Advantages of slant drilling E to lower hole internally enabling a larger hole without disturbing comfortable finger spacing?
Sure it gains you clearness of lower octave E, especially on knee, but what other consequences are there of either slanting or lowering hole to enable drilling bigger hole?
What effect on low/high E octave trueness?
Can a larger E hole in general disturb upper octave playability–stubborn, sharper etc.
Please remember question is about slant drilling which implies correct tuning and spacing externally with larger hole. Question is not about simply enlarging E.
What’s this, day 4 now? Guess this proves just how much most of this forum really know about pipe making/tuning/setup. This seems a pretty basic question, I’ve seen it done on UP and done it myself on other pipes. I’m just trying to get a clearer idea of how this effects the notorious E octave matching situation on UP.
I don’t mean any offense, I just find it ironic that so many have lept forward to complain about other posts they claim to be uncivil and subjective and unsubstantial, while at the same time the couple of times I’ve posted very simple, straightforward questions concerning real technical knowledge of the instrument these same legions of personal detractors fall so notably silent, as if, in these matters, despite their protests, they don’t have anything to offer.
Hi, Royce. As one of your biggest fans, I couldn’t see you left out in the cold like this. I am not a pipemaker. There doesn’t seem to be many pipemakers who frequent this board. The ones I know and have asked, say they avoid this board due to their desire to avoid the slagging they may get from the number of “experts” who jump all over anything technical that may show up here from time to time.
My own experience with E tuning problems is that this is more a reed issue. I say that because different reed designs I have tried work better than others as far as tuning the E goes, and sometimes just a change in humidity can throw the E tuning off. For problems caused by humidity changes, I find that just a micro adjustment of the bridle can fix this. This may be very specific to individual chanters, as well.
You might try posting this question over on the whistle forum. It might seem inappropriate, but never underestimate those folks over there. There are a lot of experts (both flute, recorders, sax, whistle, and bagpipes) that never visit this forum, and that have far more superior expertise on these matters of musical physics. Since you’d be somewhat new to their forum, be sure and pick a catchy subject title like " Any You Dingbats Know Anything?" or the real experts might ignore the thread, thinking it’s just another newbie question, and skip right on to the next. The whistle forum moves fast, with lots of poster types and challenging mindsets.
My 2 cents..think of all finger holes as an extension of the chanter bore. The pitch (both octaves) is subject to where it leaves the bore, the size of the hole, the distance from the inner bore to the outer surface (chimney height). I’m thinking that the direction (slanted, straight 90 deg., or curved) of the fingerhole would have nothing to do with octaves just like the U-bend of the bore on certain instruments (both reeds and flutes) has nothing to do with octaves. The principle should be the same.
Thanks for helping guys. But I thought I was the sole “expert” and “slagmaster” in the forum and I just barely started posting a few weeks back.
Anyway, here’s my dilemma:
1 I have one chanter, a Bob May plastic one, that has E slant drilled downward. This allows the E hole to be bigger, which would normally sharpen that note, and would normally necessitate moving the hole toward the bell to compensate. A big E hole means play particularly on the knee doesn’t sound so choked off and is more forgiving to blowing and plays cleaner rolls etc. Moving the hole toward the bell to enable enlarging however, means it’s way too close to ghost D and is uncomfortable to play.
2 Every chanter I’ve seen so far (with the possible exception of one I haven’t seen in over two years and so can’t remember well) has a very tiny E hole. This seems like it may be something makers just accept as inevitable, but I don’t see any of them slant drilled trying to open it up a bit. If you have to put any tape/wax/tac on your E, you end up with a very choked off hole.
3 Which brings me to the UP, because unlike a flute or other pipes, there’s some really weird relationship between low E and ghost D holes. If you cose up ghost D in any way, it actually brings up low E and really brings high E up a lot. If you’re trying to tune the octave Es (assuming the reed has done all it can) you can bring a flatty high E up by closing up (most effectively) the lower half or so of ghost D.
4 So, the question is, if you open up E and move it down, either by slant drilling or just moving it lower, what weird thing is this going to do to that ghost D relationship? Can you, for instance, flatten the E’s (allowing you to open that hole a bit) by opening up Ghost D, or undercutting it? Seems like if you open E, retuning by moving it down, you’d end up with more strength in closed low E on the knee, but I’m thinking there has to be some trick reason why pipe makers don’t do that by slant drilling or otherwise, and E always seems to be so tiny.
Old flat chanters often had a D# key, which sounds in perfect accord with the drones. Real sticklers for tuning, these guys. Perhaps this extra key was also used for flattening the Es strategically, simulating in a sense a wider Eb hole.
Played a newish Wooff B set the other day; the body of the chanter was very thick at the bottom, presumably to flatten the low E. Thicker = depper fingerhole. Slant drilling would simulate the same effect in a thinner chanter, of course. The thickness of the chanter was apparent in the tone, too.
Royce, I know my pipemaker, Joe Kennedy, seems to go into extraordinary fits about getting and keeping the E/e in tune with each other and to the rest of the chanter. Its like a holy grail or something.
I am trying to read up and understand the design of these things, but its mostly making my little brain hurt. I never seem to have a problem with an E that’s too flat. Its always sharp, and whenever E is sharp, you can be sure the e is really sharp.
My latest experience was playing with gouging the tails. The original reed didn’t gouge the tails much if anything at all, but I was having tuning problems in the upper hand, so I started frigging with the inner gouge. Now the upper hand is in excellent tune, but the E/e’s are sharp. You are very correct about partially taping the E to flatten it. I can’t stand that muddy E sound either, so I’ve determined I’d rather live with a slightly sharp E as long as it maintains its brightness - at least until I come up with another bright idea.
I don’t fully understand the E/Eb relationship, other than that the E needs that much extra venting to sound at all (ever tried to play the E while covering the Eb? It don’t).
I would like to see this stuff stop being such a mysterious art, but the science of it boggles what little mind I have. (bitch, bitch, bitch, etc.)
My main stick now is a keyless clean, Gallagher and most of the time the E’s are in tune. (After setting the bridle to open the throat just right and usually with rushes tuning up the lower end of the chanter in general.) But what happens occasionally, is both E’s will go sharp a bit, which I consider more annoying than any other thing a chanter can do. The quick fix is closing the top of the E hole a hair, but that makes that choked off sound on low E in particular. The “proper” fix is to just tweak the bridle up to open the throat just a hair. That fixes the E’s right away, but also flattens the whole chanter a bit, which sometimes, playing in a band in particular, is flatter than I want to be.
You can always tune everyone in a band to the pipes, which is what I do if I feel it’s not something I want to mess with. But if you’re with a box or session, you can’t always have it your way.
I was thinking about filling and redrilling the E with a slant and bigger hole, but the mysteries of those notes makes the whole proposition too adventurous for me I think, not knowing exactly what it might do. If I had a bigger E hole I could just leave the bridle alone for the most part and just tape down E’s when they go sharpish.
Hey, Royce, this sounds interesting. BUT: if I may suggest, invest in a few shite chanters for experimentation purposes. The idea of tweaking a quality stick just to see what happens gives me the frights!
After all, all you’re really doing is checking what it does to the the E; it seems to me that general intonation is a moot point. You could even use the other holes for the same purposes, and check the relative results.
Of course, in the end you have pricey kindling, but that’s research.
I know someone who did just that.
He made a mould for a resin chanter, and used a brittle resin that was around at that time to produce a stack of chanters which were rough copies of one by an established maker.
When he’d finally got the design right, he made a “good” chanter with a hardwood. I think he originally wanted to mass-produce resin chanters, but they were too brittle and so he couldn’t market them.
But he got a lovely self-made instrument out of it, and an awful lot of knowledge too. I had e/E problems some years back when starting, and he had some very good ideas where other players just scratched their heads and tried not to tell me what they really thought of my chanter.
As I think about it, I have a feeling that it is a Bourke copy, in D.
That’s the mysterious part of it. I’ve actually made several chanters and because I was designing them myself I never ran into the problem by spacing the right hand out a hair more than some. I also have one that was made that way and it works great.
But you know me, I play on the knee most of the time on E and I have this problem wondering if a really really good chanter couldn’t just be a perfect chanter…anyway. I wasn’t going to try it unless somebody out there actually could give me a dissertation on it and I knew what I was getting into. Part of the problem is I’ve set my reed up sort-of Keenanesque after taking some instruction on how the way he makes and finishes reeds, so this reed is on a stock staple and all, but the blades have been finished to a bit turkey-gobblish state that may be a little more spongy than Gallagher intended.
What I might do though, is clip the reed a bit to bring the overall pitch up and then just run it more open so it would average flattish on high E (just blow that up) and dead-on on low E with the hole wide open. Then when it went sharp from the weather it would just go into pitch rather than beyond.
But then again, I don’t want to screw this reed up either, because it’s got a bullet-proof back D and plays true all the way up the scale.
…that would be a definite sign of madness in my case.