You’ve all heard the story many times–some days for no discernable reason whatsoever, your pipes will be rendered near unplayable and the best course of action is to just chuck them in the closet for a day or two and they will miraculously return to normal.
I’ve never quite believed it myself. Those who have read most of my posts know that the humid Japanese summer dealt my chanter reed many a cruel blow, although it always remained playable even though I sometimes had to resort to large quantities of tape, rushes, etc. Then the other day, they were just hellish–the octaves were horribly out of tune. I futzed around with the reed for ages and every time I managed to bring one note in line, something else would be off. Frustrated, I put them away for two days and then got them out yesterday, anticipating further problems. To my utter shock and amazement, everything was spot on. My hard D had never sounded better (ie–just right. Not too hard and not too soft). Every note on the chanter lined up just perfect with the drones. And the drones themselves! I’ve never heard them sound so rich. It was like playing a huge vat of cream…When I played “Rolling in the Ryegrass”, I could have sworn there was an A drone going. It was an utterly dreamlike piping experience. If they keep sounding this good, I may have to abandon all other commitments and spend every waking moment of the day playing. Hell, what am I doing here blethering away on the forum?! I’m off to play for a few hours…or maybe days…or weeks.
I have had a wierd experience myself, not so similar to yours Sporting, but one that I thought was worth sharing.. I noticed one day, this past summer, my chanter sounded, well, extra musical, if that is a fair discription.. The next day everything would be in tune, but it just didn’t have the same musical quality it had the day before.. This day to day change really had me bewildered, no major changes in humidity, no adjustments to my reed, I couldn’t ,for the life of me, figure out was was different, why I was getting a different musical quality, with no obvious changes…I finally figured it out one day when, I got a little warm after I had been playing for about 20 mins… anyone solved this riddle yet???
Well, after I had worked up a “hot”, I got up and turned on my 52" ceiling fan on low speed, and “Voila”… added just the right amount of reverb to make the difference…
Mike
Welcome to the occasional nightmare that is bagpipes…
That was a great story someone related about Liam O’Flynn’s method for adjusting a reed - to stare at it for a few seconds and put it back in!
Or the joke about the weather - “If you don’t like the weather in Texas [New England] [Ohio] [Montana] just wait 5 minutes.”
Ok.., here’s my “weird” story.
Going somewhere by public transport, arriving, assembling the pipes, sit down, sound the chanter, NOTHING!
ehr.., nothing?
No sound, nothing!
I immediately switched to panic mode and removed the reedcap to have a look.
When i took it off my chanter reed fell in my lap.
Put it back in, back in bussines!
I’m now petitioning for better shocks on Dutch busses..
Too busy fecking with reeds at the bench (m’lud), got to gig, no chanter. My regulator playing has improved tho’…
Making new reed, made crap one, went to gig, forgot to take out crap reed, chronic Back D, flat 2nd 8ve. Tho’ the resorative power of beer helps, certainly improved the back D from where I was sitting.
Went to session, bloke sat on my drones while I was playing them, 12 piece set of drones… interesting… but maybe not weird…
Ah, yes. You like playing with the leslie effect? I spent 20 minutes one day trying to tune the warble out of my drones. I thought sure I was going to have to make more drone reeds until I finally turned my ceiling fan off.
All the above is absolutely true, especially the ceiling fan stuff! But I do have days where the chanter sounds clear and bright right from the get-go, and then proceeds to turn muddy and uncontrolable as time passes. No amount of fiddling with the bridle will please it. At these moments, I find the most important thing to do is to carefully put the set away before I put the damned thing through the wall in frustration.
Relax, Pipeman. UPs play well 90% of the time, but be aware there will be days when it will take an extra effort to get them working, and some days when you should carefully put them away.
I can imagine this is like an axe hanging over the heads of professional UP players. At times like these, it is a good idea to have a second instrument to turn to. I have several times seen Paddy Moloney start out on UPs, but quickly change over to whistle, and stay with the whistle for the rest of the night. I myself am still working on fiddle - a much easier instrument to play.
Ah yes…Flashback to about five years ago…Almost exactly five years ago in fact. I’m at a session in Glasgow playing with some very, very good musicians. One of them happened to play bodhran with a very well-known Scottish trad band. Anyway, this bodhran f**ker–er, player–was extremely drunk and decided that the best route from his chair back up to the bar was to trample right through the bass drone of my set of smallpipes.
By sheer luck, I was planning on visiting Hamish Moore two days later anyway and he was able to fix them right up. I have, however, had an irrational hatred of bodhran players ever since…
The UPs are still sounding sinfully gorgeous, by the way. No ceiling fan reverb necessary.
There’s a local farmer with a tractor whose engine sounds just sharp of Bb, which is rather annoying when you’re practicing your GHBs, wondering why the hell they’ve suddenly gone out of tune…and they seem to be getting louder…
