What a great weekend and concert. David Power arrived here in Chapel Hill for a small house concert and weekend of hanging out and blasting away on the pipes. We swapped tunes, bread recipes, and in general had a great time.
I must tell you that David is truly a master piper following in the footsteps or Ennis, Reck and his teacher Tommy Carney, now 96 years old and still playing, of Waterford. For piping to reach me it has to have four main ingredients: Passion, taste, respect for the tunes and technique. David has all four and in abundance. Leaning back in his chair he squeezed, beat, stroked, begged and did everything possible to pull the old tunes out of his magnificent Fremont C set.
David’s set of pipes are set up with very tough reeds and it requires an athlete to play them. I strapped them on and almost had a heart attack trying to beat my way through the “Salamanca”. David’s theory is that if the pipes are too easy to play, the piper gets lazy and the tune suffers. Pipes, says David , have to be forced to submit, like riding a wild horse.
He also points out that tough reeds are more stable and have a better tone, however this does increase the volume.
David also loves to play the old common tunes and breathe new life into the. The power and beauty of the old tunes caused them to survive for hundreds of years and they deserve our respect. I agreed with him, and we discussed how Seamus Ennis took the old tune “The Boys of Blue Hill” and added one note in the right place and it completely changed the tune.
The challenge is to take the tunes and try to make them your own, says David, this is the heart of tradition and is the force that keeps the music alive. This is a very delicate matter, learning to make the tune your own without turning it into shite is difficult even for the best musicians and almost impossible for others; then there are the gifted ones like David Power who seem to do it with little or no effort. ah! but such is art.
Pat, if you feel he’s a talent on the chanter - you should see the man heft a pint glass! Now THAT’S art! When you coming back out David? The fishing is only getting better!
David’s set of pipes are set up with very tough reeds and it requires an athlete to play them. I strapped them on and almost had a heart attack trying to beat my way through the “Salamanca”. David’s theory is that if the pipes are too easy to play, the piper gets lazy and the tune suffers. Pipes, says David , have to be forced to submit, like riding a wild horse.
He also points out that tough reeds are more stable and have a better tone, however this does increase the volume.
I once had a friend tell me he “lifted weights” just so he could play his Lynch set!!
Benedict Koehler and David Quinn have proved that this type of reed set up is unnecessary. Several do indeed have this preference. For example, Neillidh Mulligan is one who would agree with David Power. I suspect that Paddy Keenan shares the same preference. Ye only get one good original rotator cuff per shoulder…why do it in playing pipes ??? Seems like the best solution is to acquire a set that is designed to permit one to push or manipulate the chanter as one would hope to do yet not require the brute strength of such a set that Mr. Sky described.
I had the opportunity to hear David Power’s CD for the first time last week. Masterful indeed. One of our local musicians, a real student of Irish Music and one of the best fiddler players you’ll ever hear (our very own Patrick d’Arcy has recorded with him), who has worked for record companies that produce Irish Music CD’s and studies the music of pipers, told me last week “David Power brings something to the music that no other piper has to date…ever. He has touches of Ennis and all the greats but has gone beyond them in his technical abilities, virtuosity and approach to the tunes.” I can’t wait to hear him “live” myself!
I agree with this ideology. I also had the privilage to strap on those gorgeous pipes… and they were set up pretty firmly… but certainly not at the sacrifice of tone and volume. The longer I played them, the more strength I felt coursing through my forearms, hands and diaphragm. A great joy, and a tremendous lesson! Thanks again David, you ROCK!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The CD is very enjoyable, but if you get the opportunity to hear him play live…JUST DO IT!!! When he played in an old church in Salt Lake, the acoustics were amazing and so was his playing.
Dagnabbit! I really wanted to go to this event, but we already had a weekend family trip to the NC mountains planned. It aches me to know that this concert was held barely a 25 minute drive from my home. SIGH
Appreciations to all for the nice comments and invitations to go fishing. As I write, I tremble in anticipation of the big rush for CD’s which will no doubt, by its significance cause a blip in international financial exchanges!
I share Mr. Power’s view of reed strength, and had the opportunity to play his fine C set on one of the occasions that he visited my shop. I did not feel that they were set up too firmly. One of the questions pipers must ask themselves is “What am I going to do with these pipes?” As beginners, we naturally will require reeds that are easy to blow. As our piping muscles develop, this will be less of an issue. A professional piper will require other things from his reeds. I recently played five days in a row with Mr. Brendan Mulvahill for dancers at a performance at Wolf Trap. Every day it was 95 degrees F. and 90% humidity, and we were soaked with sweat before we had even played a note. No “gentleman’s reed” that I ever made would stand up to 45 minutes of this kind of moisture/heat without some serious playability problems. Yet, the pipes behaved just fine with my half decade old “hard” reed, and went from there to an airconditioned pub without much tweaking, if any. This type of reed wil also get better and better the more you play. For me, it now takes a week to get my chops back, and there is little sense in having a reed that goes south when I’m just getting going. When this reed was new, it was EAR SPLITTING loud and as hard as Liscannor limestone, as anyone at the 2000 Baltimore Tionol can attest. It is now one fourth of its former strength. I have played this reed in a cemetary in the sleet and in Washington DC in the sweltering summer. ( I don’t usually have the option to play my pipes only in the most favorable conditions.) When necessary,( usually twice a year, Fall and Spring) tweaking these reeds is done with the sliding bridle, which gives an enormous amount of control when properly fitted. I decided early on that I wasn’t likely to go fumbling for a pair of pliers in the middle of a performance, but tuning with the slider can be accomplished in a second by a blind man. Another feature of reeds like these is that the bridle touches the center of the scrape in such a way that tuning the back D may be accompished. This technique takes practice, but is very useful. When they get fully played in, they may be adjusted somewhat for different volumes. This comes in handy if you are playing one day with a loud box player and a quiet harper the next. One night , I played outside at a session in the dewy air from 8 PM till dawn. The pipes never sounded sweeter, but became flatter and flatter as the morning drew nearer, and therefore required sliding down the bridle to keep them up to pitch. It is important to remember when playing in circumstances such as this that one should not put the pipes away with the reeds soaking wet and all closed down. I open them all the way up at the end of such times as this and they are fine the next day.
Someone told me about Mark drowning out four accordions at once. In your ear!
Jayzuz, who plays in a cemetary when it’s sleeting? I’d play a hard reed if I was strong but aren’t so won’t and can’t.
If you haven’t bought Dave’s CD you haven’t heard great piping! “Perfect” piping, too. :roll:
I’m wonder if Mr. Reitman would have preferred to listen to the 4 accordions than the piper. I’m sure they were timid, and/or the story exaggerated. I will say, I was louder when I was younger. Jerry O. once told me “Play as hard as you can, like you were at a crosssroads and took out your pipes and everyone came out of the fields and cottages and had a ceili”’
Playing funerals has been pretty much mandatory if I wanted to eat. Once, about 15 years ago, I played a funeral with Kieran O’Hara (two pipers). A solemn burial for a doberman pincher wearing blue eye shadow lying in a blue velvet tufted rubbermaid doggie casket. Kieran and I were having a hard time maintaining a somber demeanor. The funeral director was asked by the bereaved to say a few words. After asking quietly the dog’s name, he began, “Digger was a good dog. He was, um, his masters dog.” and then said “How’s that?” The mourner sobbed uncontrollably and insisted on hearing “Amazing Grace” and “Danny Boy” twenty times each while Kieran and I pinched ourselves nearly to bleeding to keep from bursting into raucous laughter.
Playing in the sleet was a less enjoyable experience. The beautiful 18 year old neighborhood girl died in a car crash on the Washington beltway two days after high school graduation. 400 people cried at her graveside, and though I did not know her, I, myself, cried buckets while I played till the tears ran down my apron. But that’s the job.
Depends on the accordions! Peter Laban wrote about his first chance hearing Bobby Casey and friends play, there were a few accordions in there too. They’re part of the landscape.
Don’t sweat it, Mark, you’re turning into an uilleann pipes urban legend! It’ll be a whole session of accordions someday…glad you can get your gigs.
Who puts blue eye shadow on a dog? That’s twisted!
I too am in favour of stronger reeds for tone and stability although through some stroke of luck my current reed is strong of tone, and stable as can be even in my changing humidity, yet surprisingly easy to blow… even when compared to others’ pipes who reckon theirs are easy, mine is even easier.
Stronger does mean louder which I don’t mind, but there seems to be a fraternity of pipers and wannabes who seem to take issue to UPs being loud. Well…they can complain if my chanter is loud(er) but I’m so far the only one with a good strong back D among all their flat ones.
Now THAT’S art! 
When you coming back out David? The fishing is only getting better!