Years ago Ronnie Wathen showed up at the old Pipers club with a set of drones made up of clear plastic flexible tubing. When he sat down to play the drones spilled out onto the floor. By twisting the tubing and inserting bits of cotton into the tube, Ronnie was able to tune the drones and they sounded pretty good. As he began to play no one would look at him and he was dutifully ignored. At that moment Seamus Ennis entered the room and all eyes went to him to see what he would do. Seamus walked straight up to Ronnie and in his deep smooth voice said " That’s a very interesting set of drones you have there…Ronnie!
Does this take some of the magic out of drones? After all they are only a length of tube with a reed on one end.
Is that the Guerrilla pipe, the thing that looked like a CO2 dispenser/home enema kit? Nothing magical to look at. That was the homebrew bag/bellows I think.
I have about 19 seconds of Ronnie’s piping on tape so can’t really judge him. Someone told me they liked to refer to him as “Rotten Ronnie” though… Music’s what matters, who cares what produces it, although it helps to put some care into the finished product if you’re going to actually build something. Playing music is building something too, sez I.
I’ve heard some tapes with amusing stand-ins for drones, like a digital tuner (Ronan Browne on the G chanter) and a flute player with good lungs (Andy Conroy).
There’s a CD called Drone Magic, too…
I was discussing a similar topic with my teacher a few weeks ago as he was fitting my set with a new bellows. He argued that, since most uilleann pipers are very traditional in their thinking, pipe construction falls within certain parameters in terms of materials. I added that it seems that there is also some kind of animistic belief attached to the instrument’s components (at least at a subconscious level), explaining why folks favor certain materials over another, e.g., blackwood over delrin (even though recently one poster argued to another that even plastic once had life).
I don’t think it takes the magic out. In fact I found it kinda funny when after I spent thousands on my set that underneath all the turned ebony and silver the sound was coming from very crude pieces of cane. Regardless the sound is amazing.
I think too that its easy to go overboard in terms of aesthetics. Take for example this piano that is selling on ebay for 73,000.
and for the youngsters out there, that’s Neillidh Mulligan at Ronnie’s left shoulder, and the kid with the glasses is Mick O’Brien. Don’t know the other two.
On the left is Mal Whyte, the original owner (and if it isn’t sold he still is) of the Kenna/Ryan Beehive set. Mal used to run a healthfoodshop in Ennistymon during the 80s, decided he wanted to act and made a career out of that, you see him a lot in all sorts of movies. I remember seeing him in a tv film during the late 80s where he played a driver of a mini van taking a group of disabled somewhere. At some point he turns on the radio, hears the pipes and immediately turns it off saying ‘Jaysus you don’t want to listen to that crap’.
He also used to do a bit of photography, his are the shots of Willie Clancy and Liam Og and the one of Breandan Breathnach playing the practice set.
I would agree that at a certain point drones (and the pipes in general) become nothing more than wooden straws. But I would beg to differ by stating that even drones can be quite complex and nearly as nuanced in construction as any other aspect of the instrument. In fact, I would argue that MUCH more attention should be paid to this aspect of the instrument, as it is often neglected. It seems to me that many individuals mistakenly make the assumption that a bunch of straws IS* a sufficient amount of design investment.
Personally,I dont think so. Does it take the magic out of any instrument(or anything else) if you describe it in its most basic form.Mount everest is just a big rock,a ferrari is just an engine on wheels,a Stradivarious is just a box with strings stretched across it and drones are as you described.
Maybe some musicians would disagree ,but all things being equal sound wise,there is more to a musical instrument than how it sounds.I think there must be something in the physiological make up of some humans that like to see what I would call evidence of craftsmanship, something that displays the higher functions of the human mind. This craftsmanship then stimulates the higher functions of the mind to the observer. So with musical instruments the aural and visual senses subconsciously combined adds up to something very pleasing.
Its something thats seems to be getting lost in the modern world ,alot of things are now made with no concern of how they look.
Maybe oleo’s piper has the most warped boxwood ever? Or they’re using washer/dryer hookup for bores these days. Don’t forget your Spaniards with the truck tire pipe bags.
Me like:
Where did these nutty priests ever get the notion music had some kind of Satanic correlation?
