At the session yesterday, I met up with a visiting piper from Canberra who had a set of pipes (can’t remember by whom) that was fitted with a chanter reed made from willow. The owner said that it was made by Pat Lyons.
Needless to say I had to have a play, and although the intonation was a bit out, the tone was surprisingly pleasant…quiet and very smooth. Perhaps a good reed for playing at home when making noise is a problem. Very easy to play as well…second octave no problem and both Ds were good and steady. The reed head seemed to be only slightly shorter than a normal reed, the width was about 12mm, though the staple was very short…perhaps a third shorter than usual (I didn’t have anything to measure it with so sorry I’m a it vague here).
Anyway, I was quite taken with it. Perhaps Pat can tell us some more about it.
Hi Phil. BTW, welcome to the forum. See if you can isolate the species of Willow that works for reeds. I think I read somewhere there are hundreds of species of Willow in Australia. Some are considered a nuisance just like cane (arundo donax) in California. Here’s a link for some in Tasmania.
I’ll just have to get on to Pat and ask him where he got his willow from…I had no idea there were so many varieties here in Oz. If asked I would have hazarded a guess that it was what we think of as the “Weeping Willow” that clogs up our waterways…but from the link you kindly provided they seem to come in many types.
Then again being an Australian, Pat could have used a cricket bat!
Yes, I think so. Making reeds is torture enough without trying to make them out of Tortured Willow!
I sent off an e-mail to Pat Lyons last night and he got back to me pretty quickly. Here’s what he had to say on the subject.
I was mucking around with elder chanter reeds, a few months before, and ran out of elder; so I tried other woods that looked about the same softness. Dunno what sort of willow it was, just local willow growing along the Molonglo. I picked up old branches that had fallen and sat around on the ground. A bit of spalting in them.
I didn’t pay too much attention to the dimensions, i.e., I didn’t note them. I think I was using a Mackenzie reed design. It’s probably a Mackenzie staple, about 52 mm (?) tube, not rolled. I was quite pleased with the tone. I guess reed makers should try the normal dimensions they use and see how elder/willow/etc. works and adjust it from there. There’s a fair bit of chiselling and sanding to convert a bit of a stick into a slip, but it’s only woodwork.
When I get some more elder, in winter, I’ll get back into them for chanter reeds. In the meantime, I’ll go and glean some more willow. I’ve tried hydrangea, too, but the stuff I had was a bit soft. Didn’t like the bridle!
Cheers, P.
PS Years ago I tried making a reed out of eucalypt. It was a tad hard. Looked good though.
So there you have it…Molonglo riverside willow…whatever the hell that is. I guess anyone who want to try will just have to use whatever species is to hand and see what happens. I’m surprised that Pat said the staple was 52mm, as that’s fairly normal and in fact the length I use for my stick…either the owner had lobbed a bit off, or it was pushed way down into the stick, or I’m going blind, 'cos it didn’t look that long to me.
One trick I have learned from all this though (from a kind private e-mail) explains why my elder chanter reeds were never much chop, even though the same elder made great drone reeds. For drone’s one uses a little twig which has had the pith burned or drilled out; for chanter reeds though you don’t use it like cane (ie a 24mm diameter twig, say) but rather you use a much bigger branch and cleave it… so it’s sort of “quarter sawn” into little planks…much as Benedict Koehler does for his spruce reeds (see his article in a past issue of "The Piper’s Review’).
You can make double reeds out of all sorts of woods, it seems. Elder being used by so many is probably just happenstance - you go to the trees for the drone reed stock, might as well grab some stuff for the double reeds. Perhaps like cane? Why go to cane for reeds in the beginning, anyway? We all know it makes these instruments “sound correct,” but 5000 years ago that was rather up in the air, anyway. Maybe it was simply that the material was easier to work with than shaving down wood all day long. And the first single reed guys were most likely playing something like the laudenas [sp?] or hornpipe, too. What’s the earliest known use of the double reed, anyway?
There’s the story about famous Northumbrian piper Tom Clough making reeds out of wooden matchboxs. I make tenor drone reeds out of branches of Norway maple, which is on streets worldwide. And bigleaf maple sometimes has good bass drone reeds - softer wood, they could quiet down a noisy bass.
