An interesting talk with a young piper yesterday in Carlisle prompted me to write a little about drone tuning. Our conversation centered on the types of drones one should use and for which melodies. He was interested in using the drone configuration of A, d’, a’’ (Bass A, tenor D, alto A) with his ‘A’ Scottish small pipes. This drone configuration is not unusual in the European style but it is with Scottish small pipes. When I first heard about it I was skeptical, there would be a clash of sounds, but it was not as bad as what I thought as I listened to him play.
The problem is the amount of melodies he could play, not many would fit the harmonic arrangement. The Highland tunes would be more willing to blend in with the drones especially the one which were routed in the D note, but the Northumbrian and Border melodies that used the C# (3rd note of the A scale) a lot clashed with the D drone. He thought it sounded ok, but I begged to differ.
When I started to play the Northumbrian small pipes in G I looked for melodies that played with the A drones (a’, a’’) there was not many melodies either, the root note of the melody being the A note on the chanter. With the drone playing the root note it harmonized with the rest of the scale. Not a problem.
My young friend was interested in a small pipe that “fitted all situations”, I was too, many years ago and in some respects the addition of owning chanters reflect this still. But perhaps this has been tried before, in the past, and the best that was achieved by the tradition was a drone configuration of A, a’, a’; giving a strong root note for different types of modes/scales to be explored. For me it was interesting to see a “work in progress” but I wonder if it will be followed up in a few years time… I hope so.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Drones, Bellows and Reeds
I have not turned any drones for a couple of months so yesterday morning I had to spend most of my time trying to remember how to do it, or in what order I should do it. Also, within those months I have changed my making process and now I do things differently. What is the point (besides documentation) in writing anything down, to remember the process, when it is changing all the time?
With the new drill I bought the boring and drilling went very well, I did 2 sections of wood which will become a tenor drone.
Later that day I got given some wood which will become bellow cheeks. A change of design has been growing in my mind for several weeks now, to make the design of the bellows more airtight. My present system is an adaptation of the traditional method, but I have this idea and it will not go away! What I need to do is try it out, and this wood will be ideal for that. The process is not quicker but I believe it will be a cleaner and more secure/airtight that the traditional method.
I bought screws for the bellows cheeks, not the ones I was looking for, but they will do for the traditional bellows. This is the problem of making pipes in 2 countries (Spain and the UK), there is not the same product in both countries, not the same measurements and not the same price, and availability is not the same either. These screws will do for now until I can source better ones.
Later on that afternoon, I met a piper and we went to the park in Carlisle, the meeting was an interesting one but for the point of this blog I noticed that the reed I had made was not so bad. It was louder than what I had thought and the tone was sweeter. There were some problems with it (too sharp in the chanter) but from the point of view of making I was pleased.
With the new drill I bought the boring and drilling went very well, I did 2 sections of wood which will become a tenor drone.
Later that day I got given some wood which will become bellow cheeks. A change of design has been growing in my mind for several weeks now, to make the design of the bellows more airtight. My present system is an adaptation of the traditional method, but I have this idea and it will not go away! What I need to do is try it out, and this wood will be ideal for that. The process is not quicker but I believe it will be a cleaner and more secure/airtight that the traditional method.
I bought screws for the bellows cheeks, not the ones I was looking for, but they will do for the traditional bellows. This is the problem of making pipes in 2 countries (Spain and the UK), there is not the same product in both countries, not the same measurements and not the same price, and availability is not the same either. These screws will do for now until I can source better ones.
Later on that afternoon, I met a piper and we went to the park in Carlisle, the meeting was an interesting one but for the point of this blog I noticed that the reed I had made was not so bad. It was louder than what I had thought and the tone was sweeter. There were some problems with it (too sharp in the chanter) but from the point of view of making I was pleased.
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