Hey all!
I’m having trouble. 
Just about every time I try to do a grace note in high A, it jumps back down to the first octave. Same if I try to stacotto it. Is this because of air leaks?
I’m pretty isolated out here, so any help would be really great! 
Andreas
Its just about impossible to play high a (2nd 8ve) as stacatto unless you have a really good reed and suberb chanter, and even then its difficult. If you are really fast with your fingers you can open the notes below the a to roll your way up. Once you have hit the a you can then close the notes below it., e.g. open the f#, then g, then a, then close f# and g. Some chanters will want the f# or g to stay open with the a. This is all done in a fraction of a second - something to practise on its own just to get the speed up.
Similarly for gracing the high a with b, not many chanters will let you do this with only the a open. You may need to have the g or f# open with the a, then cut with the b.
djm
I always go straight to A the 2nd octave … 
sorry I’m no help
I always go directly to jail, I do not pass GO and never collect $200. Do you have a “GET OUT OF JAIL FREE” card? They can sometimes be most helpful…
Andreas,
Practice getting up to the high A slowly at first:
Step 1: jump to the high G from a closed chanter, hold the G for a moment, then open the A finger. Practice until you can do that without dropping the octave.
Step 2: Gradually (and I mean over the course of a month or so), practice opening the A finger sooner after you reach the G. Once you can do that without dropping the octave, then
Step 3: practice closing your G fingers after you get the A.
It takes a lot of patience, but you’ll eventually get there.
Also, some reeds simply don’t like to jump to the high A and B. Perhaps someone with more reed expertise than I have can give you advice about adjustments you could make in that area. Perhaps the reed needs to be more open? Reed sages, where are you?
KAD
Thanks for the info. I’ll try these techniques.
I am in Mali, West Africa. The rainy season is just passing, then it will become extremely dry. However, my reed does play the high notes easier when it’s humid. I have a Daye set, by the way. I’m only 15 and can’t afford anything else for now. I can jump into the second octave okay I guess, but that A is really giving me trouble. Been playing for a year now.
Thanks again.
Andreas
Hi Andreas:
High A is not supposed to be hard to play, by any means.
However on many/most chanters you can’t (or shouldn’t) go “direct” to high A from a chanter closure. Notes about the second octave G should be approached from some other note in the second octave. In other words, you “lead into” them from a lower note. Once you are in the second octave, you should be able to move between second octave notes until there is a chanter closure, after which you need to do the “lead in” trick again. Some notes that are still higher, like the high C# and high d, may require you to lead up to them from the high A and/or high B, so to reach the third octave d on many chanters you need to play something like (all in the second octave)
fabc#d
It takes some time to get accustomed to this and avoid inadvertently closing the chanter between second octave notes about g.
Hope that helps.
Bill
Hello Bill,
I’ve learned how to do the leed in thing. A piper (Luke) showed me this when I first got the set in moscow, Idaho and I’ve done this ever since. I use the F# to do this. I only play the high C# off of a high b right now, but when the need arises I’ll learn the way to jump to it. I can play the high a fine, it’s just when I try to stacotto it or grace it, it jumps down to the first octave.
So from all the posts I’ve learned that if you want to play the high a in stacotto fashion, you have to do it fast, and if you want to grace note the high a you have to have another finger open while doing this. Is this correct??
Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it. 
Andreas
Totally normal.
So from all the posts I’ve learned that if you want to play the high a in stacotto fashion, you have to do it fast, and if you want to grace note the high a you have to have another finger open while doing this. Is this correct??
Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it. >
Andreas
You can’t truly play stacatto second octave A (on most chanters). You have to lead in to it. So if you play “stacatto” i.e. with a chanter closure, you have to lead into the note again. Some folks refer to a technique for doing this quickly as ‘venting’ the note, so if you hear that term they are pretty much talking about the same thing.
I am not sure what you mean about “if you want to grace note the high a you have to have another finger open…” - if you mean that you cannot play a grace which requires you to close the a finger unless you have some other finger open at the same time, then that is correct. I would state it this way: “no chanter closures while gracing above high G, or you’ll lose the octave.”
Bill
Thanks this is a big help!
Andreas
Andreas,
Another consideration is whether the reed is new - new reeds can often be a bit resistive on the high notes of the second octave as they should be a little stiff when new to allow for the softening that occurs as the the reed gets ‘played-in’. Otherwise, if it is not a new reed, some reed adjustment may help - I’d suggest trying to close the lips a bit with the bridle or lower the bridle to assist with this note. If you want to take a huge risk, a little scraping of the scrape zone towards the sides will soften the reed a bit and improve playability (i.e. lessen the difference in pressure required to jump into the second octave). Also, if the note is a bit sharp in pitch, you could kill two birds with one stone by covering the tone hole with a little tape or blu-tac, as making the hole smaller will lessen the liklihood of the note dropping to the first octave.
I have found that reeds that don’t want to play the higher notes are either too stiff or scraped too thin along the centre line. If the reed is not too stiff, the second octave becomes easier as you close the reed / If the reed is too stiff, closing the reed a little will make all notes resistive to play (although any reed that is closed too much will be resistive and muffled so you will have to know what a normal opening range is).
All the best.