When I start playing on the chanter it is about -25 cents of C#, but when my hands warm up after a while of playing it goes up to about -14 cents. Is this normal? When I listen to other pipers, their pipes seem to stay nice in tune. Is this because they adjust their reeds? (I never touch mine.)
Pitch rises (a bit) when reeds warm up,. That’s normal. My little D set, for example, is set up/designed to play slightly below concert pitch out of the box so that after a short while in warm pub atmosphere it rises and stays pretty much spot on.
Typical really. It also depends on what the temperature is in the room your pipes are generally kept. My pipes are in the main left in a cold room (depending on the time of year). When I pick up the pipes the pitch is flat of A440 and the tuning of the chanter is variable. However, when I have played the pipes (I leave the drone off for the first few tunes) for a few minutes the pipes rise in pitch to A440.
When I take my pipes to session I generally assemble the pipes but miss out on the first few tunes. I do do however keep a firm grip on the chanter top (brass) and this quite quickly warms up to body temperature. When I then play the pipes they are somewhere near concert pitch but may require squeezing harder on the bag to raise the pitch. Once up to pitch they generally stay there but as a piper one should be generally aware of ones pitch in a session and either ease off on the bag or apply more pressure to retain concert pitch. On the rare occasions that we have a heat wave the pub (where the session is) can become too hot especially if it is full of bodies and I have on occasions stopped playing for a few tunes because the pipes have become too warm and too sharp in pitch even though I would have probably eased off on the bag pressure to compensate.
On my particular set of pipes I don’t switch on the drones until the chanter is up to pitch because I use composite reeds in the drones and when switched on and tuned, they seldom move in pitch no matter how cold or how hot the room is.
A friend of mine plays his concert pipes in a band and during tune breaks when the pipes are not required he too holds on to the chanter top to keep the reed warm.
Obviously at home, pitch doesn’t need to be spot on but it it always a good idea to be constantly aware of pitch and tuning. In time you should be in a position to know the idiosyncrasies your particular pipes/reeds and learn to adapt to them.
So to recap, your experiences of a rising in pitch is perfectly normal. If in a cold room, keep hold of the chanter and the heat from your hands should warm up the pipes and also leave the drones off for a few tunes because the chanter is sure to rise in pitch.
Good luck,
Mike Delta
My chanter likes to play at 14- 11 cents flat of A-440. But the back D is rather flat. I am wondering if the reed was made in a cooler climate, and meant to play 25 cents flat. Hmmm.
I remember playing outside when it was rather chilly, and my chanter eventually played about 40 cents sharp of C!!
If you are having consistent trouble with a flat chanter you could buy one of the helium canisters sold by NPU for the purpose. The canister which is about the size of a cigarette lighter fits to the side of the bellows valve and as you pump a small squirt of helium goes into to bellows and into the bag. Because the helium is lighter than air it allows the reed to vibrate faster , raising the pitch. The helium air mixture can be adjusted via a small knob on the gizmo to get the pitch just right, as the reed warms up you can reduce the helium to compensate. The best helium, funny enough comes from Helium on Barsoom, check with NPU to see if this is the type they stock.
RORY
I was under the impression it is a C# chanter? In which case it should bloody well be flat (of D) 
Considering the session discussion a while back i am starting to wonder whether the stick is concert pitch or C#?
A C# at a session would be as welcome as a fart in a space suit..
If it is a C# chanter that you have there Ennischanter, then the actual pitch it is playing in will be mostly irrelevant… unless you wish to play with a C/C# Box… which would be a fairly rare thing to find!
Most C# chanters made today would be modeled on an old chanter like that of the Ennis Coyne set. Now this type of pitch was quite the Norm during the first half of the 19th Century (when Ennis’ set was produced) and these days we might call that Pitch ’ Baroque’.
Now Baroque Pitch is generally quoted as having an A of 415hz. which is conveniently one semitone flat of today’s standard. So, we might assume that a chanter modeled on any of these Baroque D pitched instruments will be a C# as we know know it today. However this is often not the case and these chanters usually play anywhere from 20-60 cents flat of modern C#… as does Seamus Ennis’ set .
My theory for this is that Classical Music practitioners have decided to assume a Baroque pitch of A= 415hz for convenience sake, transposing on their modern instruments by one Semitone,whereas actual Baroque pitch, as evidenced by playing instruments made during that period, is somewhat lower at 409- 405 hz.
So, the fact that your chanter can play as flat as 40 cents north of C comes as no surprise.
I would also expect a warm up period for reeds which would show a 10 cents rise in pitch just by playing… with no temperature change in the room or by bringing the instrument into a warmer place…
When changing location, from cold to warm (or vice versa) allow time for your pipes to normalise…this saves a lot of Reed problems.
That makes me feel special! 
And to what Geoff said, My chanter does sound alot like Ennis’, judging by the recordings. The only difference really is a stable Bottom D. (I like the sound of his unstable Bottom D though, I find it adds character to his music.)
I wonder if Peter Hunter based some of his chanters off of off of a Coyne? But modified it to be sharpened to modern pitch. My chanter has been able to play about 40 cents flat of C# which Seamus Ennis’ set was pitched at.
Yeah, i guess playing out of tune with every other instrument that plays in concert D is indeed special, not in a very positive way though 
I’m pretty sure that not all sessions are in concert D.
Besides, this has nothing to do with sessions, but asking if it’s normal for an average chanter to move so much in pitch.
You’re onto something there, Rory. And in the true spirit of the internet I’ll race ya to the patents office (Shanghai branch).
The best helium, funny enough comes from Helium on Barsoom
Take me home…akh ahim akte wiz Barsoom!
I actually like playing my chanter flat.
So instead of helium I’ll get some Sulphur Hexaflouride. 
You’re to late ,I’m already there, this time next year I’ll be a millionaire.
Good one Richard.A man after my own heart . Get me back to Dejah Thoris, ASAP
RORY
Rory,
Interestingly enough, my brother, a real ERB fan, named his daughter Dejah way back in 1983!
Decades of playing both Highland pipes and uilleann pipes in various weather conditions, often in situations where I must be exactly in tune to some fixed pitch, has led me to believe that most of the pitch change results from the temperature of the chanter.
So for example if I’m out playing Highland pipes at a funeral, when I do a quick tuning check (before the people arrive) I’ll grab the chanter and feel what temperature it is. It might be an hour standing around before I need to play, but if when I do play I make sure the chanter is at the same temperature (by putting it inside my jacket to warm it up if needs be) then it will play at the same pitch. Get it too warm, it will play too sharp. Simple as that, the reed hasn’t been played at all, it’s purely a result of the chanter’s temperature.
Likewise at concert situations I need to keep my uilleann chanter at the same temperature to keep it in tune. Doesn’t seem to matter how much or how little it’s played… but of course when it’s in your hands the warmth from your fingers warms up the chanter and that has to be taken into account, so it’s better to check the pitch beforehand with the chanter not cold, but at the same temperature it will be in your hands playing it.
I’ve often been at recording studios which were kept rather cold, sometimes so cold that I cannot get the chanter to play up to 440. I need to keep the chanter inside my clothes to maintain its temp. At one cold studio, where I played regularly for a year, I found a little room with a big stack of electronic devices which put out quite a bit of heat, and I would keep the pipes sitting on top of these things to keep them warm. I’d grab the pipes right before recording, and during any down time return the pipes to their warm spot. The pipes stayed right in tune, regardless of how much ‘down time’ there was.
The speed of sound, and thus the pitch produced by a particular air column, depends strongly on temperature. At 0C, i.e. 32F, this results in a quarter tone flattening relative to 20C / 68F. Another way of putting it is that pitch changes by nearly 3 cents per degree C or over 1.5 cents per degree F. This means that the difference between a cool room at, say, 16C and a hot pub at 24C is very dramatic indeed.
Most other woodwinds are less affected by this, because once the instrument ‘warms up’ (literally), pitch stabilises at about the same level because the supplied air is at body temperature. Not so with dry-blown (‘cold wind’) pipes! Soundbox instruments and free reeds are not affected by the speed of sound in this way; temperature has different effects on those instruments, mostly via thermal expansion and contraction of reeds and strings.
This accounts for the problem often encountered by performing pipers who tune up offstage in some sort of ‘green room’, only to find that they are instantly sharper on a warm stage. To avoid this problem, one needs to know the air temperature in each location and tune accordingly.
Ah,nth at would make more sense. Means not tuning up every 5 minutes. 