I landed a gig playing at Brookgreen Gardens here in SC. This will be the last weekend of three. She’s been getting colder and colder out, and my chanter keeps going flatter and flatter.
It’s really not TOO much of a problem, since the background is provided by a Kurzweil keyboard on which I can tweak the tuning down to match the pipes as they drop those semitones…
But hey, if there’s something I can do to the reed as well, I’ll try it, although I’ve already played around with the bridle about as much as I can.
You’re having temps not unlike what we’ve been seeing here in Denver, though I suspect the humidity is a bit higher than ours.
I don’t know if there’s much you CAN do for the flatness (other than BrianLee’s suggestion).
This is an annual occurence for us in the higher altitudes - not to mention the drier air… what I recommend you NOT do is monkey around too much with your reed, especially if you’re fond of the way it normally plays. Tinkering around too much with it might cause you some great angst when you expect that it should be playing well.
No suggestions Joey. Just writing to say I love that area and the Gardens; longtime vacationer at Pawley’s Island to the south a bit. Arrogantly Shabby.
Rick
I second this thought. It is a good idea to have a ‘winter’ reed if you live in an area that cools down and dries out considerably. But the reed will need to be made and tuned within the environment that it will be played.
I second this thought. It is a good idea to have a ‘winter’ reed if you live in an area that cools down and dries out considerably.
I third this thought. I have a reed that I have been playing in my chanter for over a year. Although it has played well all year (other than that little trip to Arkansas), I noticed how much happier it got when the weather turned off cold a few weeks ago. I was thinking “Sweeeeet”, there is a benefit to having a “dry” reed.
Alan Burton (the reed magician) seems to be able to make a reed in a moist area and send it here to the “dry” without the reed suffering from any ill effect. I don’t know if he stands in a sandpile with a cactus while he’s making them or just applies some pagan magic. Whatever he does, it works.
Someone once suggested putting a guitar humidity snake in my pipe case. I’m so lazy that I never got around to it, so I don’t know if or how well it works, but it is something to consider.
I know a couple of guys who’ve gone experimenting with spraying down their pipes and putting damp rags in the box and all those humidifying things, and more than a few have ended up with warped, cracked, and moldy pipes.
They work great for guitars and fiddles…most stringed instruments. As for the pipes, I haven’t tried but my assumption would be that they’d work so-so as the wood is much thicker on the pipes that it is on hollow bodied instruments. If I were to use one, I would try and keep the ‘snake’ from directly contacting the wood of the pipes however.
You’re not trying to keep the wood of the pipes humidified, just the reeds. If this is a concern for you, it might be a better idea to keep your reeds in a separate, humidified container rather than trying to humidify the whole set.
Something I am waiting to try when the air gets a bit drier here is to use a wet face cloth in a plastic baggy under the bellows elbow, with the open end of the bag close to the bellows inlet. I saw Ivan Goff using this method to humidify his reeds at the Chris Langan weekend last year, and he was one of the few visiting pipers who could play his own set through the entire weekend. Other pipers were running around trying to borrow local sets, as all their own reeds had given up.
In this particular case, that’s true. But I can tell you, when I brought my pipes home from ireland to NYC (the land of over-heated apartments) they shrank like a mofo. I suspect that if I’d taken greater precautions, the shrinkage would have occured more slowly.
As for the reed, I recall vaguely someone suggesting blowing up the bag with your mouth before playing. Again, I’m even too lazy to try that, so I don’t know if it helps/hurts.
Whatever you’re doing, try NOT to subject the reed to wild swings in humidity or teperature. I’ve noticed that many a reed will play along just fine if you give it time to acclamate properly to it’s new environment. But if you are humidifying, then playing with dry air, then mouth blowing, then using a wet bag under your bellows arm, I would think you’re heading the right way for some major warpage of the cane at the least, and quite possibly cracks as well.
Just make yourself a winter or lower humidity reed.
And there you have it. It’s the ‘back & forth’ of humidity/dryness/humidity/dryness that will wreak havoc on a reed, and more than likely on the wood, too. And what do you suppose is occuring when you use a ‘snake’ or sponge, or whatever in your pipe cases? 65% in the case for a day, then 3 or 4 hours in 15% humidity in order to play for a while… then back to the 65% case, then out for some practice for an hour at 15 or 20%, then back in the case… that’s what I’d call ‘wild swings’ in humidity.
An earlier post talked about Ivan Goff using a damp washcloth near his bellows… but you can bet that as a visiting piper, Ivan doesn’t do that on a regular basis.
Brian McNamara visited Denver a few years’ back, in the autumn, and it had been very dry. He used a steam humidifier blowing on his pipes just to get himself through the performance. He sure doesn’t subject his pipes to such wild methods on a normal basis, however. (And for the record, he vowed never to play in Colorado again. Liam O’Flynn said the same thing - “It’s too dry!”)
Yes, I have a video of Christy O Leary playing in Utah or Colorado with a humidifier parked under his drones on stage. Not something you’d want to do too often.
The church where a lot of the Chris Langan classes are held is heated with old time steam radiators, and it is absolutely bone dry in there. I have winter reeds, and they play fine until I hit that church once a year. That’s why I’m holding off on the “face cloth in the baggy” trick. My set plays fine at home, and I have no humidifier going - definitely a one-time trick at best.
I once heard a story from a folk club organiser who had booked Joe McKenna.
Joe came round to his house before the gig to settle his pipes in, but they were suffering from dry air.
Joe asked if the guy had a shower. When the reply was yes, Joe turned on the shower and after 10 mins playing in the shower room the pipes were sorted.
I was at the gig and they held up throughout.
This should possibly be only tried in extreme circumstances
I think the idea is to avoid the 15 or 20% using the rag-by-the-bellows trick. Actually it sounds pretty reasonable to me to use this dual method (snake in the case, rag by the bellows), especially if you use a humdifier at home in the room where the pipes live. That way, the pipes/reed are never subjected to big dips in the humidity.
Throw a hygrometer into the mix and you’ll have a reasonable chance against the harsh climate changes that are common across much of the US.
