Couldn’t help but come away from a pipers’ meeting the other night feeling mighty proud of my Adrian Jefferies-made Rowsome-based chanter. Bright and crisp with a nice solid-as-a-rock back D. Got the usual dig about everyone having headaches because of the volume - not really that loud - but compared to all the others who insist on trying to make quiet chanters with sinking back Ds and played-in-a-tin-can-tone I couldn’t help but think that if you want a chanter to play in tune, with nice vibrato and the ability to play staccatto low Gs without the chanter jumping up to 2nd octave, and solid back D, then you need a bit of volume as well.
What’s with this quest for quite concert chanters??? Loud is GOOD!!
There - now that I feel better about myself and the fact that my chanter was louder than everyone else’s I’ll now go and enjoy a nice glass of Brisbane-brewed XXXX Bitter (that’s Forex (4 EX), in Brisbane lingo)- the next best thing to Guinness.
I’m sure you’re right, Dave, loud is good for sessions and public performance and sheer enjoyment. But wouldn’t a trumpet-style mute you could stick in the end of the chanter and reduce the volume by 2/3rds be great for practice? If only it were possible…
a carpeted room, sit close to the bed with chanter pointing to the matress - that mellows it down - home-made dampers in other words. If I’m really desperate, I drape a blanket or similar over the chanter.
I just made myself a “soundbox” for the chanter. A large sealed cardboard tube lined with ordinary carpeting and holes for the hands and chanter stock. Just pop in the chanter, put on the lid, place the thing in your lap and start playing. I was surprised about the effect: now I can play all night in our flat without even disturbing the baby in the next room! And it is not as uncomfortable as it may sound. Quite easy actually.
Only problem is I have to find another excuse about my lack of progress…
If anyone is interested I can post a soundsample and a picture of the thing.
I’m very attached to my 1936 Rowsome copy by Dinny Quigley. Not the slender long, flat pitch look of an Egan/Coyne/Harrington,etc. copy but elegant in its own quasi-Tayloresque kind of way. I remember a good-natured argument at NPU back circa 2000 between Joe Doyle (who plays a mammoth Burke Taylor copy D pitch set) and Liam McNulty. Liam started off by saying the “real” instrument is the flat pitch pipes. This annoyed Joe, who responded by saying flat pitch was for girls. The two agreed to disagree.
Of course, flat and D are both great in their own ways. I notice live recordings of Flat pitch pipes are difficult to get. Compare some of the live recordings of flat pitch players on D’Arcy’s radio links page with studio recordings of Hannan or Mitchell. The live recordings strike me as a bit weak and it is hard to really get the excellent tonal stuff that Pat Mitchell’s album has.
In the end, it is not so much the volume as the difference in the two tones. I like both, but I’m stuck, for better or worse, with the D for now.
I remember seeing Gay McKeon play at NPU in the basement his O’Briain D, and a week or two later seeing Robbie Hannan play in the same room with his flat Kenna set. Both were brilliant, but you really had to play close attention to Robbie’s playing with approx. 30 people in a small room shuffling their feet and occasionally coughing. Comparing the two, the O’Briain D sounded like an electric guitar compared to the flat Kenna sounding more accoustic, if I can make a poor analogy.
just a point of reference re: “loud Rowsome style” chanters; if you’ve ever heard Liam O’Flionn live unamplified his chanter is not loud. Ihave the plans for his chanter and the bore and holes are quite large. Although there are some qualities that will follow a chanter through various reeds and reed adjustments, the reed is most of what you hear. Of course I am not trying to overstate this but the cahnter only modifies what is upstream from it, as it were. My chanters are somewhat modeled after Liam’s and they can be loud or soft, bright or mellow depending on the reed. the way it is adjusted and the humidity.
I use to think that too. I have a B chanter now and the reed/chanter combo allows me to do E-F#-G staccato in the lower register. It all depends I think. No across the board rules in this game.
There’s a difference between resistance/unresponsive and resistance/open. Unresponsiveness will give you muted tone and volume and stillbe hard to play. Openness in a responsive reed will make it louder and more resistant but still responsive in that it gives you back what you put in.
I don’t think my chanter is loud either. I wrote loud in inverted commas, because that’s the way others who seem to prefer putting weak reeds in theirs to get soft tones seem to describe chanters with strong, bright tones. One would get the impression that perhaps they’ve never seen or heard a a bright chanter at close proximity.
I played one chanter - a wide bore D, that was so quite and sooooo easy to blow, that I had to really back off on the pressure. In fact, the weight of my bag alone was just about all that was required to play it. Had a fly come along and landed on the bag at the same time, the chanter would have overblown into 2nd octave. Needles to say, the back D was flat and C# almost nonexistant. But that was how the owner seemed to like it. Oh well.
Lorenzo - I’m not sure about the qualities of a B chanter and reed, but I’m refering to my experience with D chanters only which seem to have trouble staying in 1st octave doing staccatto Gs if the reed is too weak. In order to do the e-f#-g staccatto in a D chanter without jumping to 2nd octave, one generally requires a stronger reed. Perhaps your reed in your B chanter is also stronger compared to other B reeds. I don’t know. Punch me in the nose if I’m speaking through my
NB - when I say stronger, I don’t mean harder to blow, I mean brighter and hence more stable. The particular reed I have in is very light to blow, although I can withstand the added weight of a fly on the bag , not ‘loud’ as people would describe it, although, yes, louder, and for once I can vary to pressure on the bag without much variance to tuning of individual notes or having the back D and C# collapse.
On that note, I’ve alsp had ‘quiet’ reeds in it, but it just was not satisfying to the ear - a personal preference.
On that note, that doesn’t mean I don’t like quite chanters just not quiet D chanters. I would love to eventually get a flat chanter - C or C# preferably.
Probably not its ancient-ness, perhaps that it measures about 15.2mm across the top (apparently) may add to the ‘body’ of tone which people may erroneously describe as ‘loud’.
to reiterate, it really is very quiet and microphone and mixing techniques are mostly to blame for it’s larger than life effect; not that it ain’t a sweety!
, not ‘loud’ as people would describe it, although, yes, louder, and for once I can vary to pressure on the bag without much variance to tuning of individual notes or having the back D and C# collapse.