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.