Folks,
How young have y’all heard of kids starting on uilleanns? My nieces and nephew are interested (perhaps something to do with the stories I tell them lately–“The Magical Runaway Reed,” or current favourite, “The Obnoxious Unruly Chanter”…)
Any such thing as a children’s practice-practice set? I’d like to line them up with something more elegant than the drinking straw/plastic bag/tinwhistle contraption I mangled together at their age for GHPs…
Many thanks,
BC
Children start on a usual practice set. Alain Froment once made a practice set in f for the use of children, which he donated to NPU, it sounded very small-pipe like and I don’t think any more were made.
As for age, 9 or 10 is still fairly early, let them serve an apprneticeship on the whistle and move on when they can span the chanter. It gives them time to learn the music and the transition won’t be very hard.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-05-20 05:14 ]
Many thanks, Peter, I’ll start scouting for whistles! Maybe Clarkes, so things won’t be quite so deafening…
I was musing about the current approach to violin–3-year-old Suzuki students on their pint-sized instruments, and so forth. I’m certainly not a fan of pushing too early, but in cases where there is genuine interest it does seem good to have something physically manageable at a younger age, if only to get a feel for an instrument. (After the actual sound of bagpipes it was the mechanics of the beast that fascinated me as a kid!)
I suppose I could have my oldest niece strap in every now and again to work on bellows & bag, just sounding an open chanter and not worrying about notes.
Do you know whether anyone has taken pictures of that little F set?
Thanks again,
BC
Not to discourage your choice of whistle for the reasons given, but you might give thought to getting tuneable whistles so that they can play in tune with each other!
I don’t know if clarke’s are so finely qc’d as to be in tune with each other out of the box, and I doubt they remain in tune with each other through dings, dents, shifting/swelling/shrinking fipple-blocks, bent blades, etc…
(LBWs, Waltons’, Soodlums’, Oaks, Acorns, Feadogs, and of course Generations can all be mouthpiece-tuned. I’ve not yet figured out if the SweeTone can… I don’t know if the tube is conical or cylindrical under the mouthpiece…)
–Chris