Well, they played alot better yesterday and today. I was getting up into the second octave, although it’s still not as easy as I think it should be. Any sort of ornamentation in the upper octave and it flips back down to the lower octave. Maybe the reed’s just breaking in. You should be able to hit the second octave while playing off the knee, right?
I listened to an unnamed recording of a piper playing “The Spanish Cloak” today, and wow, get a load of the high B in the second part of that song. Gives you shivers. My favorite piping song by far. That guy’s reed is priceless as far as I’m concerned. It’s also the only recording that I actually REALLY liked the regulators - they sounded really deep and round. Almost like french hornish. Does this sound familiar to anyone? - I’d really like to know who the piper was - I’d buy his cd. It was just solo pipes (drones & regs).
I sent an email to Pat Sky. We’ll see what he has to say about my reed, too.
Gay McKeon plays it on the npu tape vol3 and shows how to use regs with that tune.
Apart from that one i only heard a recording of it by Finbar Furey, but that has his brother on whistle on it as well i think..
Whoa, Joey. I think you just revealed part of the misunderstanding. You asked: “You should be able to hit the second octave while playing off the knee, right?”.
Nope. Sorry, but the whole point of closing off the chanter by putting it down on your knee and covering all the holes is to build up the extra pressure required to get up into the upper octave. Once you start playing up there you should be okay (as long as you maintain the pressure), but every time you play a note in the lower octave, you will have to stop the chanter for a split second and build up the pressure again to get back up into the second octave.
Once you get good at doing this, you can work on popping the E, F# and G in the upper octave. This still requires closing off the chanter completely for a split second to build up the pressure before playing the notes.
If your chanter/reed set-up is good you should be able to hit the A to high D in the second octave by venting them with the F# on the lower hand. Realistically, though, you seldom need to go above the B, but you may need to keep practising the high notes if you want to roll the B.
Yeah, so playing on the knee really helps with that second octave… Yikes, these are good things to know!
I did some recording of my humble one-month progress so you can all hear another one of Davy’s chanters. Does anyone have a lead on where I can post it to link to?
Normally, if you have your own web page, you could post your sound clip there, and then just put a link to your web page here in the forum. The Chiff & Fipple folks are very thoughtful, though, and have provided a Clips ‘n’ Snips page on this site for people like you who would like a place for posting in easy reach of like-minded people. Check it out: http://tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/index.htm#postyours
Hi Joey,
I also use hotmail (the free version ) and don’t have a problem sending an mp3. I record as a WAV using Cool edit and then use Music Match Jukebox to convert the WAV to mp3 pulling it down to about 50kbs so that even quite long recordings are under the size limit. Music Match Jukebox is also free (you can see a pattern forming here ) If you have any questions mail me, I’m not an expert but maybe we can figure something out.
Hi,
I lowered the the sampling rate to about 50kbs, that was for a pipe tune I sent in that had 3 parts, each repeated. I’ve send other stuff where I was able to send it sampled at 96kbs (my normal setting for ripping to mp3) I didn’t know I could convert WAV to Mp3 using Cool Edit, you live and learn
I just got a note from Syntrillium. Cool Edit has been bought up by Adobe as part of their digital audio/video editing suite. I guess that shows how good the software is, but the price will probably go through the roof once its in Adobe’s hands.
Joey, sound quality drops the lower the sampling rate. That’s why so many people poop on the mp3 format. In order to get the file size down to something easily ftp’d you have to drop the rate down to something very grainy sounding. Of course, mp3 has the capacity to match cda (44.1K samples) or wav (up to 96K samples) files, but then the size of the file goes way up too.
ahhh, 'always wanted to use that face.
) and don’t have a problem sending an mp3. I record as a WAV using Cool edit and then use Music Match Jukebox to convert the WAV to mp3 pulling it down to about 50kbs so that even quite long recordings are under the size limit. Music Match Jukebox is also free (you can see a pattern forming here 
) If you have any questions mail me, I’m not an expert but maybe we can figure something out.