There are five short demos of V pipes. I’ve heard worse. I was surprised by its ability to do slides. Not the greates, but not the worst.
Not bad. I thought it would sound alot worse than that. But, it looks fun. Anyone know who the piper is?
I think it’s fantastic. What are you guy’s complaining about?
How many of you first complained about Photoshop and Autocad… now you cannot live without them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP5sCEY3kN0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsiYyTVGw3Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elEd63OS590
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6WEuf47_Qo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBLoS1Gi-w8
What’s next? Perhaps Eric Rigler using v-pipes on the new big musical soundtrack?
I’d like to hear them played by a piper with a tighter style, see how they deal with that. And I guess you’re stuck with that ugly, tinny tone, which doesn’t derive from years spent learning to produce it, but the quality of the recording of the original sound samples, and the tone, on that particular day of the pipes they sampled.
What you heard was probably the built-in microphone of a hand held camera at an outdoor ren-fair played through small monitor speakers.
According to the letter in the other v-pipes topic, the sound samples came from Cillian Vallely playing Rowsome and Froment flat and concert sets recorded at Trevor Hutchinson’s studio in Ireland.
I realize the sound on the clip sucks, and I’ve read the post about where the samples came from. My point remains the same. Much as I admire Cillian, I don’t want to sound like him or his pipes. It remains to be seen (or rather, heard) whether an individual’s style can be heard through someone else’s tone production.
Also take into consideration the effect the booming (and questionably played IMHO) guitar, swallowing up most of the sound. An unaccompanied demo is in order.
They really should have tuned up before launching into it!
Or, being as that’s presumably now the only way to introduce “out of tune-ness”, is it to make them “more authentic”??
Actually I’m quite impressed, but won’t be altering my christmas list 
Ditto.
Now, don’t go wetting yourself over this, but having seen the example clips, I’m starting to have less negative thoughts about these beasts. If the vPipies ever become affordable, I’m thinking they may be a good place to start for beginners.
This thinking was sparked by a friend trying to teach her daughters to drive a standard. One took to it like a fish to water (much to my friend’s dismay) while the second just couldn’t help stalling the car constantly, even after a couple months practise. Standard drive just seemed too much for her, but when she got into an automatic she was fine. So maybe the vPipes don’t teach you bag control or bellows method, but it does give you the opportunity to isolate chanter work without those other distractions. Others have previously noted some of the good things about vPipes, like the physical convenience of no drones sticking out, headphones for private practise, etc.
At their current price, I can’t see these things making it, but at half the current price they would be well placed to compete with a regular beginners set.
djm
I think the idea is great and am very interested in trying one out, but as djm states I think the price is a little too high as well. Seth
I’ll be a stick in the mud here, but learning fingering without bag or bellows? Why not just go out and buy a mouth blown practice chanter? What is the difference? Niether will do anybody any good when it comes to playing the Uilleann Pipes.
As a practice instrument for those who already can play, this would be the ticket to work out tunes without upsetting the wife, husband, kids, pets, neighborhood… I do not feel it is a good idea for beginners at all.
Just my opinion.
The problem is, is that there is no “automatic” version of the pipes. Bellows and bag control, how to futz with a reed, how to squeeze a different sound from the chanter… these are all things that come with learning the real instrument. Anything you have control over, you have to take control of.
And just like kids who never learn to drive a stick (i guess there is a bit of a pun there) they are at a loss for how to go about operating the real deal with all the extra coordination when they have to. My wife only drives an automatic… which drives me nuts! 
This seems to take away much of the contol of the real instrument offers, not to mention if you want anyone else to hear it you are not just buying a stick for almost a thousand Euros, you gotta have at least an amp to plug it into. The monitors, amp and mixer these two were using in the clips would probably also come close to 1000 euros as well.
I would consider this a totally different instrument than Uilleann Pipes. Just like the EWI or EBI instruments. They are unique unto themselves. That said, they sound pretty good to me and really, I could see pipers in pop Celtic bands using these instead of real pipes because they will already have the extra sound reinforcement equipment. Also if they travel much, they won’t have any of the headaches that accompany a real set when they get too far from their home climate. For beginners though, This seems like lots of overkill.
Agreed. I can’t wait until work begins on drones and regs.
I think they have a switch on them that turns on a droning sound..
I say it’s no different than learning Photoshop and Autocad. It’s digital electronics… that just happens to sound like UILLEANN PIPES!
Because it’s MIDI, so you should be able to play v-pipes (with proper sound module) and sound like any other instrument (if you desire) It may also be reversable… so you could play any (other) instrument that supports MIDI into the v-pipes.
The price isn’t important. No reeds to buy. No moments of anger when the tuning isn’t right… no warmup required.
Considering Yamaha makes a MIDI saxophone controller for around $800. And… They’ve made thousands of units.. for years! The v-pipes is the first of it’s kind, a few hundred v-pipes may only get produced. Hopefully more, if they continue to improve the product. I think this price is reasonable considering the effort that is going into this project. It would be awesome if you could download upgrades from the website. Samples of famous makers pipes.
Bensdad didn’t want to sound like Cillian Vallely. sound like? why yes… they are sampled from his chanter. Play like Cillian Vallely… why no. It’s no different than any of you playing someone elses pipes. It’s YOUR STYLE. YOUR TECHNIQUE.
I certainly doubt the maker(s) of v-pipes expected ‘home movies’ of v-pipes to appear on Youtube.com. Like any good business they will probably have good quality movie clips on their website when the production release date grows near.
Twenty years ago, I played my pipes into a two thousand dollar microphone in a fancy studio.
For two hundred dollars, I was fed for two weeks.
After two minutes, I felt I was robbed of my soul.
In twenty decades, long after we all are gone, maybe there will be a cumbersome renaissance of real piping.
I still think it’s a con. Nothing in the YouTube clips looked authentic. The fingering of the piper, even out-of-sync, didn’t match the sounds he played.
That’s just a flook I’ve noticed that happens with Youtube. The sound and video do sometimes get out of sync. All in all, I think the Vpipes is a great idea for those of us pipers who can’t find much time to squeeze in practice do to the noise accompanying it. I don’t think Youtube clips should be the end all say all of the product.
But what if this is the natural evolution of things? I mean, if you were around two hundred years ago would you have the same point of view on the uilleann pipes coming from a pastoral pipe background. I say that this may be the shape of things to come. We are now living in the 21st century, you know.