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Is the "neutral third" used in Swedish piping?

 
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MatthewVanitas
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Joined: 01 Mar 2010
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:57 pm    Post subject: Is the "neutral third" used in Swedish piping? Reply with quote

I was working on my sackpipa on an arrangement of Gul-e Sangam, a Persian pop-tune from the time of the Shah (YouTube clip of the original), and found myself thinking about quarter-tones and other such foreign music theory bits.

I had heard that some Swedish music involves quarter-tones, and that Ale Möller is known for having a bozouki with extra frets for hitting them. It's my understanding that Swedish music also employs the note known as a "neutral third", that is, a note between a major and minor third. On a D/G pipe that'd be a note between F and F#.

Is such a note ever used in Swedish piping? Would you just take some tape and slightly cover the F# hole to bring it down, but not so far as to bring it down to F?
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Olle
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Piper Anders Norudde often tunes his bagpipe to play neutral thirds. He does so by simply moving the rubber ring or bees-wax for the corresponding hole. (Before I saw Seth Hamon's pipes in Minneapolis I had never seen anyone use tape - it's too awkward to move)

Personally I very rarely retune my instruments that way. To me - this is a personal opinion of course - neutral thirds do not blend well with the drone. Neutral thirds can be beautiful when used right on the fiddle or Härjedalspipa, for example, but if you have a drone there which gives you a reference to compare it to, it just sounds "sour" to me. Having said that though, I do have special keys for neutral thirds on my Kontrabasharpa, which is also a drone-instrument.

The tune "Glad Sigfrid" on my MySpace page is a good example of what I tend to do instead. Anders Norudde plays the same tune on his CD "Kan själv!", using neutral thirds. I instead alternate between the minor and major in various places. I'm not consistent in exactly how I do that (when I chose the major or minor).

If you listen to Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson who made a famous record in the 1960s with Swedish trad music in a jazz setting, you will hear him play the minor and major simultaneously in the places where a fiddler or singer probably would play a neutral third. I think that is a very interesting way to solve the "problem" of neutral thirds on a piano.
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Black Rose



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Location: Minneapolis Minnesota USA

PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 6:28 pm    Post subject: Source for thinwalled, skinny Swedish/Euro bike innertubes Reply with quote

Tuning the Swedish chanter with little rubber bands is a very low-tech but ingenious way of making the thing very adaptable to tunes. However, this is clearly done by way of some very thin cycle tubes from very small diameter tires. (Tyres...) Here in the states the thickness of these inner tubes is roughly a thousand times that of those that came on my Faust chanter--for which I consequently have no immediate replacement or backups. Likewise, the diameter of American bike tires is approximately the size of my head compared to those Faust-supplied tubes. We are big and obnoxious and everything we make or do is huge. We're Americans. That's our forte. Having admitted this, is there any way I might order one of these helpful little Eurozone inner tubes over the miracle of the world-wide web?
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Olle
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm sure you can find them in the U.S. They are not regular tyre rings, though. They are for racing bikes.

A substitute which I'm using more often than bicycle tyre rings nowadays, is to cut off the little finger from regular dish washing gloves.
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Aaron K. Holt
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Olle is right, you don't want to throw the tube from a mountain bike on you chanter, you should look for racing bike inner tubes. You can find them anywhere here in the U.S.

I bought one from Bike Line years ago and it's exactly the same diameter and thickness as the rings that Alban originally shipped when he made my bagpipe (those rings have long since dry-rotted, hence the need for replacements).
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Anders Jackson
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Don't forget to ask for the colour of the tubes, before you buy it! You don't want to end up with pink or baby blue. Laughing












(never heard of any other colour than black Wink )
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texasbagpiper
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 8:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I went to the local Bicycle Inc shop which has everything you ever wanted for a bike, but of their hundreds of tubes they don't have one narrow enough to use on a chanter. I've looked but have yet to find a source, although I would love to find one. Tape may not be the best for wooden chanters, but it slides around easily on the poly chanters, as long as you use plastic 3m tape, electric tape doesn't work as well. Tape is a learned behavior from my many years in the Highland bagpiping world. Seth
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Anders Jackson
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 1:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

texasbagpiper wrote:
I went to the local Bicycle Inc shop which has everything you ever wanted for a bike, but of their hundreds of tubes they don't have one narrow enough to use on a chanter. I've looked but have yet to find a source, although I would love to find one. Tape may not be the best for wooden chanters, but it slides around easily on the poly chanters, as long as you use plastic 3m tape, electric tape doesn't work as well. Tape is a learned behavior from my many years in the Highland bagpiping world. Seth


Try a rubber or latex glove used when cleaning. Cut of a finger, and remove it's top and then put the remainings on the pipe.
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texasbagpiper
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 11:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aaron K. Holt wrote:
Olle is right, you don't want to throw the tube from a mountain bike on you chanter, you should look for racing bike inner tubes. You can find them anywhere here in the U.S.

I bought one from Bike Line years ago and it's exactly the same diameter and thickness as the rings that Alban originally shipped when he made my bagpipe (those rings have long since dry-rotted, hence the need for replacements).


Aaron, do you know what the size of the tube was? I've been looking for a proper tube to use as tuning bands and I haven't found one in years of looking. We have a few large racing bike stores, Bicycle's Inc for one, and they don't have anything small enough. Here is the link with the sizes.

http://bikeline.com/product/standard-tubeschrader-valve-557-1.htm
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Aaron K. Holt
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I believe it was 16mm, or 5/8"...something like that. I haven't thought about it in a while, so I'll see what info I can find.
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