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Ornamentation, and the limitations of open fingering

 
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MatthewVanitas
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PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2011 7:36 pm    Post subject: Ornamentation, and the limitations of open fingering Reply with quote

Coming to the sackpipa from a tinwhistle background, and being that the instrument is very forgiving of fingering, I've been tending to use a fully-open fingering on the instrument. That is, as I go up the scale, every raised finger remains raised, so on the high E all my fingers are off the holes with just my pinkies bracing the chanter.

From reading other topics here, it appears that a lot of the ornamentation that some pipers use depends on closed fingering, as they use the down fingers beneath the sounding note to affect said note's tone, warble it, etc.

Am I greatly short-changing myself by using mainly open fingering? I've tried out playing with semi-closed fingering, such as closing my lower hand when playing upper-hand notes, but perhaps since it's new to me I don't know much ornamentation where such really helps. And further it seems that I lose some of the tone richness (due to reducing the heard harmonics?) when I close off the lower hand.

Any suggestions or observations, or ideas on how to incorporate more ornamentation into my playing? I think currently I mainly just ornament by flicking to one note below or one note above the main note I'm sounding, but I reckon that might be limiting me to the more primitive of ornaments.
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Olle
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PostPosted: Tue May 24, 2011 10:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ornamentation is not the big problem here. Hearing the beat is.

If you play for dancing, at least, it is important to get the beat message through and that is difficult on a continuously sounding instrument. The most effective way is to play short notes (staccato) in selected places, and that is very difficult if you play with open fingering, since you have to go directly down to low E so simulate the pause.

This is what turned my fingering around from the open fingering I started with to the fairly closed fingering I use now. But it was a gradual change, not something I made a conscious decision to change.
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Yuri
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PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2011 6:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Generally what you say is quite true. I know that in other traditions where large fingerholes are used, the same sort of thing happens. (for example the Hungarian piping. A few play open, but most closed) However, as someone playing only open fingering, because of cross-fingring needs, I can say that it is possible with time to develop a rather nifty technique, where you basically can imitate (momentarily) the closed holes by slapping all fingers, at the same time, when a pause is needed. The open fingering also allows for a whole range of other type ornamentation, not possible with closed fingering.
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PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2011 6:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
it is possible with time to develop a rather nifty technique, where you basically can imitate (momentarily) the closed holes by slapping all fingers, at the same time, when a pause is needed


Yes, but that is quite difficult. As you say, it takes some time mastering that.

Quote:
The open fingering also allows for a whole range of other type ornamentation, not possible with closed fingering.


I don't understand. Could you examplify? I don't see how keeping your fingers off the chanter can possible help you to do anything.
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2011 5:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You can do trills, for example. That is momentarily slapping just one note higher or lower. You can do , erm, can't really put a name to these, like momentarily opening a note somewhere above the played note, then immediately closing it, and also closing the note next down to the played note, and immediately opening it agan. All this takes a split second, you are not conscious of the separate notes. Then there is the holding a note and playing vibrato on a fingerhole far further down the chanter. This will not create a vibrato, as the pitch will not change. The sound quality will however. It's like singing a note, and changing the volume of your mouth, without altering the pitch. Then ther is the running up to the opening (for example) note. Say you play the three-hole note, and start it by covering all, ten quickly opening the lower ones one after te other, very quickly.
Naturally, there are more. Also, most of these will not suit all styles, you need to adapt to what you play, and use only appropriate embellishments.

Sorry about the italics, can't be bothered re-posting.
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Olle
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2011 7:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

All these are possible, and indeed routine techniques, also with closed fingering.
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2011 2:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would say, start with open fingerings and use closed when you need it. You would prob. be using closed fingering after a while.

You can still use ornamentations that is more far away than just one note up or down with open fingering. As always, practice makes perfect. Smile=
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Yuri
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PostPosted: Fri May 27, 2011 5:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I know there are possibilities with closed fingering, too, but they are not quite the same. I actually do (very occasionally) play the Hungarian pipes, with closed fingering, so it's not completely theoretical.
And in any case, the pipes I play simply do not allow closed fingering, which is why I have to stick to the open one. Chromaticism is an absolute must for the music I play, and cross-fingering is te only viable option.
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Black Rose



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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Olle Gällmo wrote:
All these are possible, and indeed routine techniques, also with closed fingering.


With what little playing I've done so far, I find the uilleann approach to be an almost exact match for the Swedish chanter. In fact, the basic normally-closed fingering charts found in the Willie Clancy tutor/collection by Pat Sky and the Heather Clarke tutor, the nearly universal "closed" scale of the UP works wonderfully as the normal fingering system on sackpipa. Unlike any other pipes I know however, except what I now know about sackpipa, the uillean piper only uses the basic fingering system as a standard starting place, and depending upon what run or ornamentation, particularly staccato popping or triplets, the system may open or even close more phrase to phrase. In any case, all the cuts, rolls, and other Irish ornamentation is available on sackpipa at will from closed position, which is considerably more constant and diverse ornamentation than would be considered traditional in Sweden. So what Olle says about closing up the fingering was immediately obvious to me when I first picked up the chanter.

What also became immediately obvious, is that like the Zetland pipes I engineered a while back, the chanter has some inherently cute playing characteristics and to ignore them and impose some other ornaments from some other pipes upon the chanter actually loses something more often than it gains. For example, the annoying "bipping" from staccato D's and E's and whatnot at first hearing sounded to me like what a Highland piper would call a "crossing noise," or a mistaken closing of the chanter between high notes due to uncoordination. What I learned on the uillean pipes is, if you keep the chanter bell closed on your knee, instead of a "crossing noise," you get staccato and nobody knows you're uncoordinated. What I learned on sackpipa, is that if you play crossing noises often enough and put them in the right place in the rhythm, it's called a "style," and has an irritatingly cheerful charm to it.

I don't know how old that faked-staccato using the low E as a drone to break up the melody style is, but the sackpipa chanter is pretty mundane without it. Other piping traditions use it of course, the Highland pipes use mostly the high A, the thinnest note rather than the bell note as a drone to pop out phantom staccato-sounding melodies, again, opposite to the sackpipa. But the Swedish chanter really sounds sweet and chirpy when played in that style like very few others. So anything you can do to facilitate a more closed general fingering plan helps. And relearning fingering isn't all that hard when it comes down to it.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 8:21 pm    Post subject: Cuts, taps etc Reply with quote

Yuri wrote:
You can do trills, for example. That is momentarily slapping just one note higher or lower. You can do , erm, can't really put a name to these, like momentarily opening a note somewhere above the played note, then immediately closing it, and also closing the note next down to the played note, and immediately opening it agan. All this takes a split second, you are not conscious of the separate notes. Then there is the holding a note and playing vibrato on a fingerhole far further down the chanter. This will not create a vibrato, as the pitch will not change. The sound quality will however. It's like singing a note, and changing the volume of your mouth, without altering the pitch. Then ther is the running up to the opening (for example) note. Say you play the three-hole note, and start it by covering all, ten quickly opening the lower ones one after te other, very quickly.
Naturally, there are more. Also, most of these will not suit all styles, you need to adapt to what you play, and use only appropriate embellishments.

Sorry about the italics, can't be bothered re-posting.


I just re-read what you're attempting to describe. And keep in mind I'm really only addressing the application of this lecture to sackpipa technique, as I can't speak to the merits of how other-world chanters all function. But I am fairly well familiar with the sackpipa now, the Highland and uilleann pipes, the Lerwick Zetlands, similar to sackpipa only set up for Highland fingering and scale, scottish smallpipes, Northumberland smallpipes, Scottish border/reel pipes and a few others along similar lines.

The first ornament is a cut, or gracenote above the melody note, followed by a tap, or "slap" if you're whacking a whole handful of open fingers in Highland terms, below the melody note. Together that's an Irish "roll." On Highland chanters you can make the roll hard by cutting with a high G, and slapping all the way to the bell and burping out a low G, or you can soften the roll by tipping with only the C finger. You also have doublings, or two gracenotes above the note cutting it into two melody notes, and double-cut rolls, adding two cuts and a tap, making a triplet out of your melody note. But you must know however, that all of these embellishments and more are available in closed position, the modern standard position on uilleann pipes. Standard closed gives you the option of a stacatto cut or roll, or an open cut or roll simply by faking a not open, usually a finger or two moving to allow tapping down to an open note rather than a closed bell and staccato.

There are also triplings, the Scots just call these "GDE gracenotes" because they're only played from C down to low G and produce a loud bell-accented triplet. The uilleann pipers call this "cranning," and call both doublings and triplings cranning all the same. They also call it cranning whatever note the doubling or tripling is played on, because mostly they use a long or short roll instead of Scottish-style doublings and GDE cuts. The short roll is a double beat, the long roll is a triplet beat in Irish style. The Scottish call a double-cut roll a "Hornpipe shake" or "one of those thingies," because they stole it recently and never really connected it with the whole Irish style and system of embellishments until the last couple of decades where they now just steal wholesale from uilleann technique.

Most of the trilling, http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/texta/Appoggiatura.html and other "appoggiatura" I hear in sackpipa and other European piping is essentially baroque orchestral technique. All of this you could easily play on Northumberland pipes, which use the most closed system of any pipes in the universe, stopped bell, one finger, one note.

The problem you seem to be having, as do many Highland converts to Irish pipes or I assume sackpipa, is this fixed notion you have of an exact, disciplined fingering system. This is irrelevant to musical playing. You have to get beyond that mentality because it limits you to what you are "supposed" to be playing, rather than producing good music. There is no more rigid a piping discipline in this regard than the Highland school, and even the late, great Captain John A MacLellan, when asked by an awe-struck pupil in one of his summer schools how he was playing some particular upperhand work so incredibly fast, he explained: It's simple. I'm cheating. He further explained that the phrase went by so quickly it was inaudible anyway. When asked, in Highland fashion, if the judges ever called him on that sort of thing, Highland-style judges being notorious for visually checking to insure that perfect fingering is being maintained, his advice was to always face the judge square-on when you get to that part, because from the dead-front, you can't really see what fingers are up or down, or when they move in any case.

Anyway, making better music isn't really "cheating" I suppose is the lesson I learned. Facilitate a phrase or embellishment as cleanly as possible, but more importantly, as musically as possible first. There are some chanters, like Scottish border or reel pipes, where many of them are extremely sensitive to "correct" fingering, else the E, or fifth, a very important note, and perhaps a few others, will drop insanely flat. But the uilleann chanter, and certainly the sackpipa chanter is extremely accomodating to bad fingering, almost nothing is lost even if you play "wrong" fingering, so a little "cheating" is audibly invisible.

Oh well. I'm still trying to keep that extra thumb hole sealed. Goodness. That turns out to be a major habit to learn, or perhaps a major habit of keeping the right thumb relaxed (Highland) or wandering around for keys (uilleann) to unlearn. So who am I to ramble on about proper fingering...?
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Olle
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 9:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Adding to this excellent reponse (thanks Royce!), I would like to point out two differences between the Scottish and the Swedish bagpipe traditions, which both affect our respective fingerings, and how strict (or not) we are about it.

1. The Scottish tradition has been unbroken for centuries. I'm sure, it had its ups and downs too, but there is a long unbroken lineage. The Swedish tradition is revived. There are no MacDonald's or MacLelland's in our history to go to for advice, no literature written before the revival to consult. We could find enough information to revive the instrument per se, but everything about playing styles, including fingering, was lost. We had to reinvent those things.

2. The Scottish pipes are often played in large piping bands. Keeping order in a band of, say, a dozen pipers, each one armed with a weapon loud enough to kill an innocent observer from a hundred paces, requires discipline. Seriously, playing that many together requires strict rules on how to play your tunes, including embellishments, or you will have utter chaos. The Swedish piper, on the other hand, were loners, maybe played together with a fiddler sometime, but rarely with other pipers. I may be wrong, but I don't think there is any historical record of even two Swedish pipers playing together! (before the revival, that is) Who cares how you finger your chanter then?
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

With Swedish bagpipes (Säckpipa) you can change between open, semi open and closed fingering in the same tunes. So in short, use what you think is usefull for you and the tunes.
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Aaron K. Holt
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 3:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

One limiting factor to keep in mind is the size of the holes. If I were to play either of my Faust chanters *fully* closed, a number of notes will not play in tune, specifically C, A, and G-natural (Bb, G and F-nat on a G chanter). Playing completely open doesn't really make a difference, but fully closed does. Leif Eriksson's chanters have larger holes and can be played with "Northumbrian" fingering, I think Seth's pipes can too but Alban uses much smaller tone-holes so it will have an effect on your tuning.
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Anders Jackson
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Olle has had some discussions with him about that, way back.

Faust did that modification on his own, because that was what he had been tough in Germany.

Faust is without any doubt a very skilled instrument maker, but that modification change how you could use your instrument when you played, so he went back to traditional size. I agree with Olle that this is an important feature on swedish bagpipes.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 9:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

From a physics point of view the size of the holes matters: as soon as the hole is larger than the bore diameter it (theoretically! But I haven't yet found any bagpipe that knows about physics or cares about it Embarassed ), it cuts of the air tube and makes the holes below irrelevant. With such holes you can do whatever you want with the fingers below, but, on the other hand, no crossfingering tricks like vibrato or strange semitones are possible any more. For this you need smaller holes as they are to be found in Alban's pipes.
Also the possibility to play in G on an E/A chanter (which Alban demonstrated to me last weekend) makes use of the smaller holes as the little finger is used there to "retune" the b into a "purer" third.
On the other hand, "monster holes" can be more easily retuned to practically everything by using beeswax. Ralf Gehler reports that about a 15th century Hümmelchen that hat a neutral third with large fingerhole which could probably be retuned to major/minor by adding beeswax at the bottom or the top of the hole, respectively. But of course that is (however educated) speculation.
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tomas.Sauer wrote:
With such holes you can do whatever you want with the fingers below, but, on the other hand, no crossfingering tricks like vibrato or strange semitones are possible any more.


Well, the are still possible to get a kind of vibrato, as the quality of the tone changes, but not the tuning, when you close and open the lower fingerings.

And as all previous säckpipor, that we know about, had larger fingering holes and that make a difference, I think it are a definding property of the Säckpipa.

I would/could argue that pipes with smaler finger holes are something else than a Säckpipa. Not that there are anything wrong with that.
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anders, also Leif Eriksson's pipes have much smaller finger holes than the historical instruments. Where's the limit when you would not call it Swedish anymore, and what do you call the instruments made by Faust?

(no offence taken, I'm just curious where you draw the line)
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 2:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Olle Gällmo wrote:
Anders, also Leif Eriksson's pipes have much smaller finger holes than the historical instruments. Where's the limit when you would not call it Swedish anymore, and what do you call the instruments made by Faust?

(no offence taken, I'm just curious where you draw the line)


When open or closed fingering starts to matter. And, I have bigger fingering holes in my pipes than original Leif Erikssons pipes. Yes, I got an original Eriksson set.

(added fingering above)
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think if anyone were to draw a line they would have to use a very fat marker to do it. Even if only based on visual comparison, there are a number of differences between Leif's säckpipa and the museum examples, all of which stem largely from the fact that he based his pipes on several different historical sets -- all while trying to make a playable instrument at the same time.

An small amount of variance between makers should also be expected with hand-made instruments. I wonder if the diameter of the tone-holes on historical sets vary from chanter to chanter, and by how much.

To me a Swedish bagpipe is identifiable by the reed, straight bore, and (most importantly) the sound. I would argue that changing any one of these three things would result in a different instrument. Other factors would seem to be minor details to me.
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Anders Jackson
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aaron K. Holt wrote:
I think if anyone were to draw a line they would have to use a very fat marker to do it. Even if only based on visual comparison, there are a number of differences between Leif's säckpipa and the museum examples, all of which stem largely from the fact that he based his pipes on several different historical sets -- all while trying to make a playable instrument at the same time.

Sorry for my bad english. You should learn Swedish. Smile

Yes, you are right about that we don't exactly know what the instuments sounded like. As no one living has heard a playable set of swedish pipes, we can't actually know how they sounded or even how they was tuned. But I guess that as long as the instruments playing together (fiddle and pipes) was tuned together. Or if singel, intonated right, I guess they just played. I have played a hot day, comming from a cold old stone building, and the tuning went up about three notes. Sounded good though, as long as I didn't played with other more stable instruments like a fiddle. Smile

But what I thought about in my post was the finger holes diameter. They should not be too narrow so fingerings matter to the tuning.
Quote:
An small amount of variance between makers should also be expected with hand-made instruments. I wonder if the diameter of the tone-holes on historical sets vary from chanter to chanter, and by how much.

I don't know this question. I do know that when they reconstructed the pipes, they adjusted the instrument so it should be playable with others and that it should tune with most old tunes. Playable was the goal, not a good replica. If so, you have to remove the adjustable drone pipes and just have a fixed lenght. I wouldn't want that.
Quote:
To me a Swedish bagpipe is identifiable by the reed, straight bore, and (most importantly) the sound. I would argue that changing any one of these three things would result in a different instrument. Other factors would seem to be minor details to me.

Reed, check.
Straight bore, check.
Sound (what do you mean here, actually?), check.
Finger hole diameter not to narrow, check.

The last thing has an influance on the sound and also more important forces one set of fingering on to you when you play. And that limits what you actually can do with the instrument.
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Olle Gällmo wrote:
... what do you call the instruments made by Faust?

(no offence taken, I'm just curious where you draw the line)


I call them brilliant.

But also note that the uilleann piping tradition is some several hundred and more years old and until its "revival" in the late 1960's, no two instruments were in any practical sense playable together or with any other instrument. No chanter fingered the same, no chanter was in the same key or used a reed compatible with any other chanter. Chanters were originally noted by length, not pitch, and called a "flat" chanter or a "high" chanter, ranging from B or Bb to C, and then in modern times up to C# and then the now "standard" concert D. Even today, the "standard" concert D chanter varies widely in key layout, finger spacing, and still uses a proprietary reed in each maker's design that is essentially incompatible with any other maker's design.

Have a look at the "World's Champions" in the Highland band piping world. They use the cheapest, most standardized reeds in the piping universe. They sort through boxes of hundreds of them to hand-pick the best of the best. Unlike any other piping tradition, these players easily buy precision engineered and manufactured chanters matched by a single maker and likewise cheaply buy matched reeds designed to play in them. Even so, they spend many thousands of dollars to outfit their bands in the finest chanters from the best makers, hundreds of dollars monthly to reed them with precision reeds developed to bring the best pitch and tone out of them, and then whittle the hell out of both reeds and chanters anyway, to get the band tuned up.

And still, no two chanter makers agree on base pitch, and not two Pipe Majors agree on what the best reed is for any given chanter, so even two bands playing the same chanters may not tune because their reeds disagree on base pitch. And two bands playing the same reeds and chanters will still almost never agree on where to set those reeds in those identical chanters and thus will still never tune together spontaneously.

Everyone for decades has boasted of the great sound of the Sinclair chanter, but there isn't a single band playing them that hasn't first rehersal started carving their holes until they are long, oval and nearly connect together. And then they add yards of black electrical tape subsequently and constantly to maintain them in proper tuning. Soloists aren't much better.

The truth is, Alban Faust can make his holes any size he wants to make them, and if playing any particular note closed or semi-closed is too flat, I'll just auger out my A-hole. And if it's too sharp I'll just tuck a little wax into the top of my A-hole. (Pun of course, is intended. I know it's lame, but it's always a hit at band practice when the other guys ask me what I'm doing...)

The beauty of the sackpipa in particular is that I will decide what fingering I'm going to use on it, and I'll decide how each and every note should be tuned. In fact, I will decide which notes will be not tuned "properly" when I use "cheater" fingering and I will decide what fingering is "cheating" and what fingering is "correct." I will fudge all that adjustment around and I will get my pipes playing my way in my style. Sackpipa are the most forgiving and adaptable pipes in the world for these reasons and more.

All you need is a small rat-tailed file with a handle end small enough to pack and smooth wax or a small screwdriver to do the same, and you can be in complete control of your own fingering system and tuning scheme. Any piper who doesn't carry a tool kit containing some pure beeswax and a small round file in his pipe box should take up accordion instead: Push a button. Get a note. The same note every time, rain or shine. That's the sort of thinking that killed bagpipes all over the world.

Pipes are not a musical instrument so much as a do-it-yourself project. Every chanter or reed comes to you in the form of a kit, to be finished by yourself. The belief that any set of pipes from any part of the world comes to you like a piano or even a guitar, where all you have to do is pick it up and play, and now and then turn a tuning pin or something, is the stuff of fantasy. The notion that you are going to take your pipes into the "shop" to have the "maker" keep them working, adjusted, and tuned for you is bordering on childish. Being a piper means being self-contained. That means making or at least finishing reeds and hacking into chanters.

Just wax, file, or undercut from the top of the hole until it tunes. It's actually an advantage to whittle your holes a bit sharp. Then you can put the pitch of every note at any given moment, exactly where you want by dropping it with wax or tape. (I avoided any further puns there I think...)

As the Highland pipers say: Tune it or die.


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