Do you really need a regulator?..... Beginners Question

Uilleann Pipes
21

Never thought I’d want regulators but somehow I ended up with 4 of them on my D set. I do play them but not as much as I’d like to. The bass reg is the one I play least, so when building up a 2nd set (in C) I decided to stop at a 3/4 set.

I think that regulators complete the sound of the pipes. If I hear a solo piper play through a tune without using the regs, I’m usually left wondering how much nicer it would have been with just a touch of regulator accompaniment. And when I learn to play a new tune, I’m always on the look out for where I can add some regulators.

In his earlier recordings, Seamus Ennis was the benchmark for tasteful regulator playing. Not too much, not too little, and nice variation. In subsequent years, his regulators were in dire need of tuning and this took the shine off of his later recordings.

22

So, in the end a chanter reed that is correctly finnished for a full set will take so little wind that in a practice set you’d play for quite a while without needing to use the bellows.. in other words it would be too delicate for a beginner. This is the problem with commencing the pipes on a practice set. IMHO one should start with a half set, at least.

The lightest set I ever played was Leo Rowsome’s own set !!!


A whole load of work goes into making a Bass regulator and yes it is the least used pipe and most expensive. >Three quarter sets are nice.

23

Sorry to continue the slightly off topic discussion, but how would you go about making such a reed. Would you just scrape it some more, or use a different design altogether. I would be highly interested in what contributes to make a reed easier to play. My chanter plays quite easily on its own, but with the drones on, I sometimes wish it would need a little less air. I also started on a practice set and got the drones later.

Fabian

P.S.: I am a big fan of your reedmaking video from NPU

24

Well, perhaps the information you seek is contained in that video, or it should be. If not then let me just say that if your reed plays quite easily without the drones switched on then you should first try to establish if it is the chanter reed that is using too much air or is it the drones that are at fault or.. is there a leak of air somewhere ??

After that yes you could scrape your reed to lighten it but you might also need to close the aperture a little and scrape the reed in such a way as to not make the ‘reed head speed’ drop in pitch.. which will soon start to cause problems if it is allowed to do this.. problems like, harder to get the upper ocatve, sinking back D… loss of crisp tone etc etc.

So, with scraping a reed to make it easier to blow it is ‘where’ you scrape that is important… and that would be even further off topic… and I’m watching a very funny film on the television just now as well as trying to play the Concertina forum’s tune of the month in 8 different keys and they are all minor/major so that makes 16 keys if you like… but start a topic and we’ll see if it will gain any interest and some fine ideas. :thumbsup:

25

Beautiful!

I’d also like to add that some of the most amazing and captivating regulator playing I’ve ever heard is Leo Rowsome playing Jenny’s Wedding / Lord McDonald. Very tasty pepperoni indeed.

26

I like the look of a full set, a half set just doesn’t look… right. Or one could also say unfinished.

27

I happened to be listening to Seamus Ennis play the Groves from the tracks on Ross Andersons music page today on my way home from work while thinking about this topic.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/music/

Scroll down to the last track under the Seamus heading.

Struck me as some of the finest reg playing I’ve ever heard.
Much more than just vamping away. Clever without going over the top.

I asked does anyone know whether there is a bass drone sounding on Pat Michells recording? A few posts back. Am I imagining it not there? Or is it mixed low?

28

Pat had only chanter and two drones working at the time of that recording from 1975/6. I played with Pat at a session during Willie Week , 2005 (I think) and his set was still like that.

29

Thanks for your reply, Geoff
Good to know, I was hearing only two drones.

Was so glad to find Pats recording on iTunes.
I like regs but am not left wanting by this album.

30

I thought I had read somewhere that Willie Clancy was of the opinion that the core sound of the pipes was the chanter heard over the drones… I can’t find the actual quote at the moment.

When I started piping, in the 1970s, I was listening to hours of Paddy Moloney playing with The Chieftans and hours of Paddy Keenan playing with The Bothy Band, without any regs to be heard at all. And only rare use of the drones.

Yes I agree that oftentimes the regulators are used in a way that doesn’t make much musical sense… such as in a piper playing through a tune three times, and just hitting a couple chords on the regs the 3rd time through the 1st part, only. Such use sounds random and arbitrary, no matter how good the piper might be at playing the chanter.

Then there are pipers who use the regs in a consistent musical way. There’s an old 78 from c1920, I can’t remember the piper’s name, where the piper uses his regs as part of his overall arrangement of the tune: no regs in the first part, then the regs come in in the 2nd part and support the tune in a very effective way, the reg arrangement being the same for all three playings of the tune.

I really like those old records of Finbar Furey where the regs are an ever-present element of the pipe’s sound.

Of course Patsy Touhey used the regs to great effect, their use cleverly planned to fully utilize all the capabilities of the instrument for maximum public appeal. Also in this vein is Joe McKenna’s approach (such as when he plays an entire polka on the regs alone, or hits reg notes with the bottom of his chanter, etc etc).

As people have said, there are pipers who have elevated the use of regs in airs to a supreme art such as Ronan Browne, Mick O Brien, Paddy Kennan, etc.

I guess what I’m saying is: if you haven’t heard reg playing that appeals to you, keep listening to more piping! Soon enough you will hear reg playing that very much appeals to you.

31

Pancelticpiper… Thanks for the post. I just listened to joe mckennas playing. I LIKED the regulators. They seemed to come in and out very subtly. In fact many times I did not notice them until they had been played a while. And they blended perfectly with the chanter tune. I wonder why this sounded so good and yet with some other pro players it sounds like a honking car went by.

But… If I could every play like this, I could see how adding regulators would add a lot to a tune.

32

Ha! Heretic! :smiley: Sort of. Kinda like a pope who’s about to get excommunicated, more like. :laughing:

Years ago Sean Folsom told me about visiting Leon and playing Leo’s pipes - you didn’t need the bellows, it was so light. I always wonder if Sean wasn’t just a bruiser and couldn’t tell the difference. Having attempted to play Sean’s pipes shored up this hunch, too.

So Leo’s pipes are lighter than yoiur Harrington - how does that work? You can drive the pipes by pushing on the bag with half a finger? By blowing on them? :slight_smile:

You guys know there are more archival tracks of Tommy Reck on YouTube, right?

That’s a shame about Tommy’s pipes being on the fritz for so long. Pat Sky wrote here about fixing up his set for the LP - Tommy had taken them all to pieces for some reason, Pat had to make all new reeds for the thing. He said they got two regs going but not all three so Tommy opted to just leave them alone. It was funny how in the liner notes Breathnach made it seem like this was some deliberate artistic statement…

I notice on the LP they seem sharper than before - tone changed as well.

Will write a bit more tomorrow - am going out to play some Irish music. On the accordion and banjo. :devil:

33

What ever happened to the Reck set?


http://www.itma.ie/digitallibrary/sound/bucks-ennis

I found ennis playing this this..

It shows how his regulator playing varied… Sort of

34

Ha! Heretic! :smiley: Sort of. Kinda like a pope who’s about to get excommunicated, more like. :laughing:



So Leo’s pipes are lighter than yoiur Harrington - how does that work? You can drive the pipes by pushing on the bag with half a finger? By blowing on them? :slight_smile:






OOOOhhhh… Pope… Heretic… ??? What are you on Kevin ?

As you have never played my Harrington you’d have no idea of what degree of ‘light’ I am talking about… Still, there are… light, lighter, lightest and ridiculight…

35

Hm, it’s been a while but I remember it as being in a similar range as my own C set. The same order as Pat Mitchell’s with the Willie Clancy reed, which I have seen him pass around at tionols to see who could cope with the unbearable (to most) lightness of being.

Something I learned nearly thirty years ago came from dealing with a pipemaker who, if you’d get reeds off him, used to advocate very strong reeds ‘look at what Keenan uses, you’d need two arms to play them’. At a pipers meeting during the early eighties I played his own set (at least the one he was playing at the time, makers’ personal sets tend to get sold in lean times) and it was reeded so light it started playing tunes before i had even strapped it on properly. Which taught me never to believe a hard reed story when a maker tries to leave you with one of them. Playing a properly played in reed should never require an big effort.

36

Not to veer sharply on-topic (I’m much enjoying this thread!): for a recently-recorded example of tasteful and effective regulator use, you can hardly beat Pat D’Arcy’s rendition of Sí Beag Sí Mór.

Veering slightly back OT: with respect to reed-hardness, I’m enjoying seeing genuine piping/zen masters declare that soft reeds are not only compatible with, but arguably necessary for advanced playing (i.e., for the Full Regulator Experience).

Having finally reached the point in my playing where I can handle a harder reed setup, I’ve been wondering “O.K., I can now function this way, but what’s the point?” I suppose the obvious answer is “volume,” (also “upper body conditioning?”) but I am henceforth cutting myself more slack in enjoying reeds that don’t cause me quite so much pain and tension. :wink:

Anyhow, even from a stupid “moral” perspective (“Difficult = Virtuous!”), playing soft reeds well takes skill. Even I have figured that much out: my best soft-playing reeds demand bag-pressure nuance for certain notes to lock in properly (e.g., especially little pressure for low notes & back D).

P.S. Seems to me that if you start a beginner on an easy-playing reed, they’ll be less tempted to mess with it in an inexperienced, destructive way. (Maybe the trick is to only sell beginners’-reeds that have already been properly broken in?) Maybe wrecking reeds is all part of the journey, but why not avoid unnecessary early frustrations where you can?

Regards to all,
Mick

37

My experience is that harder reeds last better in the highly varying climate we live in (maybe it’s worse here than in MN, but judging from friends’ posts last month, I doubt it!)

“Harder” is subjective though. And why it’s harder is, too.

38

I suspect Detroit and St. Paul have similar seasonal humidity/climate shifts. But my softer reeds seem to do fine here; I just have to adjust the bridle, sometimes fairly radically, when those shifts happen. The winter → summer transition is most difficult for me. (Note the absence of spring – this morning it was 37 degr. F., and tomorrow it’s expected to get up to 90 (F). We really don’t have much in the way of 60’s - 70’s-type weather here. :stuck_out_tongue: ).

Anyhow, it was very telling to me, seeing Paddy Keenan play here a couple of months ago. Over the course of a brilliant concert he adjusted his chanter reed after nearly every set of tunes (grumbling good-naturedly each time). Obviously he’s reputed to play harder reeds, but the lesson to me was to never think my reed can go without adjustment indefinitely, even within a single playing session.

Not that I’d assume you lacked that lesson! Just speaking for myself. And I’m in no position to judge actual reed longevity, being in only my third year playing the instrument, albeit obsessively.

Regarding variables behind hardness/softness: I wonder, does one get more durable soft-playing reeds, by favoring playing-in and bridle-tweaking, versus scraping them wafer-thin? Then again, our fellow Midwesterner Tim Britton makes pretty thinly-scraped/sanded reeds that seem to last (and adapt) quite well…

Cheers,
Mick

39

My chanter reed generally plays pretty easily. Unfortunately right now, my drones have turned into total air-hogs. I don’t mind having to use more pressure as long as it’s all of a piece, but the unbalanced-ness of my present scenario is driving me crazy. Where is that stupid leak??? Where??? Where??? ARRRRRGH!

(I fear it’s in the drone switch plunger rod assembly or the bored-out area it lives in. O curse-d boxwood! Welcome to piping …)

40

Agreed about adjusting, of course one has to do that. But a telling example is that I have a reed in a D chanter that is fairly hard, and was made in winter in Southern Ontario. I also had a lighter reed, made in spring, I think (actually I’ve had several lighter reeds made in many seasons, but let’s just compare two for now). I played the lighter reed all through summer, into fall, until winter started to hit, and the reed suffered too much to adjust. I switched out the reeds, everything was fine. Fast-forward to the following spring, when I think to myself, time to try the summer reed again! No dice, it’s dead and gone, never to work again. Four or so years later, that hard winter reed is still going strong.

(The reality is that there are so many variables that we may never know one way or another whether (weather?) hard reeds last better or not. It’s just an impression of subjective experience.)