Naturally, when you are playing the pipes, you are using a bellows to fill the bag instead of your lungs. Do people ever sing while playing the pipes, or use their mouths for other activities (smoking, etc.)? And is this acceptable? I heard a recording of a guy playing a half set, while using a D harmonica to simulate reg playing.
Thoughts? Comments? Etc.?
Have any of yous pipers tried anything like this?
You’re serious, aren’t you!?
I know of one fellow who sings a few when he plays. Very “minstrelly” in its effect. Normally he stops the chanter while singing, plays the regs where it works, and then plays the chanter in strategic spots to reprise the tune.
As for smoking, I don’t recommend it in public. Sooner or later the smoke inundates my eyes as the ciggy shortens, I get all grimacey and watery-eyed (attractive, I’m sure) and then I have to quit mid-tune to get the thing unstuck out of my face, not being so dextrous as to keep playing while I do the necessary thing. And it really makes me look like a bum (in the Merkin sense of the word) when I ash my pipes.
Seamus Ennis recorded “The Frost is all over”. He sings over his drones and then plays chanter (and regs?).
Also, here’s a photo of Ennis in Miltown taken from uilleannobsession.com (which took it from the WCSS website):
The only reason I really took up the pipes was so I could play something when my mouth is full.
Doc
Well, I ask if this is acceptable in the sence of pipe etiquette (SP? probably) I find it really rude when whilest in the middle of a whistle tune, a listener will start asking me questions. I can’t answer in anything less than grunts, or arm flails, or primative dance steps. I’m new to the pipes, so I am curious. I’ve found out a lot of interesting things on these forums. So I guess it is kosher to do this stuff. Any things to be avoided (besides the already mentioned smoking?) How often do people multi- instrumentalize with the pipes?
Also, anyone made any ‘useful’ madifications to their instruments? I’ve seen people with spare hemp wrapped around the H in their bass drone for example. I have a bottle opener on the tailpiece of my tenor banjo (just in case.)
I don’t know about singing with uilleann pipes but there is a tradition of it on Scottish smallpipes in the Borders area. Since the revival of the instrument it is gaining popularity for Scots-Gaelic song.
Looks it’s going a few inches over from the bum (British sense of the word).
Yeah, that’s the worst, isn’t it? You’re doing a gig, playing away, and some fat b*stard or weird old lady comes up to you and starts yammering away at you.
A friend of mine owns Fred Morrison’s old set of Nigel Richard Border pipes (as seen in the film “Rob Roy”)—the bag is covered with cigarette burns.
Aside from all of the other dangers of smoking that you already know about, one downside of playing & smoking is that it would eventually blacken the reeds.
Singing whilst playing the pipes was very common in the Border piping tradition. Not sure how common it was in Irish piping.
As for sticking anything else in yer mouth while you’re playing, well, that’s just perverse!
Harmonicas?! Yeccchhhhh…
You guys are SO easy. 
I like to smoke a pipe during some airs. I guess it is a warning signal to the people who know me. “He is reaching for his peterson, better get ready…” Why not make airs a complete sensory experience?
I am not yet that coordinated on bellows pipes to play a tune and speak so I run into that whenever I busk. I physically cannot talk and while playing.
Wow, cinema and music history all in one. 
The story goes that Calum Piobaire liked the reelpipes because he could smoke his pipe while playing for dances.
Me neither. I’ve tried, and all I could manage was a strangled yowl. An inarticulate baboon playing an esoteric contraption. Boy, was that embarrassing.
I saw the Chieftains in concert once and between songs Paddy Moloney jokingly talked about wanting a piano-like device he could play with his feet whilst piping.
On a side note…Carlos Nunez was on tour with them and the show was PHENOMENAL!
One or more of the McPeakes used to both play and sing. I used to have a recording of him doing that Irish somg that starts “Or-o..” something or other.
I sing and play all the time on my shuttles and have just started trying it on the pastorals. The shuttles are in A which is a better key for me. I know there is a similar tradition among Northumberlandererers.. ers..they have contests for piping singers.
Because of the info I have turned up regarding Robert Bremner’s book on playing the guittar, I double the melody line with the chanter as I sing rather than cutting in and out and doing hamonies etc. Bremner specifically recommends doubling the melody when singing with the guittar, so I am beginning to think this might have been the historical way to go.
Has set me to thinking about the notion of session players all doing the melody (and of course earlier dance players) and avoiding harmony. It may have some very deep roots.
Robert Mouland
www.wireharp.com
Óró, sé do bheatha 'bhaile. Folktrax has a CD of Francie I and II singing/playing, very nice record. THE SINGING PIPER it’s called.
what on earth is that?!
