I think Kevin asks a difficult but important question.
Let me give you an example . . . Like many, I started out on highland pipes. Over in highland-land, it’s all about drones. It was for me, anyway, since most of the competing I did was in a band (which issued the chanters) so you didn’t really have to think about chanters. What made a good set of pipes ended up being drones you could easily reed, which would then “lock” in tune and have a nice ring to them. Aesthetics were kind of secondary, and I’m still partial to military spec drones (“full ivory” mounts with no metal).
Then I moved into bellows pipes, smallpipes and borders. Borders were a real challenge. Sheesh, they’re SO testy, a little variation in pressure and the pitch is all over. I have a set made by “THE” border pipe maker, and was constantly having trouble with the chanter and occasionally with the drones. Certain notes would skirl or squeal or make a horrible noise if my arm pressure made the slightest hiccup, and the drones were acutely sensitive to bag pressure. I called the maker several times and ended up with a new reed, and with a couple of lectures as to how difficult the border pipes are to play.
Somewhere in here I started playing uilleann pipes. Now there’s a bellows-blown pipe! I still like the Scottish stuff, but it’s fun to play an instrument as versatile as the uilleanns when you come from the Scottish tradition. But what’s this? A pipe whose chanter you’ve got to overblow into the second octave? But the drones remain relatively stable through that . . . now if the uilleann drones can sit there while we jump octaves, what’s keeping that from happening with the “exceedingly difficult” border pipes?
So, new reeds for the border drones, and eventually, a new chanter from another maker. And what happened? While not as insensitive to pressure as a set of uilleanns, here’s a set of pipes that’s actually playable. Don’t get me wrong; I practiced and practiced to get to where my bag pressure was ABSOLUTELY ROCK STABLE so I could play the borders, and I felt like I’d accomplished something . . . but was it all necessary . . .
I guess my eventual advancement to the uilleanns taught me some important things about bagpipe design and about what’s possible in a bellows-blown pipe. And maybe it just illustrates my ignorance, but I also tell the story to show that it’s difficult to say what makes a good set of pipes when your expectations are unreasonable. I thought that my first set of border pipes were the pinnacle of pipemaking because of the source. And, I worked really hard (and learned important skills, certainly) to get to where I could play those pipes really well, all the time hearing from several sources that the style of pipes is really difficult. Then I played another species of pipe, and found that its design got rid of some of those problems. So I readjusted my idea of “what makes a good set of pipes,” and then became much happier both with myself and with the pipes.
So, part of the question is expectation . . . what’s reasonable?
I hope that made sense!
Stuart
