Hello All,
Although I’ve been a member of this forum for a bit, lurking and listening, I just spent a great weekend in a little town called Pittsboro here in North Carolina at Pat Sky’s “crash course” in reed making and I thought it was certainly worth sharing. It was a “crash” course in that so many reed making details were taught in such a relatively short period.
There were four students in attendance varying in ages from 16 to 60: Jack Devereaux, Ian Knepper, Jerry Jacuzio, and Ken O’Neill (myself). We all arrived at Jerry’s Farm at around 7:45AM on Saturday and were cutting cane (mostly supplied by Nick Whitmer) by 8AM. We worked pretty much non stop until noon (oh my aching fingers).
At each stage of the process Pat was over our shoulders nudging us in the right direction calmly and skillfully seeing to it that each staple and slip of cane were coming along well. All of our mistakes became teaching tools and each person’s successes and failures lent something of interest to the endeavor.
Two of us (Jack and Ken) wound up making very good reeds the first day (under fairly direct supervision) and then changed off on Sunday with Jer and Ian making reeds that worked whilst Jack and I trashed several attempts. Although two of us had been fooling around with and had made reeds previously neither of us made better than two good reeds out of 5 with the admonition from Pat that “you could get three good reeds out of a hundred or you might make three good reeds right off ” you never know.
Pat’s technique this trip was for a concert “D” chanter using tube staples. While we worked on making the reeds we were constantly entertained by Pat’s incredible reed knowledge and deep understanding of the instrument. We were also privey to watch Pat set up Jerry’s half set which had had multiple problems including some separation of soldering on the base drone and some very bad workmanship in the main stock’s elements. Always exciting to see a master at work.
I brought my pipes: a brand new full set of silver Gallagher’s, a half-set of Bruce Childress and an older half set with a baritone regulator of Charles Roberts. Jack brought his “B” set. Jerry has a set of Drones by Pat and has both one of Pat’s “budget” chanters. It may be budget priced but was nicely executed, plain with the chanter and the mounts turned of one piece. Jer has also one of Pat’s new model fully mounted with a medium bore, large finger and scalloped finger holes (great tone due to each hole being slightly undercut, while the scalloping aided not only the tone but made the chanter fit your hand like a glove). Pat’s chanters are designed to use tubing staples and work very well with the reeds we were making. Pat brought a set of original Leo Rowsome’s which just had a great sound and were very easy to play. By the way Pat commented that the Gallagher set seemed to play and sound just like the Rowsome, that being easy to play, in tune, great regulator sound and action with the chanter being so sweet sounding that one might think it was a “C” set, made me feel very good about dropping the bucks on the set.
I wound up making two good chanter reeds out of the first three I made on the first day of class and destroyed several slips on the second day by making them too thin and having them split on the final shaping of the “V”. Pat decided it would be a good “test” to see if we could super glue the split (a fairly serious split) and see if we could get the reed to go, which we did although the reed may never play well it does work which surprised me as it was a gruesome split.
Jack (the Wiz) made an incredibly good sounding reed and just blew us all away with an amazing performance (on my Gallagher’s) Saturday night with just beautiful regulator work on tune after tune for an hour straight, then switched to fiddle for (like the great piping he did wasn’t enough) more tunes….too cool. Afterwards Pat got on his Rowsomes’ for a set of great classic piping tunes including a soulful rendition of “An Coolin”. I would have to say the piping alone was more than worth the price of the course.
Just one of the many great things I came away with was finding out that when you are testing the crow and continuing to work on the reed by both shaving and adjusting the bridle the crow you are looking for is the pitch G#. When this occurs you’ll have a workable reed. Also couldn’t resist picking up Pat’s book (I used to have the original over 16 years ago) “A Manual for the Irish Uilleann Pipes” and his reprint of “O’Farrells Pocket Companion for the Irish or Union Pipes”. We were all pretty exhausted on Sunday but learned how to make a cane bass drone reed successfully and of course the same principle applies to the tenor and baritone drones although we didn’t make any of those.
All in all a great weekend, and the reeds made were well worth the price of the course ($150). I think if you do the math you’ll find that you may not be able to buy two good reeds for that price nor have the experience of laying eyes and ears on so many set’s of pipes in a fairly intimate environment, not to mention a piping concert by two great players. Lovely, lovely, lovely…….ken
PS if you would like a very, very informative book on Uilleann Piping technique and lore as well as a working set of plans taken off Pat’s Rowsome full set you couldn’t do better than Pat’s Manual for the Irish Uilleann Pipes, much new stuff in there since the first printing see Pat’s site at www.patricksky.com.
PSS sorry for such a long post, and I’m sure you all know Pat from previous posts but I thought I’d include his site just as well. Love the C&F
