When a group of GHB players get together, chances are that they are not in tune with one another. Most times, some fine adjustment allows everyone to come into tune enough to play together reasonably well.
I have not yet had the chance to sit and play with another UP player. UPs are so much less standard than GHBs, it strikes me that two or more UP players would have one hell of a time trying to tune their pipes with one another. It strikes me that, not only are pipes different from maker to maker (moreso than GHBs), the reeds (mostly home made, right?) will differ so much that it seems a VERY difficult task.
I have a fairly nice reed I made. My chanter ‘balances’ sharp, though: A=446 sometimes. If I sat down with someone who had their A spot on at 440, I would be hard pressed to even want to monkey around with my reed to tune it to someone else.
OK, small question too much writing … sorry … anyway, how does this go? I’m thinking too about whole group lessons as occur at Tionol…
There’s a very good reason why UPs are considered a solo instrument, and you’ve just nailed it.
Something that was very hard for me in the beginning was learning to ignore what seemed to me to be the chanter’s out of tuneness with itself. This changed a lot when I added drones later, and I could appreciate the need for the chanter notes to be more in tune with the drones (in 2 8ves, no less) than amongst the chanter notes themselves.
As for many UPs playing together all at once, I’m not aware of it happening much. Even if everyone is close in tuning, the variety of playing styles precludes much in the way of an even sound. Gay McKeown of NPU has just issued another CD, and plays together with his two sons on several tracks. On the Late Session he admits it was a bit mad, and they did it with some trepidation (this within the same family!). I don’t think there will be a big call for UP bands anytime soon.
Our fortnightly get together has about 5 - 6 pipers playing through tunes on chanters ranging from 439 - 442Hz or thereabouts generally, but it doesn’t seem to be too much of a hassle doesn’t sound too bad at all.
When I was down at the London Uilleann Piper’s Club we’d have 6 to 8 of us sometimes playing away and it was no problem at all. It’s no different to going to a session where you’ll get a range of instruments that can sound relatively in tune with each other but not 100% perfect.
It really isn’t an issue to be honest, as we’re not trying to be a marching band or orchestra. I’ve been to multi-instrument sessions with as many as 3 Uilleann Pipers playing without any drama’s. Normally, 2 UP’s are enough in a normal session as otherwise, the sound tends to dominate over the other instruments with too many pipers (depending on the number of other instruments and loudness of them).
The tonal range between the instruments is distinguishable but then that means you can hear individual pipers playing and I have to admit, with all piper’s ending on a low hard bottom ‘D’ you can really feel the power!
There are plenty of piper’s clubs around and they normally always play in session together too, so it’s never really a problem. It starts to become a real problem if everyone’s got their drones going sometimes but that’s the beauty of the Uilleann Pipes, you can simply switch them off to suit the occassion.
UP’s make a great solo instrument but they’re often played with each other and other instruments without difficulty.
Leo Rowsome did the whole UP quartet, and that sounded awesome. Granted, he did make the sets his family played and could get the them as close intune to each other as he wanted. But still, the recordings of him and Leon playing and harmonizing are fantastic. It makes me want to experiment and try that sort of thing. The whole harmonization between the two chanters creates a whole new side to the music, it’s quite exciting. At the SF tionol, we had a whole room full of pipers (6-7) amongst other musicians for a session and it sounded just fine. And I’m positive all the chanters weren’t all in perfect tune with each other. I’m personally all for the whole multi-UP shindigs.
Multiple pipers aren’t really an issue in my experience, and the harmonizing effect when different players go with different settings of the same tune can be really cool. As stated before
Something else to consider is that if you have your pipes going at A=446 then you are really only 1.36 cents sharp of “concert” pitch A=440. (the logarhithmic nature of acoustic pitch aside) That’s pretty darned close. Enough that you wouldn’t get a nasty warble between the two. More like a nice chorus effect instead. This difference here being small stuff and that which you should not sweat.
Sounds like he’s got the disease of piping too!!! 
As stated before