The Clarke tutor teaches the C natural as having the left index and right index finger off the chanter, and I just started watching the NPU video and they teach the C natural as the left index off and the right middle and ring finger off. These two techniques do sound different so I am wondering if one is more ‘right’ than the other. I’ve already been learning it the Clarke way.
It depends on how your chanter was designed. The Rowsome design works with the two index fingers off. Mine doesn’t work with this method. It only works with the top index and bottom middle finger. Sometimes when the reed is acting up I need the top index plus middle and third fingers on the bottom hand off.
djm
C natural can vary wildly from one chanter to the next, with how you take your fingers off the chanter, with your lifting the chanter slightly off the knee or not etc etc. As always your ear should be your guide NOT what your book says. And you may want to have different pitches and tonal colours at your disposal.
If you continue with the NPU video you’ll see that the second piper prefers to play Cnat using the same fingering as the Clarke tutor. When I experimented with this initially I felt I was getting a better sound with two right fingers off. A couple of months ago I tried again and there was very little difference between the two, probably because I’m covering the tone holes better than I used to. One right finger off is simpler, hence better for us beginners.
Andrew
Depends on the Rowsome; some prefer the top-index and bottom-middle. IMO the top-index+bottom-middle is the most common modern fingering for Cnat (on the knee).
As Peter says, let your eag be your guide; and it can be nice to have more than one variant at your disposal.
Thanks for the advice. I’m not entirely sure what a Cnat is supposed to sound like really. 
I’ll rewatch the video and see if I can match what I hear.
On your chanter Cnat is (left index finger and right middle finger)…
It’s really, really important to spend a lot of time listening to good pipers while you’re learning..the more you let that music seep into your head, the more you’ll know how things should sound. It’ll be a lot easier to learn to play because you’ll have a point of reference and you’ll be able to tell when things are sloppy or not coming out quite right. That’s true with any instrument but I think especially so with the pipes.
Trying to learn the pipes without spending hours and hours listening to good pipers would be like learning to drive a car while bllindfolded. It just doesn’t make sense!
To get that very evil nyahhhish C natural I don’t think of playing a B and sliding up to C - to me it’s more like playing a G and then raising the topmost finger, sliding up into the C. Say at the beginning of the Twisting of the Hayrope (Casadh an tSugain), I play G - A - B and then close the top hand ring and middle fingers; as they are just hitting the chanter I begin to raise the top hand index, sliding into the C. I lower the bottom hand index finger as well. The C note starts out a bit muted this way as well, you can add some vibrato to it for more hair raising qualities.
This is how you get the EnnisReckClancyRBrowne C, to me the descriptions in the tutors are misleading - certainly I don’t play a B with the ring and middle fingers up in the air, then “slide” the top hand index finger up, as they illustrate. I don’t own the NPU home movies so I can’t comment on them, although I saw them once and remember the editing was a bit Twilight Zone.
This may be a personal matter - sometimes I need to find the right way to approach something before it comes out right - perhaps this way of playing the C will help some of you.
I suppose somebody should mention that the guys playing C and other flat chanters are going to find that the F# and G fingers both off or the G finger off alone is pretty common, but on a concert D set this produces almost universally a very very very sharp C nat. So let’s just get our heads out of our arses before we start the heavy bickering. The C# open and the F# open is the most common–uh nearly universal way to start getting a half-decent C nat on a wide bore convert D set unless you have a defective reed. From there you should probably note that the C# finger should never really leave the chanter much, and of course the fooking now standard Willie Clancy half-uncurling the C# hole so the tone pukes and moans out the hole with that bluesy pain we all love. The latter works on either wide or narrow bores but of course, you do have to figure out which lowerhand vent needs to work along with it.
Well that would be the answer I’m looking for since you would know. I guess I should have just asked you first. 