I was reading a past issue of ‘An Piobaire’, no date on the front for some reason, but from about 1999 with a photo of Stephen Scales, the London/Kerry piper’.
Anyway, there’s a technical article on reedmanking and something called the ‘Golden Division’
Problem is, the introduction is easily understood but once the writer gets onto the issue of what the ‘golden division’ is exactly, suddenly I’m absolutely confused by an inundation of ‘AB is to BC what AB is to AC waaa…waaa…waaa…’ .
So…I was wondering if anyone has the article could possibly translate the information into layman’s terms si that I might have more of an idea what the writer in on about?
Not sure what the golden ratiuo has to do with reedmaking, but…
The golden ratio is basically a number that crops up in a variety of guises in maths. It’s value is 1.61803something-or-other ( to be precise, it’s the root of five, plus one, all divided by two). The ancient Greeks had a theory that rectangles whose sides had lengths in this ratio were the most attractive, and buildings like the Parthenon are laid out accordingly.
The ratios of successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence (the addition of the two previous terms, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc) approaches the golden mean. A whole bunch of other interesting things also make it happen, including things like snail shell spirals and origami. I imagine an ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Google search will be fruitful.
Yes, the root of 5 also makes an appearance on some of the reed diagrams in the article but no mention of it in the text. Obviously the author assumed that all readers interested in reedmaking would know exactly what he was on about without much clarification.
I’m interested in reading this article, but I don’t know how to get a copy.
Would someone please point me in the right direction?
I was reading a math/art book about golden proportions, and stumbled accross the golden proportions in Seth Gallagher’s reed specifications. If you take the length of the scrape - about .8 inches and divide it by the width of the reed head - about .5 inches, you get close to the golden proportion. If you ever saw Disney’s “Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land,” it shows how our whole musical scale is related to the golden divisions. It seems that thinking about reeds with this in mind may help me make better reeds. ( I don’t want them to sound like Donald Duck, though.)
The golden section is a division which can be indefinately repeated with the same ratio,so that the lesser is to the greater what the greater is to the whole.
Got it! good… :roll:
Marco Pollier who is still living in Ennis,I think,was the genius who applied the da Vinci Theorem to reedmaking and completely confused the pipering community with it at the time
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
The cowbell guy is from a skit on “Saturday Night Live” from about five years ago. He’s supposed to be a member of “The Blue Oyster Cult” during a recording session. He started out by whacking the 5$!% out of the bell. When told by the producer, “I need more cowbelll baby!!”, there was not much left to do but add some pelvic action…
Marco Pollier who is still living in Ennis,I think,was the genius who applied the da Vinci Theorem to reedmaking and completely confused the pipering community with it at the time
Uilleam,
Did Marco write that article, do you think? Can anyone tell me which issue of
“An Piobaire” it’s in?
Dirk.
yes he did ye can try issue for February 1999 or April 1999..The copy of the an Piobaire wasnae marked as stated by Ausdag but I figure it was early in the year rather than later,but it was definately 1999.If ye phone Na Piobaire Uilleann in Dub …teileafon..01-8730093 ask for Mary she will send ye a copy of the article.Or ye can email info@pipers.ie
Its under the Technical Column.The use of the Golden Division in Reedmaking page 15
Good luck..its fucking boring as hell :roll:
Slán go foill
Uilliam
Many artists employ the golden division to decide where to put the focal point of their painting having been convinced that it will be most appealing to a viewer. I say…just paint the thing…and just make the reed. I remember the issue on an Piobairi and also of thinking of the notion as nonsense. I wonder if the golden division crept into the recent NPU reedmaking DVD?
“I wonder if the golden division crept into the recent NPU reedmaking DVD?” Glands.
No, just sensible, practical observations, very hands on, and down to earth, with just the right amount of philosophy concerning reedmaking from all four reedmakers. Cillian O’Briain states the importance of being in the right frame of mind when setting out to make a reed, and of not being in a hurry when using very sharp tools
.