Can someone explain to me exactly how humidity affects chanter reeds?
Thanks, Arbo.
My basic understanding is that the cane either absorbs or loses moisture and so swells or shrinks and so changes shape and so plays better or worse ,for richer or poorer as long as you both should live.
RORY
What Rory said.
In a less extreme case the cane might not change shape, but certainly it’s stiffness will be affected - wet cane = floppy. So your reed could behave as though it’s been either overscraped or not scraped enough.
As an aside, i’ve done some experiments to convince at least myself that the speed of sound is different in humid air than in very dry air. So even if the cane of your reed wasn’t affected much by a humidity change, the pitch of your pipes would alter anyway.
A
Also the moisture in the cane could change the weight (mass) of the vibrating part of the reed which will also change the pitch.
regards,
donpiper