’re still interested (been 5 years) but a good contact with a lot of other gajda players is the eefc.org mailing list. There are a bunch of us that track it. I track this forum too, don’t know how I missed you earlier.
Jim
I am still here, it’s been very slow - the music is dense, complex, and very different than “western” music. I really need to find someone close to work with me or it may be a no go.
Hello Guys.
I just bought a jura gaida in RE from bulgariana.com and, of course, the problems begin.
Firstly, i didnt had time to play it to much because something happened to reeds and the second day, they did not sound anymore. I tried, what they wrote in the book: i rubbed them with suet (Don't ask me how difficult it was to find suet in a big city!) but that had almost no succes. I am trying now with other reeds and it is very difficult to tune the gaidenitsa. Seems like every reed reacts differentlly. No note is where it should be. And the flea note is sharping the others notes (when im open it) much more that it should.
Can anyone recommend me a link to internet where i could learn to make my one reeds.
Thank you.
Florin
The mormorka or “flea hole” is tricky. If you’re blowing the chanter at too low a pressure, the fleahole notes will be too sharp.
So I would experiment with blowing first. I’ll wager that an experienced gaida player could play your chanter fairly well in tune.
It is possible to flatten the fleahole notes by putting a tiny bit of tuning wax in the mormorka.
I’ve even removed the tube from the fleahole and replaced it with a tube of a different Inside Diameter and/or a different length, to fine-tune the fleahole notes.
About your chanter reed’s instability, all cane reeds play differently when they’re dry and when they’re moist. I would wager that if you spent a week playing your gaida on a regular schedule, say, one-half hour each day, the reed will stabilise.