Hello all,
Well its me again bitching about reeds. As many of you know I have been making reeds for many, many years for every type of chanter. On many occasions I have received letters asking if I guarantee reeds. This definitely puts me on the spot. While I am sympathetic too the high cost of reeds and the pocketbooks of pipers, especially beginners, I can only guarantee that a reed will leave my shop in playable condition.
Back in the early 1970s I naively and egotistically believed that I was the worlds answer to reed making. With this character defect I put out the word that I would make a reed for any chanter for $15.00 . Just mail me the chanter and I will fit the reeds. The problem quickly arose when I discovered that I had to make several reeds to get one to fit, and occasionally I would get a chanter that, after making 5, 10-15 reeds and several hours of work, I had to finally give up and I could not charge for my time. That idea disappeared real quick. I also remember that I charged $.50 cents for a reed and got may complaints about the high cost, which is another story.
The real problem is one of standards. There is no standard Uilleann pipes chanter. Even the so called “Rowsome” design is not standard. Rowsome himself seems to have made several different chanter designs. If by some miracle one could get all of the pipe makers to make a chanter that uses the same bore and hole placements, so that one reed fits all, the price of reeds would come down and then the problem would be solved. Of course the chance of this happening is virtually nil. I know that this would work because I make all of my chanters using the same bore and hole placement. When I make a reed it fits almost all of my chanters, I say almost because one must allow for minor adjustments of bridle, cane and staple measurements, etc. I believe this to be true of most pipe makers.
A standard chanter would:
1- Be in concert pitch, and in tune with itself.
2- Use a standardized reed with a standard tubing staple.
3- Have a standard bore and finger hole placement
Is it possible to get pipe makers to do such a thing as make a standard chanter? I don’t know. .. probably not. In the meantime, if you purchase a set of pipes and cannot make reeds yourself, then set aside several hundred dollars for reeds, because the chances of getting that perfect reed right away is almost nil.
As a final note: there is no such thing as the perfect reed. Every reed will have its built in quirks and you just have to live with it.
A lovely idea of s. th. that might be long overdue in the development. Wouldn´t it but be easier to standardize the cp-reed and all the pipemakers built some chanters around it?
I experienced s. th. a bit similiar recently: These Eezedronereeds are a standard and I use them to reed any drones (D, C#, C, B, Bb…) They usually work for all pitches and bores (with of course minor adjustments and fairly often not fitting into the tenor drone hole). If however pitch or performance do by no means work you would of course not interfere with the Eezedronereed.
Anyway, standardized reeds are easier to come by (e. g. by mail) or are by far easier to make by pipers than chanters. So, instead of blaming the reed or one´s reedmaking abilties the chanter might be faulty?
Well my experience is not as large as Mr. Skys but I try to make all my chanters the same and to give the client all measurements and recipe for reedmaking, I reeded a couple of chanters that the makers denied reed information and recipes to the client. So I had to investigate with some success. Im gratefull for it I learned a lot.
When was 50¢ ever exorbitant for a reed!?!?!? That was 10 times what I paid for a candy bar in my youth (70s), so figure $5 in today’s prices maybe? You must be talking about the half finished reeds you were marketing, right? That was a good idea.
Standard chanter? You could have a chanter competition at a tionol, have all attendees play examples and discuss/rank the sticks, record the results too. I think that would be harmless enough for a start, but far as I can tell most people are content enough with the traditional system of no system at all.
BTW, there is this online-video-clip of GHB reedmaking. Umpteen GHB reeds are made in few minutes, a GHB tune is played in the background and one of the guys is cooly chewing a chewing-gum. I can´t find it now. Could somebody be so kind as to supply (this Uilleann Pipe utopie)?
Had a look at youtube to see the vids on reedmaking and found that someone has recently posted the Colin Ross vids on Northumbrian chanter reedmaking at a higher quality setting.
Why hasn’t there ever been a standard reed for chanters? Orchestral players can buy their reeds off the shelf, why can’t uilleann pipers?
“Because, in the past, faults in the chanter meant that the reed had to be tailored to correct those faults. Each chanter was an individual case, so reeds had to be fitted to the chanter. It’s much better to design and make a fault-free chanter, so that the reed can be standardised. If reeds are made in a certain fashion, the chanter is in charge, and any inherent faults will be obvious. If the reed responds to the chanter, rather than the reverse, it can be changed over from one chanter to another, and will play as easily. With a fault-free chanter, fitting the reed becomes so much easier. I’ve come across chanters that should have been used for firewood, so that nobody would need to spend hours trying to make reeds to fit them”.
From what I’ve been told and read, all decent oboe and bassoon players make their own reeds. “Standard” reeds may be available, but they are rarely good enough for the high level players, and must be adjusted to suit actual conditions.
The idea that a reed is just perfect and stays that way forever is nonsense. Welcome to North America, home of some of the widest variations in climate in the world.
Fault free is amusing, too. Who defines what is a fault and what is not?
Its a detail but I liked (in the reedmaking clip) too much the way they holds the cane halfs together to bind them to the staple. Ill investigate how to make something like that to suit the UP reedmaking.
There is no such thing as a standard orchestral double reed. There’s a variery of reed dimensions and scrapes for oboe and bassoon. Different instruments can work better with particular designs, but the huge difference that renders the comparison with UPs moot is that tuning and response can be controlled with the embouchre.
And different levels of moisture. They’re played wet, and typically soaked before playing … At least I remember the oboe/bassoon players I knew walking around with reeds in water glasses. And I think you might use reeds of slightly different stiffness and geometry for different applications - orchestral, chamber, solo, etc.
I think that’s basically right, Nico. But in my day at least, the student double reed players in high school (even the good ones, including my girlfriend ) used pre-made store-bought reeds, perhaps scraping them a bit to suit. And they seemed to do quite well at that level. Which suggested to me that there’s a greater degree of standardization that pipers would envy, and/or that wet embouchure reeds are simply much less fussy.
On the other hand, the studio of my clarinet teacher - who was primarily a Broadway pit oboist by profession - always looked like a bloody reed factory. And I always wondered how much of this was from necessity, or simply because when you can make your own reeds, the temptation to tinker is great.
But I have no horse in this race … er, reed in this chanter … I’m stickin’ to whistles. At least for now …
And I think you might use reeds of slightly different stiffness and geometry for different applications - orchestral, chamber, solo, etc.
A wet reed does eliminate the whole humidity dimension. You can buy store bought reeds, but different makers’ reeds vary a great deal in dimensions. Overall you’ve got a lot more latitude due to embouchure control. The other factor that varies is the staple for oboe reeds and the bocal (the equivalent) on the bassoon. These are not standardized except within makers and have a significant effect on the instrument’s response.
On the bassoon I don’t use a different reed for delicate passage but I do use a different bocal. I do use a harder reed for very high passages.
In my opinion where a conical bore, double reed instrument is concerned there’s no such thing as standard or perfect, only a balance of compromises.
Two thoughts come to mind when I think of this. The first is a quote from Kieran O’hare at a Tinol in Ann Arbor Michigan.. “If you wanted to play in tune you wouldn’t have picked up the uilleann pipes”. and the second is that maybe we should find a way to Clone Benedict Koehler, because I was able to call him up when I had a broken chanter reed and he said.. now If I remember correctly you chanter was… (blah blah blah) and that should be similar enough to our current design that the standard reeds should work.. and then 2 weeks later another amazing chanter reed appeared in the mail which was placed in the pipes and played perfectly “in tune” we need to have an army of reed makers like that..
That was 10 times what I paid for a candy bar in my youth (70s), so figure $5 in today’s prices maybe? You must be talking about the half finished reeds you were marketing, right? That was a good idea.
) used pre-made store-bought reeds, perhaps scraping them a bit to suit. And they seemed to do quite well at that level. Which suggested to me that there’s a greater degree of standardization that pipers would envy, and/or that wet embouchure reeds are simply much less fussy.