Tuesday, May 25, 2010

What is a piper? Part 1

That you would think would be a very easy question to answer. Well it is and it isn't. At the very least, a piper is someone who, owns a set of bagpipes, a kilt and all of the accessories that go with the, Travel to Scotland tour posters. Oh, and they should know how to play the pipes! That last item you would think is a no brainer. I am sorry to say that, that is point of this article. Simply because someone has all of the gear, including a full number one dress, uniform feather bonnet and all, and they know a handful of marches does not really make them a piper. Okay, it does, but it does not make them a musician and that’s really my point. This country is lousy with people who are like what I described above and have no musical sense about them. They have no rhythm, haven’t a clue what is meant by expression and think pointing is something a hunting dog does.

Lower grade bands are for the most part to blame for this glut of bad musicians playing at being pipers. They spend too little time teaching new people how to play correctly and too much time trying to build the ranks of bands that as a whole sound just bad.

It should take a full year of chanter work for the average student to become proficient enough at the basics before they are ever introduced to a full set of pipes. They need to understand the history of the instrument, the history of the music and the traditions that make piping what it is.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Pipe Pitch

I began piping in the mid eighties when the pitch of the bagpipe was around 466 (Bb) to 468, just slightly over Bb and had a nice full rich sound. Now bands are pitching around 480 to 483 and have a thin quality to the tone. It now takes twice the number of pipers to attain any real strong "band" sound ! Back in the day a grade one band could go out with fifteen pipers and sound huge! Now they field twenty plus and still don't have the richness the bands had when I started.

The worst thing we had to deal with, with the lower pitches pipes was a "F" that would want to go dead flat. If you tried to blow it in, the High A would go too sharp. However a dental rubberband (gumband) would fix this nicely. Now, with the higher pitch chanters, the whole top hand gets lost.

What's the fix? Will the piping world ever return to the rich full tones of the Bb chanter, who knows. We can only hope.

Hello world!

Okay, I have just jumped both feet into the Twenty-First Century! I have a BLOG. Oh, God shoot me now. Seriously, I am doing this for two reasons. The first is that in my "new job" I need, as the in house graphic designer/web guy, to build a blog for the company. So here I am, learning yet another form of social marketing. Oh, I have a My Space that I never visit nor do I update it. I have a Facebook, that is actually kinda fun. I don't have several thousand "Friends", crap; I don't even know a thousand people!

The second reason I now have a BLOG is to talk about piping, bag piping. I will, when the mood hits me, put down my thoughts on piping in general, the trends in piping, the good the bad and yes even the ugly of piping. I will post things that I have seen and done while piping or watching others pipe.

I will also talk about teaching piping as I do that as well. Will from time to time talk about products I use or have tried and rate them.

I will also allow reader comments, I will as long as they don't get tiresome.

Okay, that's it foir now. Stay tuned for more. Like I said, when ther mood hits me.