Not being personally familiar with B or Bb chanters I was wondering , when listening to some players playing said chanters, there seems to be a lot going on, apart from the basic tune. (I wont get technical because I don,t know how ) There seems to be A lot of other sounds coming from the chanter , Maybe this is called tonal colouring I,m not sure.
But when listening to Liam O,Flynn on The pipers call album playing his Alian Froment B chanter it seems there is none of this .A much more straight forward sound .(not explained well I know,but I hope you know what I mean )
Is this due to the playing style of the player or is it due to the chanter
I was listening to Kevin R playing his brad Angus pipes on clips and snips there are loads of these sounds from his chanter compared to O,Flynn’s B chanter ,any trackwhere he is playing the B chanter
I believe you are talking about the reduced overtones on a flat chanter. This gives them the quieter, more nasal sound. Whether you go for this sound depends on your personal tastes. Something about opening up the bore for the concert chanters adds alot of extra high end frequencies that make these harsher and brighter sounding. Its really up to you as to what strikes your fancy.
I don’t think we’re comparing concert chanters with flat chanters here. The Q’s about the sound of two or more different B chanters. I would say it’s difficult to guage the true tonal properties of any chanter from recordings especially low-quality Clips and snips records compared to high quality Liam O’Flynn studio recordings.
I,m not really comparing O,Flynn’s to Kevin R’s chanter , I was using that as an example
It’s more that I think that O,Flynn’s chanter sound very different than most other B chanters I.ve heard
You’ll get different results from different chanters, but I think a great part of it stems from the player. From Kevin’s clip-n-snip, I get the impression he is using a lot of off-the-knee as well as very open (alternate) fingerings to get an extra nasal tone.
I would say it’s difficult to guage the true tonal properties of any chanter from recordings especially low-quality Clips and snips records compared to high quality Liam O’Flynn studio recordings.
Compare that O’Flynn recording to Mick O’Briens recording on Kitty Lie Over. Its the same set. Liam borrow’s Mick’s set often enough.
I’m not saying Liam can’t get better tone from it than Mick. When you compare studio recordings of the same set or sets made by the same maker you have to consider the mixing engineer too.
O’Flynns recording of that set had a bigger instrumentation, thus more equalisation, compression, etc. on the recording.
Liam did indeed borrow Mick’s Froment flat sets over the years. Liam also acquired his own Froment B set along the way.
Liam does make the flat pipes play like a concert pitch set. I’d often thought the same thing of Sean Og Potts. When I hear both pipers on their flat sets, I’m more reminded of their playing on concert pitch pipes.
Liam does make the flat pipes play like a concert pitch set. I’d often thought the same thing of Sean Og Potts. When I hear both pipers on their flat sets, I’m more reminded of their playing on concert pitch pipes
Jim is right.
There are quite a lot of differen’t technique involved in playing a flat set compared to playing a wide bore D set. Some pipers, experienced or not, will treat a concert pitch chanter the same way as a chanter in a flatter pitch.
O’Flynn is a very structured, yet exciting piper, so when he playes a flat set, he employes the same technique as he would when he plays the Rowsome set. Really, there aren’t a huge amount of players that can stylisticly adapt between the two.
But then, thats why their style is so distinctive.
Maybe pipers that are used to flatter pitched sets won’t give it all on D pipes and visa versa.
So, in what way should the style differ from wide bore to flat? I’ve always naturally assumed one plays both in the same way. I tend to play flat chanters in the same manner as my wide bore.
“Better tone than Liam O’Flynn.” That’s going on my resume!
That Clips Snips thing I recorded was on a different Angus chanter than I play now. The old chanter had a slightly wider bore and larger fingerholes, the newer one has more typical narrow bore sizes, and I’d say has a nicer tone. One thing you may be hearing on the recording is the old chanter’s fantastic hard Es [sic] - it had two distinct tones for this note, which I used at different places in the air.
Listen to O’Flynn play the air Maire Ni Mhongain, on the Drones and Chanters Vol. 2. He uses all of Ennis’s techniques here, the Eb - E movement in the second octave, the trills on E and F#, the very prominent ghost D, the slide into B, the chording, and so forth. And someone reeded up the old Coyne set to sound precisely like Seamus had it - as I understand it Liam had someone (Nick Adams?) make new reeds for it in the 80s, which is what you hear on those records, and the tone changed quite a bit.
But Liam still doesn’t have Seamus’s tone - as opposed to sound, let’s say - and I think that had as much to do with his own playing as the instrument or the reeds - bag pressure, and Seamus wobbling his fingers in his own very personal way. How fast he took the chanter off the knee. This is why no one will ever quite sound exactly like O’Flynn, Hannon, Keenan. How are you going to duplicate things like this to such an exact detail? And why bother! But keep it mind.
When I call up Dave Power we’re always wondering how these guys got these great sounds - a tone with so much variety in it. Fingering technique will only get you so close. I have video of both Seamus and Tommy Reck and there’s a lot to be learned there - Seamus’s fingers would shake and wobble all over the place, even in dance music, in places. Seamus was said to be very strong, too. Sometimes you can hear him almost break the C natural (in the same way the back D will break with too much pressure). And Tommy would always be jerking the chanter up and putting it right back down, in the space of an eighth note perhaps. One bit of him I have is with Mick O’Brien at the Willie Clancy School recitals. The video is very murky and the chanters going up and down look like a couple of pistons.
Now, also listen to Mick on the Drones/Chanters 2, and then on Kitty Lie Over. Same set of pipes! And both records were recorded in professional studios. But the tone on Kitty Lie Over is great - I thought he must have gotten a new set - a better set, frankly. But Dave told me the main thing is Mick knuckling down and making his own reeds, and getting his own sound in the process, so there’s the value of having good reeds, making them yourself if need be.
I remember Mick at Ted Anderson’s house in 1998 (I think) talking about wanting to get into making more squeakers. I think Ted sold him some cane there so good man Ted!
Is that the G chanter that Ronan Browne has? A friend gave me a tape he made of Ronan Browne playing at a tionol in Pittsburgh ages ago and he was playing a G chanter…it sounded a bit like an elephant farting (or at least how an elephant fart would sound in my imagination, never having heard one in person, thank you very much), but I imagine it was quite impressive if you were there to see and hear it firsthand. A bit difficult to play without squeaking, though, it seemed.
My apologies. I took it from a thread a few months back. From recollection the images came from DS’s website and were provided by Mukade (so he gets the credit and/or blame ).
The farting elephant. Well it makes a change from the choking goose or the strangled chicken. You’d want to have long fingers to play that chanter.
I know it would be long as Hell, but…curious
).