How do you get pipemakers to make you a set e.g. without paying. As many of the albums that I have say that this player plays X pipers sets. I’ve also heared of some pipemakers just making sets for people. Just because the feel like it. Ian Mackenzie has sent out a few Bb chanters as promo sets. As I’d really like a flat pitch set at some stage in the near future.
So how do you twist a pipemaker into making you a set for free. Apart from bribing them . As I can’t see myself having the funding for a flat pitch set of pipes anytime soon.
EDIT: Just to let you know that Patrick payed full rice for his K&Q set. Sory if I embarresed anyone.
I think you’re on the right track, Rory, but it goes beyond just being good on the pipes. You’d also have to be well known for being good on the pipes. It would also help to be good on the pipes, well known and influential in the ITM community. That would make you a primo target for loss leaders, free preview chanters/sets, trips to exotic locations, chocolate covered dancing girls, and all the other marketing techniques we have come to expect in a free enterprise capitalistic system.
I, for one, am seriously regretting having given Patrick D’Arcy that shiny big set for free. He had some pretty darned embarrassing photographs of me at a quilting bee, and there are some things even a defrocked priest such as myself cannot afford to let get out in public.
But, for constructive suggestions: It shouldn’t be too difficult to twist a pipemaker as you suggest, because most of them are more or less twisted to begin with. Bribing doesn’t usually work unless a lot of money is involved.
I have had a couple of free sets of pipes from a maker.
Here’s how to do it.
Make sure you are born next door to a pipemaker.
Spend at least twenty years cultivating a relationship by being a cute kid, then a interested teenager, then by drinking homebrew in his workshop and attending piping meetings and performances together.
Move very far away, the other side of the earth in my case, and when you come home once a year, always pay a visit, bring some small gifts, and crack open a few cans while reviewing his latest work.
Feed the cat when he is away on holiday.
In my case, the pipemaker makes Northumbrian pipes, harps and other instruments, but if you follow these four easy steps, you too may find some free uilleann pipes on your lap.
Yes, I always insist on my pipemakers providing me with free pipes. You should do the same. These guys make enough money from the common folk and we deserve better than the smelly man on the street (or woman, excuse me ladies).
Seriously though… what the hell are you smoking? I paid dearly for the set, every penny. I do believe them to be worth more than I paid but that is just down to uilleann pipe inflation. But I still paid twice what I paid for my Wooff set five years previously (almost to the day).
I want to laugh but find it hard at such an ignorant comment. I use that word in it’s true sense not in it’s slanderous sense. No knowledge to back it up.
Maybe I should be flattered. You think I am of that calibre. I don’t know.
Exactly what I mean PJ. Well I wouldn’t be able to comment on tone of a flat set. I’ve only so fare played a Wooff C# set and a Mackenzie C chanter. I would be able to say that, ouch the set takes to much air, Or it isn’t easie to tune, or this happens at this point in my playing. You get the picture. So if there is any pipemaker out their who might offer me a new C#, C or Bb set to test. Just pm me .
Patrick my above post has been edited (apologies).
Perhaps you might want to choose your words more carefully next time… I promise that I will do the same for any future response that I make, or any future post I submit.
But, what if he had gotten it for “free?” Would it be anybody’s business??? As far as I am concerend, anyone who creates something is free to do with it what he or she wants.
I sell some paintings…and gift others? Is that a cheat to my paying customers to give some of them as gifts? I think not!
Here’s the way… (from an email possibly received by me)
Good Day,
My name is Sikiratu Seki Rowsome, the only son of late Mr. and Mrs Shongwe Ibrahim Seki Rowsome of the blessed memory My father was a very wealthy Uilleann Pipe merchant in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast (provider of the finest ivory in the world), my father was poisoned to death by his business associates in one of their outings to a local tionol.
My mother died when I was a baby and since then, my father took me so special. Before the death of my father on january 2003 in a private redd making clinic here in Abidjan, he secretly called me on his bedside and told me that he has the sum of Eight Million Uilleann Pipe Full Sets left in a fixed/suspense account in one of the prime banks here in Abidjan, that he used my name as his only son as the next of kin in depositing the pipes.
He also explained to me that it was because of this wealth and reed making ability that he was poisoned by his business associates, That I should seek for a foreign partner in a country of my choice where I will transfer these Uilleann Pipe Full Sets and use them for investment purpose such as real estate management or hotel management or perhaps kindling.
I am honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways:
To provide a bank account into which these Uilleann Pipe Full Sets would be transferred to.
To serve as a guardian of these Pipes since I am only 21years old
To make arrangement for me to come over to your country
to further my piping education education and to secure a resident permit for me in your country.
You will find no argument from me here. I always have (and will always continue to) make a gift of any information or resources that I have access to, to those who I deem in true need of them, or to whom I have been the overwhelmed recipient of a ‘Pay It Forward’ generosity, and a selfless spirit.
I am not into piping because I want to be a superstar piper. I am into piping because I do not have a choice in the matter… it is the very music of my heart and soul, and has been the one of two things that have kept me living over the past 20+ years. The joy I felt through the selflessness of others is the joy I now wish to nourish and pass on to those who felt, who FEEL the same aching way I did back then, and the way I do now. It is nobody’s business but my own, and those, to whom I owe a debt of grattitude or to whom I owe a kind-hearted salutation, in addition the sacred hand of kinship… you have my respect and trust.
What would the price of something like that be? Nothing is free. Everything is earned, in one way or another.
L42B,
This is a dangerous thread to have tossed at a bunch of pipers.
. As I can’t see myself having the funding for a flat pitch set of pipes anytime soon.
I paid dearly for the set, every penny. I do believe them to be worth more than I paid but that is just down to uilleann pipe inflation. But I still paid twice what I paid for my Wooff set five years previously (almost to the day).
I use that word in it’s true sense not in it’s slanderous sense. No knowledge to back it up.