Category: Bagpipe Lessons

The Practice Chanter

Parts of the practice chanter

Being able to identify the parts of the Practice Chanter is a requirement for SCQF Level 2
  1. It is either made of plastic or wood. Chanters made by the better manufacturers have the maker’s name engraved on the lower half of the chanter between the joint and the high G hole. Only well made chanters will be in tune with itself.
  2. To check a chanter, look in the bores. The inside should be smooth. Also, try playing a reed, and check the pitch of each note to the others. Some reeds may not tune in a certain chanter, but most reeds should.
  3. When buying a chanter, there is no point in buying a model with ivory and silver finishings as that only adds to the cost without improving the sound.
  4. There are half sized chanters on the market. There is no point in buying them. A person quickly becomes used to stretching their fingers to cover the holes of the full sized chanter. Besides, if the learner gets used to the half size chanter, then he or she has to relearn hole spacing for the bagpipe chanter.
PracticeChanter.jpg

Parts

PracticeChanterParts.jpg

The Mouthpiece is where the lips wrap around and through which air is blown. On most (plastic) practice chanters the mouthpiece is molded onto the top section. On wooden chanters, the mouthpiece is generally plastic and the top section wood.

The top section connects to the bottom section on the pin. It covers the reed completely, and air flows from the mouthpiece through the top section to and through the reed.

PracticeChanterMouthpiece.jpg
Reed

The blades of the reed is what vibrates causing the sound. The blades sit in the staple and the staple and blades are wrapped with hemp.

Bottom Section

The bottom section contains the finger holes. It also contains the pin (joint) on which the top section is attached.

The Sole is ornamental, on the bottom of the chanter. It helps prevents wooden chanters from splitting. It also raises the chanter up off of the table (when resting on a table) which allows sound to escape.

PracticeChanterBaseSole.jpg

Practice Chanter Maintenance

Being able to maintain your Practice Chanter is a requirement for SCQF Level 3

Also see Care and Cleaning of your practice chanter

Weakening or Strengthening the Practice Chanter Reed

To make the reed harder to blow, we curve the blades (pinch the sides).

To make the reed easier to blow we flatten the blades (pinch the middle top of the blades).

Making the Practice Chanter Reed sharper or flatter

To make a note sharper, you need to shorten the tube. One way to do this is to push the reed in slightly.

To make a note flatter, you need to lengthen the tube. One way to do this is to pull the reed out slightly.

Care, Cleaning and Storage of the practice chanter

Care, Cleaning and Storage of the Practice Chanter

Practice chanters are sensitive to extreme temperatures.

  • Don’t leave them in your vehicle during the hottest days of the summer or coldest days of the winter.
    • Heat will melt the plastic chanters and reeds.
    • Cold will make both plastic and wood chanters brittle allowing them to break easily.

Materials Needed

  • Practice Chanter
  • Hemp
  • Parafin Wax
  • Scissors or knife (cutting hemp)
  • Cloth/pull through

Disassembling the practice chanter

Make sure you always separate joints by grabbing onto the top and bottom of the joint immediately beside the joint before you twist. DO NOT leave a great space between your hands. The stress of the twisting motion can cause the chanter (or other part like a drone) to break, especially if it is wood.

Hemping the joint

On the newer practice chanters that are plastic, they usually have rubber o-rings for sealing the joint so hemping isn’t normally required. However, on wooden chanters it is required. Due to the air pressure required for the reed to sound, we need to ensure that the joint between the top section and the bottom section is as airtight as possible. This is accomplished by wrapping the pin with hemp. The hemp is coated with paraffin or bees wax to help make the hemp water resistent so that it doesn’t rot. The hemp also helps prevent the hemp from spinning on the pin.

To hemp the joint:

Form a loop with the hemp. The top of the loop is at one end of the pin and the free end of the loop is at the other. At the free end, start wrapping the pin with hemp by filling in the grooves (practice chanters that need to be hemped will have grooves). Once you have wrapped to the loop end, you insert the running end of the hemp through the loop, and then pull it under the wrappings by pulling on the free end of the hemp.

Continue adding layers of hemp as required such that the top section will fit snugly on the bottom section.

NOTE: If you haven’t used pre-waxed hemp, you will need to wax each layer of hemp as you have finished the layer.

Removing Moisture from the practice chanter

Wipe down the outside of the chanter.

Wipe down the seat and around the pin (inner part of joint).

Insert your cloth up into the upper section of the chanter to absorb moisture that may be in the chanter.

You may also need to hold the bottom section upside down so that moisture drains from the chanter.

Removing Moisture from the reed

Wipe down the reed.

If there is moisture in the reed (it makes a gurgling sound when played) you can blow from the staple end of the reed and this will blow most of the moisture out of the reed.

Cleaning the practice chanter

Don’t use harsh chemicals on your chanter. Usually wiping the chanter down swill suffice, but if that isn’t sufficient, use luke warm water with a very mild soap.

Assembling the practice chanter

Carefully line up the base section and the top section. Ensuring that you don’t scrape the reed on the inside of the top section, insert the base into the top so that the pin on the base is snugly in the top.

Storing the practice chanter

Store your practice chanter in a cool dry location. I usually store my chanter in my pipe case.

How We Learn

When experiencing something, our mind puts the experience, knowledge, etc into short term memory. If we process something three times, the memory becomes stronger. The next time we sleep, those memories are then moved into long term memory.

The more often we process something, the stronger the memory becomes. If we process something similar but slightly different, we now have 2 memories competing against each other. To reduce this internal competition and to strengthen the true memory we want, we need to compare what we learned versus what we wanted to learn. In terms of music, this means comparing what we played versus what we were trying to play.

We will take the bigger picture parts of piping, and break them down into smaller chunks so that we can focus on small items. This focus will allow us to process it enough times to get the knowledge or technique into long term memory.

To enable our best learning, we need to have Ownership, Enjoyment of the activity, and intrinsic Motivation. If we don’t have these 3 things, we aren’t going to put the effort in to master what we are learning.

What is Sound

Sound is vibrations that are within the range of human hearing. When an object vibrates, it displaces a medium like air. The moving air then moves parts of your ear which is translated into an auditory signal in your brain.

On the bagpipes, sound is created by the air moving past the lips of the reed. This causes the lips to vibrate, leading to the sound produced.

If an object vibrates at one frequency it has what is called a pure tone. When the object vibrates at multiple frequencies at the same time and there is a mathmatical relationship between the frequencies, you have a rich tone. If the ratios between frequencies is not whole numbers, you end up with noise.

The pitch of the sound

The pitch is determined by the frequency or frequencies of the vibrating object. Since the speed of sound is constant in a medium, the frequency is strictly dependent on the wavelength.

frequency = speed / wavelength

In an instrument, the wavelength is determined by the length of the tube that the vibrating air is passing through. The longer the tube, the smaller the frequency (less vibrations per second) and therefore the lower the pitch of the sound. Another example of this though not sound producing is a pendulum (think clock). The longer the pendulum arm, the slower the swing. A guitar string is the same; the shorter the string, the higher the frequency.

Further details as it applies to bagpipes can be found at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Acoustic_resonance .

While the pipe chanter is a cone, the open tube is close enough for both the chanter and the drones. The theory around False Tones also applies, as you can get harmonics out of the drones if the tuning aligns just right.

On the chanter, we alter the length of the tube by covering or uncovering the holes with our fingers. The more fingers that are down sequentially, the longer the tube and therefore the longer the wavelength resulting in a lower frequency.

The Tone of the sound

A musical note is more than just the base frequency – there are overtones that make up the tone of the note. The first (strongest) harmonic is a perfect octave (2x the frequency) of the main frequency. The next overtone is 3/2 the frequency. The exact mix of the overtones is what changes the tone (overall sound i.e. tonal quality) of the note from warm to cold. When all of the overtones are added together you end up with the waveform of the sound.

Computer generated waveforms are square, but non square ones can be simulated by adding a whole bunch of really short square ones at appropriately different strengths to make the round/triangle/ waveforms desired.

Whats new in August 2019

After a busy July working around the house, I’ve had a few hours to go through the website and update many of the pages. There was some major cleanup needed as I had migrated my website hosting from one provider to another.

I have also started putting my individual lesson material online here as products you can purchase. This is still in the experimental stage, but my initial experiments were working, so I will continue.

My pipe band the Airdrie Scots Pipes and Drums has performed a few parades and we have 2 left on our schedule. We have started working on the tunes we will play for our Robbie Burns night in January or February (date TBD). New members always welcome!

My wife and I are attending the Airdrie Farmer’s Market this summer. We will be at the next 7 (August and most of September) on Wednesdays. I have my Fraser Highland Shoppe and Marcia has Marcia Fraser’s Custom Travel as vendors. I also take my pipes along and play a tune from time to time throughout the day. Stop in and say Hi!

Spring is in the air. Time for Spring Cleaning (Bagpipe Maintenance)

As Spring is now trying it’s best to be here, it is a good time to do bagpipe maintenance so that we can enjoy piping outdoors. I am looking at holding the class on either April 25th, 26th, May 16th or May 17th.  If on a Saturday, the class would be from 1 until 4.  … Continue reading “Spring is in the air. Time for Spring Cleaning (Bagpipe Maintenance)”

            As Spring is now trying it's best to be here, it is a good time to do bagpipe maintenance so that we can enjoy piping outdoors.

I am looking at holding the class on either April 25th, 26th, May 16th or May 17th.  If on a Saturday, the class would be from 1 until 4.  If on the Sunday, it would be from noon until 2:30 (band practice will start a bit late).  The cost would be $50 a participant.

Topics I intend to cover:
*Checking the bag for air tightness.
*Bag seasoning
*blowstick valves
*hemping of joints
*Adjusting Chanter reeds
*Adjusting drone reeds
*Tuning the chanter to itself
*retying a stock (as required)
*discuss water traps/cannisters

If you are interested in attending the class, please contact me at bagpipes@ksfraser.com indicating your order of preference for the dates listed above.

Time for a Spring Cleaning on the pipes

Now that the birds are chirping outside, Spring is on its way.  And that means its time for a spring cleaning, bagpipe style. It is now time to do that maintenance that has been put off. Check all hemp and replace any that is not 100% Check the air tightness of the bag.  Season as … Continue reading “Time for a Spring Cleaning on the pipes”

            Now that the birds are chirping outside, Spring is on its way.  And that means its time for a spring cleaning, bagpipe style.

It is now time to do that maintenance that has been put off.

  1. Check all hemp and replace any that is not 100%
  2. Check the air tightness of the bag.  Season as required.  Replace the bag if there are holes.
  3. Check the air efficiency of the reeds
  4. Break in a new pipe chanter reed if you don’t have a spare ready to go (I don’t, and my current one is at the end of its life.  I’m going to break in 2).
  5. Make sure all parts are in good order.  Reglue on the metal fittings that have fallen off, take some silvo to the tarnished ones.
  6. Run some bore-oil through the bores.
  7. Check the blowstick valve.

Stay tuned for a date when I will hold a drop-in class on bagpipe maintenance!

The interview with the Echo has been published

While some of the details are slightly incorrect, it is a very nice article.  For example, I’ve been teaching for 20 years, not that I am 20 years old.  I started teaching seriously 2 years ago.  Dad took over a militia unit, not a military base, great grandparents came from Scotland…  But otherwise 🙂   … Continue reading “The interview with the Echo has been published”

            While some of the details are slightly incorrect, it is a very nice article.  For example, I've been teaching for 20 years, not that I am 20 years old.  I started teaching seriously 2 years ago.  Dad took over a militia unit, not a military base, great grandparents came from Scotland...  But otherwise :)

 

http://www.airdrieecho.com/2015/01/27/bagpiper-passes-on-music-knowledge

The Crazy things students get up to when unsupervised

Well OK, maybe not so crazy.  C performed this past weekend, leading the procession.  At one time, he was joined in a jam session by 2 other pipers.

Well OK, maybe not so crazy.  C performed this past weekend, leading the procession.  At one time, he was joined in a jam session by 2 other pipers.

Blowing a set of pipes for the first time

It is an inevitability.  Take piping lessons long enough, and you end up having to blow a set of pipes.  This week, it was Janet’s turn.  Well done!

It is an inevitability.  Take piping lessons long enough, and you end up having to blow a set of pipes.  This week, it was Janet’s turn.  Well done!

Janet blowing a set of pipes for the first time
Janet blowing a set of pipes for the first time