Hi! I’m thinking about asking David Daye to add a chromatic Bb key to my set, as I love that scale. However, I’m uncertain on how these keys work.
Do you adjust them to make the chanter change scale?
Keys help you to play notes that are less frequently played in traditional music. Most Irish traditional tunes are composed in D or G major (or their relative minor modes). An unkeyed chanter will allow you to play in these modes.
The 2nd octave C natural can be cross fingered, but most people find easier to play with a C key. A C key is probably the most common key added to chanters.
To allow you play in D minor, you need to be able to play F natural. Again this can be cross fingered (depending on the chanter) but in general it is easier to play if you have a F natural key.
Tunes in A major require you to play G#. I only play one tune which requires me to use the G# key - St. Anne’s Reel. - and even there, I can get by without it.
B flat keys are often added to make the chanter “fully chromatic”.
Some chanters have a 3rd octave D key for the handful of tunes which require this note. Some also have a 3rd octave E key.
Some chanter have a key for D#/Eb, as the ghost D isn’t always a true D# on some chanters.
If you’re just starting off and you want to have a chanter that will occupy you for plenty of time, get a C natural key. If you have the money get an F natural key. If you’re planning to play standard session tunes, you’ll have all you need with these two keys.
I don’t know what that term means. Does it mean that a Bb key makes more scales available than just Bb?
I’m not really sure why the Cnat is the most common at all. I’d say of the four keys on my D chanter it’s the least used. I probably use the Fnat key most, followed by Bb and G# for a close tie.
You wouldn’t really be able to play in the key of Bb major, though, due to the way the chanter is tuned. It wouldn’t sound right! On the other hand, keys like G dorian or D minor sound great. You might try (after some time getting used to the common notes, keys and tunes!!) learning Caisleán An Óir in Gdorian (Bb and Fnat), Maids of Mitchelstown (Fnat), Bear Island Reel (G#), The trip we took over the mountain (G# and Fnat), Paddy Fahey’s Jig #1 (Bb and Fnat), Whistler of Rosslea (Fnat), Splendid Isolation in Gminor/dorian (Bb and Fnat), for some nice “key” tunes.
On an aside, the only tune I can think of offhand that I would regularly use the Cnat key for is Caislean an Oir in Adorian, to hit the high note in the second part. I use it occasionally for some grace / passing note effects, but hardly at all other than that. And also, most of the time I half hole the Fnats mentioned above, so realistically you could probably play everything mentioned with only the Bb and G# keys!
Now, as far as your original question, I don’t think you really get what the keys do. In all the cases, you play the fingering of a note below the keyed note name, then hit the key to raise the pitch of the note a half step. For the Fnat, you play an eye, then kit the key to open another hole, raising the note a half step. For G#, you play G, then hit the key. For Bb, you play A, and for Cnat you play B. So in all cases, the key affects one note only. You wouldn’t get one key added to play in the scale of Bb for instance, as you would need a Bb and an Fnat. The further you get from D and G, the more of these “accidental” notes you have to play. The keys are added to aid in hitting these notes that are note easy to play otherwise. After all, you can theoretically half hole just about any note!
He means that after the Cnat, Fnat, and G# keys are added, many people will go ahead with a Bb key to finish the process of making the chanter fully chromatic, even though they will likely never need that key.
As you can see from my post above, not everybody adds it just to have it “in case”, many people use all the keys regularly!
Taking one step back let me add that a chanter can play the following notes easily, directly, without half holing or the use of keys, and with only simple, common cross fingering:
D E F# G A B Cnat C# d e f# a and b
Most concert chanters can also fairly easily hit Eb eb c# and d’
(upper case is the bottom octave, lower case is the second octave, the ’ means third octave, # means sharp, nat means natural, and a b after another letter means flat.)
The four common keys give the following notes:
Fnat G# Bb fnat g# bb cnat
That means that theoretically a chanter could play all the notes:
D Eb(D#) E F F#(Gb) G G#(Ab) A Bb(A#) B C C#(Db) and then all that up a second octave too.
Note that the name that pipers usually use for the “chromatic” or “accidental” note comes first, followed by the other name for it in (). This is what is known as a chromatic scale.
Hi CelticMusicLover
Western music has a total of 12 notes in an octave. The black and white keys on a piano - play all the keys in any scale and you play 12 keys before you reach the last note in the octave - the next note will be an octave above the starting note.
A fully chromatic chanter allows you to play all of these 12 notes in the key of D (if it is a D chanter). As to playing a scale in Bb, I suspect that it would not actually be in Bb but a scale in the key of D starting and ending on Bb.
David
Thanks everyone for your answers. Things are much clearer to me now.
By the way, the reason why I want a chromatic key (although I’m a complete beginner) is because I want this (see link below) song to be one of my first. I’ve tried to play the part ranging from 4:37 to end on my D whistle, but it seems to require a lot of half-covered holes (something better to be avoided on an uilleann pipe; it’s hard as it is already). I’ve sat down with my keyboard trying to find out what key I might need. It seems to be either Bb or G#. I have a feeling though, that this tune isn’t even played on a D set (although the beginning is clearly in D).
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wz1xA5kxVI
That last section sounds like it’s played on a B chanter in G fingering - concert key of E - and uses 2 chromatic notes, fingered F-nat and Bb (concert D and G).
Can be played on a D chanter (or D whistle) in E fingering if you can manage the fingered G# and D#, and omit the lowest note.
Not sure that Titanic is the best motivation for a keyed chanter, though. And it’s hardly a good starting point for a beginner.
It’s a good piece of music though, isn’t it?
D# and G# aren’t any problem, but the lowest note is a B. Is it possible to play notes below D?
That’s why I want to play it! 
Although I doubt I’ll be able to play it straight away; the first months will probably be all squeaks and complaining family-members 
You could try getting this: http://www.ronimusic.com/
The amazing slow downer. (it pitch shifts too..)
It’s just one of many apps out there designed to help
musicians learn music. Works great for me.
I have a C# chanter and trying to go note for note with a
D chanter on a recording is useless. I use the pitch shift function.
Just pitch shift the music until the low B matches the
low D on your chanter, and away you go…
Check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X78OBaClo4A
He’s playing the same thing on a C# a C and a B chanter. He’s not
changing the fingering of the tune.
It seems like what you’re trying to do, unless I’m confused, is
to change the fingering of a tune being played on a B chanter so
you get the same notes off of your D chanter. It seems like an
exercise in futility. I don’t think adding keys is going to change that.
Exactly so!
I remember running into a guy, a fantastic “classical” musician but new to Irish music, who went out and bought a Generation D whistle and was learning all the tunes on the first Mary Bergin album on it (by ear). For those that don’t know, Bergin uses whistles in several different keys on that album. Yep and this guy was trying to play the tunes that were coming out in four flats on a D whistle, marvelling at how great a player Bergin is to do all that! I had to explain to him that trad Irish players played just about everything in one or two sharps (G major and D major and all the related keys and modes) but when they played upon anything but a D whistle everything comes out transposed.
That guy’s notions sound silly to us ITM players but it’s the way it is in the “classical” world: you go out and buy a “C flute” and you learn all the scales and you play everything on the same flute no matter what key it’s in.
So a D uilleann chanter plays, without keys:
D Eb E F# G A B c c# d eb e f# g a b
but the same fingering on a C chanter gives
C Db D E F G A Bb B c (etc)
while that same fingering on a B chanter gives
B C C# D# E F# G# A A# B (etc)
of course the following notes are the same
A# = Bb
C# = Db
D# = Eb
E# = F
F# = Gb
G# = Ab
So if an uilleann piper fingers a tune in D major it will come out in D major on a D chanter (two sharps F# and C#) but on a C chanter it will come out in C major (no sharps or flats) and on a B chanter it will come out in B major (five sharps, C#, D#, F#, G#, and A#).
Likewise if an uilleann piper fingers a tune in G major it will come out in G major on a D chanter (one sharp, F#) but on a C chanter in F major (one flat, Bb) and on a B chanter in E major (four sharps C# D# F# and G#).
Then add to this mess chanters in C# and Eb and Bb.
Thus demonstrating MTGuru’s Law, that any explanation of transposition and transposing instruments that runs 25 words or more is indistinguishable from the proof of Fermat’s last theorem.
I think the only piper who would agree wi ye is Eric kerchink Rigler 
Here is the Chromatic Scale.PS Don’t forget the drones 
Key of
C
C D E FG A B C
G
G A B C D E F# G
D
D E F# G A B C# D
A
A B C# D E F# G# A
E
E F# G# A B C# D# E
B
B C# D# E F# G# A# B
F
F G A Bb C D E F
Bb
Bb C D Eb F G A Bb
Eb
Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb
C#
C# D# E# F# G# A# B# C#
Db
Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb Cb Db
Thanks MT am getting ma B Majors and Bb Minors mixed up
The bottom line to Chromatic keys: How do they work?
is that they don’t work like the keys on a clarinet (for example) in that the purpose isn’t to allow the chanter to be able to play all scales/keys with more or less equal facility. Yes I have all the keys on my D chanter so it’s theoretically possible to play in any key. But as a practical matter, if I (or probably any piper) were to play in six sharps or five flats on a D chanter it wouldn’t sound like much.
Well the keys work like the keys of a clarinet to a limited extent: I’ve played things in the key of C a number of times on my D chanter at various studio gigs, because on my chanter low F and high F are bang-on and can be played with good facility. But I have to explain to composers that though the D chanter is capable of hitting G# and Bb etc there isn’t much that I can do with those notes: all the cool notebending etc the composer wants is only going to happen on the open-hole notes. Composers are used to keyboards and other “legit” instruments and write things in whatever keys they feel like. The manner in which “folk” instruments favour certain keys is alien to them. (It shouldn’t be alien to them, though, and shows ignorance… clarinetists for example will often go out and buy an “A” clarinet for sharp keys, which are very difficult on a normal Bb clarinet. And trumpet players often own trumpets in different keys.)
I have had similar discussion about Northumbrian pipes with people who want to buy a 17 keyed chanter because it is fully chromatic over 2 octaves (NSP does not overblow - to get extra notes the chanter gets longer with keyed notes). In the cases of both uilleann and Northumbrian pipes we are dealing with a simple one or two keyed instrument nominally in D and G (and the related minors) which have had accidentals added to them. Orchestral instruments, particularly after the introduction on Boehm instruments are designed to get multiple keys as Panceltic has described. I think the keys on pipes were added more so that pipers could add “color” to the basic scales rather than go off and play odd keys.
Ian
Churlish, Uilliam; maybe you should get out more.
It’s a good piece of music though, isn’t it?
I think so too..