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MatthewVanitas Senior User
Joined: 01 Mar 2010 Posts: 108
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Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:57 pm Post subject: Is the "neutral third" used in Swedish piping? |
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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 Site Admin
Joined: 21 Oct 2006 Posts: 435 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
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Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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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. _________________ Info on Swedish bagpipes at http://olle.gallmo.se/sackpipa
More about me at http://olle.gallmo.se |
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Black Rose
Joined: 10 Apr 2011 Posts: 44 Location: Minneapolis Minnesota USA
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Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 6:28 pm Post subject: Source for thinwalled, skinny Swedish/Euro bike innertubes |
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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? _________________ Sigs are a waste of bandwidth |
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Olle Site Admin
Joined: 21 Oct 2006 Posts: 435 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
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Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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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. _________________ Info on Swedish bagpipes at http://olle.gallmo.se/sackpipa
More about me at http://olle.gallmo.se |
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Aaron K. Holt Senior User
Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Posts: 291 Location: Pennsylvania
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Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 3:22 am Post subject: |
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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 |
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Anders Jackson Senior User
Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 142 Location: Dalarna, Sweden
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Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:31 am Post subject: |
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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.
(never heard of any other colour than black ) _________________ No MSN or ICQ. Only Jabber at <xmpp:anders.jackson@gmail.com>
Änd sorri får maj misspellingz, inglish is nått maj först language. |
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texasbagpiper Senior User
Joined: 24 Oct 2006 Posts: 352 Location: Texas
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Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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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 Senior User
Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 142 Location: Dalarna, Sweden
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Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 1:58 am Post subject: |
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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. _________________ No MSN or ICQ. Only Jabber at <xmpp:anders.jackson@gmail.com>
Änd sorri får maj misspellingz, inglish is nått maj först language. |
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texasbagpiper Senior User
Joined: 24 Oct 2006 Posts: 352 Location: Texas
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Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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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 Senior User
Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Posts: 291 Location: Pennsylvania
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Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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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. _________________ Aaron |
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