I have been thinking about playing some tunes with other people in public, but I’ve still only a practice set. How acceptable is this amongst those who know. I’ve heard a few tunes with chanter and with other backup instruments and they do get the pipes across rather nicely. I just don’t know if this is done much.
Happy Easter!
T
Hm, I’m not sure I understand your concern. If you’re talking about sessions, people play practice sets all the time. And for ensemble playing, pipers may not even touch the drones and regs. If you’re just concerned about appearances, to heck with that. Play what you’ve got, and make some nice music. 
Beware, if you should someday get drones, you would forever after feel naked without them.
Playing a practice set well is IMO much more acceptable than having a full set and never using the drones and regs.
Don’t worry, just play!
Besides, 9 1/2 out of 10 people around you won’t know what the pipes are anyways.
MTGuru’s response was excellent!
Thanks for those responses. I think that it was sort of what I was hoping to hear. When I get my chanter playing under more control I’ll move on to getting drones, but meanwhile I have some friends who would like to hear me play with them every now and then. That is, until I actually do. Then they might change their minds. Ha.
Personally I think having drones (and regulators) is the whole point of playing the pipes. When you play a chanter without the continuous push and pull of the harmonies the drones provide and the blending of tonalities, that whole point is gone. You may as well play a flute or whistle.
True enough, but at present, he HAS no drones; and often enough it is recommended a beginner should start off with a practice set (and with good reason, too).
Besides, a very prominent piper has been known for decades to play only the chanter… most of the time.
I take the point, but that’s a very piper-centric view, no? From the listener’s (and perhaps other players’) perspective, the chanter by itself has a lovely and distinctive voice on par with that of any other melody instrument. There’s no point lost. And the context here is session or ensemble playing. Especially when you have harmony instruments present, I’ve seen pipers make a real hash and clash of things with overbearing regs and drones. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, and sometimes less is more.
Besides, I doubt you’re really telling Hobbit to confine himself to the kitchen until he can afford more than a practice set, no?
Besides, I doubt you’re really telling Hobbit to confine himself to the kitchen until he can afford more than a practice set, no?
No, I don’t think there was anything proscriptive in what I said. I said how I feel about it.
Nothing wrong with confining yourself to the kitchen though. If we’d count the needs of the many, I’d probably argue pipers learn the fiddle or the flute and play to blend and use the pipes in no set up larger than a trio. But that’s probably another discussion altogether.
I understand your point MrGumby. I do wish I had the rest of the set, but have to attempt to try and conquer what I have first and playing publicly with others I think would assist me in that by intensifying my learning curve ( I occasionally play with some real good musicians for charity events). That said, I’ll have to admit that I have a hearing impairment and some frequencies ( especially wifes) are lacking. When listening to irish groups with a piper I rarely hear the drones and regulators over the other instruments. I do when the player is solo. I hear the chanter quite well in either case. I don’t know if its because of that that I find the sound of the chanter only is an acceptable sound in such group situations. My original pondering was is this acceptable from a pipers point of view, ie dare I appear in public without anything more than a chanter and do other pipers do this?
YES!!
Do it, and do it proudly.
Heck, in a session of more than four players or so, half the time I’m not sure anyone hears the drones anyway. And at the piping weekends I’ve been to it seems like most of the pipers never turn theirs on except when doing solo stuff, to the point where I wonder if I’m violating some unwritten rule of etiquette when I do. (Been meaning to ask about that for a while, in fact.)
Anyway, in my US travels I’ve seen mostly chanter playing in sessions.
That said … when you do get the rest of the rig I bet you’ll find yourself longing to play alone more and more so you can wallow in the sheer amazingness of it all without all those annoying fiddles and flutes and plectrum thingies. 
Not etiquette, but simple pragmatics: if there are multiple pipers with drones not quite in tune with each other, it can be a bit… annoying.
That said, I usually try to follow the same rule as for rhythmic or harmonic accompaniment: 1 at a time. I do tend to get annoyed with pipers who try to join in with their own drones, after I’ve started a set, if they aren’t in tune with mine. But sometimes it’s fine. And it depends on who you’re with.
While I can agree with you to a certain degree, I also (as a beginner piper, mind you) feel that there is quite a bit of learning to walk before you can learn to run, in a way, and obviously one can’t be expected to start out with a full set, or even a half set to begin with, not only for monetary reasons, but also for the simple reason that the chanter in itself is a beast to master (if it can truly be mastered at all, my experience hitherto points to a resounding “F**K NO!”). And a competently played chanter alone is a wholly different story than playing the flute or the whistle to me, as the techniques are completely different, and the means of articulating a tune is also a completely different thing. To my ears.
Not to mention the fact that a mediocre player, playing the whistle on a chanter, as might be the case (that is, without the chanter specific elements of playing, articulating, ornamentation of tunes and so forth), with less focus spent on the chanter and more on getting the drones and maybe regs, will still be no more than a glorified whistle player, albeit one with a substancially deeper debt than an ordinary whistle player (depending on the severity of the whistlers WhOA, of course), while a player very proficient in chanter playing without regs or drones may still not be a “complete” piper, but a good deal more so than the whistle player with the chanter.
That’s my two late night cents, anyhow. Post will be revised tomorrow to iron out spelling errors, semantic mishaps and general screwups that will inevitably come from spending too much time and the sauna with too good a supply of beer.
There’s nothing like writing a short academic essay as a forum post after too much sauna and beer… 
I’m also on the opinion that less is generally more when playing with others. Having D drones on in an e minor tune will surely ruin it for everyone anyway. It all depends on the tunes and what the others are playing. Sometimes it’s nice to start with only the chanter and switch on the drones when moving into another tune that’s in an appropriate key, create some drive and dynamics to the whole like that. If there’s a good musician playing tasteful chords on the guitar or some other instrument more suited to playing chords, I much rather stop playing the regs and even drones altogether, and give room to him/her, than bang away creating as many sounds at the same time as I can. Or, I simplify my own accompaniment to only playing a back-kick on one reg key at a time (d, a or g usually). It all depends on the situation… enjoyment is the only thing that matters.. Playing only the chanter is perfectly OK.
Theres a computer somewhere in Clare with a worn out and broken delete button.
RORY
Thanks, Nico! I hope I haven’t gallumphed all over you. I usually try to be sensitive to the “owner” of the set, but I also get carried away sometimes (in case you hadn’t noticed 
).
As for the whole drone discussion that followed my question … well, sure I hope someone wouldn’t be clueless enough to use the drones on tunes where they don’t work. Even I’m not that deaf. 