I’ve been thinking lately about the classic sound of the old style D sets as made by makers like Taylor, William and Leo Rowsome, etc.
And I’ve been thinking.
Some pipes makers will make you a beautiful copy of a classic Coyne or Kenna set in B. But it’s not modern B as we know it. Kenna and Coyne made those sets in C but concert pitch was a flatter in those days and we now have something that’s close to B but not quite.
Pipers are still delighted to play these beautiful sets and most pipers who prefer to play flat sets will keep a D chanter on standby for teaching or playing at a session, concert, etc.
So… why not do the same for D sets.
The late 19th and early 20th century D sets were originally made to play around A=450 or so. (448 to 453)
So what would pipers think about having a set that is made to be based on a Rowsome or Taylor set and tuned just like the original. And then you could have a 440 chanters for when the occasion arises.
Maybe I’m listening to too much Leo Rowsome and Patsy Touhey lately but is it time to revive the ‘sharp’ set?
Stradivarius violins aren’t forced to play in modern pitch with tape and wax so why should a classic set of pipes be forced to do the same.
I read an article by Geoff Wooff and he made it sound as if a concert chanter would play better if it were tuned higher as originally intended. I think if it played better, it would be really interesting. I like my flat chanters though and a chanter playing higher than D frightens me a bit…
Caspermilktoast,
I’m not sure which article you are refering to… it is a very long time since I quit writting stuff like this ( because I simply have better things to do with my time than preach to the un-hearing… for the most part that is)… but what I was probably saying agrees with the originator of this thread.. in that the pipes of the Taylors through to the Rowsomes do sound best if reeded to play where they want to, thus somewhere about a half semitone higher than modern concert pitch.
It is when pipers try to force the pitch of these old sets ( and copies made to the same models) down to 440hz that the sound changes, becomes ‘heavy’, loud… in fact changes from musical sounds to just noise at times.
I don’t see any thing against making Pipes that play nicely in moden pitch as such… that i’m not a lover of Concert D pipes is as much to do with the way they have been made in the recent past… before some people ‘copped-on’ to the fact that they were copying a less than ideal model for 440hz.
YES YES YES.. let your pipes play in a pitch where they are happy… ( happy Pipes= Happy Piper)… play with fiddlers who have yet to subscribe to the " tune to a meter" brigade.
Note ; I am not against electronic tuners per se… I bought my first one in 1976… and currently have 7 or 8 of them from a tiny ’ tune your fiddle’ size to one that weighs several Kilos…
I’m also not against Concert Pitch… I play the concertina after all!
Why doesn’t anyone make a narrow-bore Eb set? Or do they?
And, a related comment: It seems like the players of each instrument have their own favorite alternate tonalities. IME, the flute players prefer flutes in Eb (for brighter) or low Bb (for mellower). The low whistlers love low F. The high whistlers like Bb. Pipers most often seem to go for flat sets in C or B. Fiddlers will tune up or down a semitone or two, or pick up a viola. Guitarists enjoy putting the capo on the third fret.
(And yes, I know that there are so many exceptions to this that some people are going to wonder why I bothered making the generalizations.)
I think having a universally accepted standard (A=440hz) is basically a good thing unless you’re always playing solo.
That said i own instruments that really sound best just north or south of their intended pitch and when noodling around at home i don’t bother tuning them “correct”
If i had a Rowsome copy that played best just shy of Eb i would consider leaving it well alone and perhaps getting another stick (made for being “in tune” rather than a copy) for session/studio/gig work.
I like Taylor chanters that are reeded to the intended pitch. Joe McKenna made his own Eb set as he was fond of the sound of Patsy Touhey’s recordings, which are somewhat lower than Eb, as I recall. I am not that fond of Eb pipes. The Rowsome copies I have tuned to A=440 sounded great at about A=452 (London Philharmonic pitch pre-A=440) before I modified the tuning. That was the pitch often used before A=440 was adopted as the standard in the 1930’s. Many of Leo’s chanters are 14" or 14 1/8" long which is too short for D at A=440. Michael Hubbert has copied a Rowsome chanter that is 14 3/8" long, which may be one of the attempts Leo used to get to A=440, which he had a lot of call for after it was adopted. It seems to reed at A=440 without too much fiddling with it. Leo undercut and scalloped holes in various combinations in attempts to please customers who wanted A=440 sets.
Many modern makers have tried to rescale their flat sets to play in B or C based on A=440. Some flat set are close enough to A=440 that reed modifications will get them into modern pitch. Others require rescaling of chanter lengths or rushes and tape. Some makers have done a better job of this than others without altering the original sound too drastically. That seems to be the modern conundrum. Most now want B or C sets to be based on A=440 so they can jam with others. Others are happy with copies of historical sets that were never intended to play at A=440.
Many modern makers have tried to rescale their flat sets to play in B or C based on A=440. Some flat set are close enough to A=440 that reed modifications will get them into modern pitch.
I agree it wouldn’t take much to tune, say a Coyne 16 1/2 chanter to modern B but it would be easy to rescale it too because it’s only going to move a few mm.
It’s a different job entirely to rescale that kind of chanter to modern C or Bb.
It can be done because we know that Kenna, Coyne, Harrington, etc, tended to use the same bore ‘shape’ in they’re chanters. A lot of the time anyway.
But finding the new tone hole positions is a lot more difficult. You could move them uniformly if the chanters were made using a straight cone with one rate of taper, but they weren’t.
There are several rates of taper in a bore of one of these ‘classic’ chanters so new hole positions can involve some very tedious and complicated mathematics or a lot of saw dust! Or both!!
But it can be done. I made a very nice C# chanter based on the bore shape of an even nicer Matt Kiernan C chanter.
Why doesn’t anyone make a narrow-bore Eb set?
I’m sure several makers have done this.
In fact I’d shy away from a wide bore Eb chanter entirely. That’d cut the ears out of you!
Actually, wide bore Eb isn’t particularily loud. Narrow bore Eb and E * are pretty quiet, dull and generally not really worth bothering with. The wide bore Eb is slightly quieter than the D it is based on.
Some designs will happily stretch or squash into different pitches, some won’t. Using multiple reamers helps.
E I haven’t made myself, I’m going off what Peter told me about the one he made
Maybe the chanters I heard were wide after all. I kind of presumed they narrow bore.
One record I still really enjoy listening is "The Long Finger’ with Joe McHugh on the pipes. He plays an Eb set. Might have been made by Joe McKenna as Ted mentioned.
Narrow bore Eb and E * are pretty quiet, dull and generally not really worth bothering with.
That’s interesting. I haven’t made anything above D so I always had the notion that an Eb chanter in the style of a squished Kenna D would be nice and bright and plenty loud.
Mind you a Kenna or Coyne style bore with a 5/32" (ish) throat would be kind of wide bore relative to the length of the stick. No?
I’ve heard chanters in F by Froment and Leo Rowsome. Arie De Keyser made a G chanter for one of his kids.
Bats wouldn’t hear some of those notes.
On one of Paddy Keenan’s albums, Na Keen Affair, his pipes sounds quite sharp, at least when I try to play along with my pipes. Could this be because the Rowsome chanter was more comfortable playing at a higher pitch (ex. A:450)? Anyone know when Paddy’s Rowsome chanter was made?
Not sure when it was made but the rest of the set was a Crowley set which was made in the 50’s, I think. Maybe earlier. Depending on which Crowley made them. Tadhg died in the early 50’s but Dennis continued till the mid 60’s or so.
Those drones and regulators would be very happy around 450 too.
Rowsome made a few chanter that work well closer to 440 but only a few.
I have a “flat-Rowsome”-copy chanter that was intended to be in C, but when the maker was reeding it up he decided it would be “happier” as a C#. I feel like I got the best of both worlds with this one. Wherever the tone is the best and truest seems perfectly sensible to me!
I agree that it’s good to have a 440 chanter setup for times with others, but the pipes are often a solo instrument, so if I was good enough to play solo I’d have no qualms about going with where my pipes have their best solo “voice.” If that happened to be north of true D, that would be an option too.
I have a “flat-Rowsome”-copy chanter that was intended to be in C, but when the maker was reeding it up he decided it would be “happier” as a C#. I feel like I got the best of both worlds with this one. Wherever the tone is the best and truest seems perfectly sensible to me!
Leo didn’t make much flat pitched pipes but his dad did so they would have followed the concert pitch of the day and run sharp relative to todays pitch.
A few years ago I got to listen to and play a tune on Pat Sky’s W Rowsome C set (with a Quinn chanter) one of the nicest sets of pipes ever!!!
Recently I got my hands on a set of measurements for another W Rowsome C set. I got very excited until I saw the numbers. When I looked at the bore and length of the chanter I thought, ahh… 1900 concert tuning… Balls.
I don’t think this set would go as far as C# though.
I’m happy with my C pipes anyway but it’s always nice to try different designs too.
Oh, doh. It probably was William. Thanks for straightening me out! Steve Vickers made it, and it’s taken from an old set he measured in Dublin. It looks like Pat d’Arcy is selling the chanter’s sister, which is reeded and plays in C. I don’t know why mine wanted to be C#, but it is, and I like it very much. Nice combination of dark and light tones.
Could be a reed thing.
My Kiernan C chanter likes to play C# with a certain type of reed that would normally be fine in other C chanters.
Steve makes fine pipes but maybe decided that C# may be better suited to how the chanter behaves but with a totally different reed design it might still be encouraged to play in C.
Oh, doh. It probably was William. Thanks for straightening me out! Steve Vickers made it, and it’s taken from an old set he measured in Dublin. It looks like Pat d’Arcy is selling the chanter’s sister, which is reeded and plays in C. I don’t know why mine wanted to be C#, but it is, and I like it very much. Nice combination of dark and light tones.