“Just nine notes. How difficult can it be?”

Here are some of the items I have for learning this very difficult instrument. Or for at least looking the part!

• Practice Chanters (PC)
• Electronic Chanter
• Shuttle Pipes
• Great Highland Bagpipe (GHB; wood)
• The Kilt
• Earplugs
• Smallpipes
• Plastic Highland Bagpipes
• Drone Reeds

Practice Chanters (PC)

Bagpipe chanters, from L to R: Short Naill practice chanter (note homemade cork sole), long Naill practice chanter, highland bagpipe chanter (the real thing!), and Techno-Chanter (with headset, bought separately).
Handy hand: Joann’s.

PCs come in two basic sizes (short and long) and various materials (typically plastic or wood). My first PC was a short Delrin (plastic) Naill PC, which I bought from the British Shop tent at the New Hampshire Highland Games (Loon Mountain, NH) in September 1997. The holes in this PC are countersunk to make it seem more like the chanter of a Great Highland Bagpipe (GHB). The price was right ($50), though in hindsight a long PC would have been a smarter purchase.

At the time, while considering this PC, I talked to a customer, Gail, who assured me that there was a bagpipe instructor who taught in the city near where I lived. Gail even knew what times were available. I bought the Naill PC, the music book Beginning the Bagpipe by Pipe Major Sandy Jones, and the following week, called Brian Yates. Got him on the first call, and started bagpipe lessons the following week. (And that’s when I found out that Gail was a student of Brian’s.)

The short Naill didn’t come with a sole, which made playing it troublesome if it was resting on my leg. My neighbor made a sole for it out of cork (thank you, Don); friction keeps the sole on the end of the short Naill. This has helped immensely.

A year later, again at the Highland Games at Loon Mountain, Joann (my “spousal equivalent”) bought me a belated Chanukkah gift: a long wooden Naill PC. Unlike the short Naill, the long Naill has a sole of imitation ivory. The long, like the short Naill, has a Delrin blowpipe. The holes in the long PC are also countersunk, but they’re not like a GHB chanter either. Also the C and B hole seem unusually close. It took me months before I was comfortable playing it.

I keep the short Naill in the car. I can usually practice a bunch of D Throws, doublings, and (attempt some) crunluaths while waiting for the light to change. Either that or practice an entire part of “Lochanside,” “The High Road to Linton,” “The Battle of Sherrifmuir,” or whatever else I’m learning at the time.

Electronic Chanter

The Techno-Chanter is definitely going-off-the-deep-end stuff. Made by Anders Fagerstrom in Stockholm, Sweden, the Techno-Chanter is sold in several bagpipe stores throughout the U.S. The Techno-Chanter measures 9” long by 5/8” diameter, runs on three 1.5V watch/camera batteries, and cost $250. I chose the transparent pipe casing (versus the solid black pipe) because the technoweebie in me likes looking at the electronic circuitry inside. The Techno-Chanter has screw heads to replicate the holes in a conventional PC. There’s nothing mechanical about the Techno-Chanter; your fingers on the screw heads close an electrical circuit, which generates the notes. It’s absolutely unforgiving in terms of crossing noises. Plus, because the Techno-Chanter requires earphones, you can play it anywhere without waking the dead. (It does attract attention and start conversations on planes and trains!)

(Here’s more about why I like the techno-chanter.)

Shuttle Pipes

Shuttle pipes are a no-maintenance bagpipe—a kinder, gentler bagpipe, if you will. It has a plastic chanter, Gortex bag, and three drones in the key of A. The drones—plastic reeds—are in a wooden cylinder; each drone is tuned by a shuttle that slides along the cylinder. Two drones are tuned to A—one octave below, two octaves below—and the third drone is tuned to E (a fifth).

Walsh probably made my shuttle pipes during the winter, when the air was dry. I got them in mid-June—on the first day of essentially 30 days of rainy, or at least humid, weather in New Hampshire. Opening the wooden cylinder to get at the three drone reeds was impossible; the wood had expanded with the humidity. Getting to the reeds was important because the shuttle pipes were hopelessly out of tune. (Yes, shuttle pipes are tuned before they leave Walsh’s shop. This set was out of tune.) Refrigerating the shuttle pipes, plus huge amounts of elbow grease, finally got the cylinder open—about two months after I got the shuttle pipes. Soon after, it was playable. (Up to that point, I was having second thoughts about this whole thing.)

Great Highland Bagpipes (GHB)

My bagpipes were supposed to arrive by the end of January, two-and-a-half months after ordering them. They arrived March 3, 1999. (But who’s counting, right?) Three days later, late in the evening after a day-long Master Class, Brian showed me how to retie the stocks so I could replace G&M’s standard leather bag with an L&M bag. Needless to say, I was apprehensive. Did I write “apprehensive”? How about filled with dread. I just got my bagpipes, I hardly knew how to strike the drones, and now we were taking apart this hardly used $1,100 instrument and replacing a critical part!

Piece o’ cake. Three months later, I retied the blowpipe to reorient it. Didn’t give it a second thought.

In December 2004, I had these bagpipes modified to improve tuning and sound quality. More information is here.

The Kilt

A deal is a deal.

There are dozens upon dozens of tartans. Different mills can have different shades of the same colors, same tartans. Supposedly a kilt exists that is white with a light-blue stripe along the bottom. However, I’m not Greek. Nor am I Scottish. I didn’t bother looking for a tartan with light-blue 6-pointed stars.

The tartan I chose for my kilt is Ancient (Hunting) MacIntyre. It is the tartan that Brian, my bagpipe teacher, often wears. Brian chose that tartan because it’s the tartan worn by his teacher, Hamilton MacIntyre Workman (1933-1990), of the 1st Battalion, Highland Light Infantry. (Click for some history about the MacIntyre tartan.)

Now about that deal I made with Joann. The fact is, I don’t wear my kilt every time I practice the GHB. It takes too long to change clothes. The kilt is heavy. And it is hot, even when I’m not wearing...... Never mind.

Earplugs

I now have a pair of Cabot Safety Corp. E.A.R. UltraTech Earplugs (NRR 12) and Aearo Company UltraFit earplugs (NRR 21). When practicing the GHB indoors, I put an earplug in at least my left ear.

By the way, I got two pairs of each earplug at the show. The other pair is for Joann.

Things get lost, they break, and sometimes, as in my case with a pair of earplugs, a cat will chew on something (yeech!). In March 2005, I bought a bunch of Aearo UltraFit earplugs (NRR 21) from W.W. Grainger supply store. Price: $1.87 a pair, with case, which is about 15% the price of “high fidelity earplugs” for muscians—and just as good.

Smallpipes

My long Naill practice chanter is in the middle. On the left: The Heriot and Allan smallpipes chanter in the key of A. On the right: The Hamish Moore smallpipes chanter in the key of D. The F holes are more or less lined up.
Handy hand: Mine.

Plus, unlike GHBs and even shuttlepipes, I can buy smallpipes that can play in different keys, which might be nice if I ever got to the point where I could—or was allowed to—play with other instrumentalists. One problem: Such smallpipes are pricey. In fact, they cost more than my GHB.

Almost four years after I started learning how to bagpipe, I got a set of smallpipes from Heriot and Allan (Whitley Bay, England). These are “cold” pipes in that they are bellows-blown. You squeeze the bellows under your right arm, while squeezing the bagpipe bag as you normally do under your left arm. The only unusual part about this arrangement is, uh, having the bellows under your right arm while squeezing the bagpipe bag as you normally do....

It’s like patting your head with one hand and rubbing your stomach with the other. It takes lots of practice. I figure I’ve got the rest of my life to learn that (both playing smallpipes and the patting head/rubbing stomach).

The smallpipes have four drones so I can play in the key of D or A. The four drones: bass A; E or D (plays both depending on how it’s tuned); tenor A; and tenor D. Three drones play at a time; you switch from one group of three to the other group of three depending on what key you’re playing in. Actually, two of the drones are the same in both groups of three, but they have to be retuned depending on the third drone used, which really means: depending on whether you’re going to play in the key of A or key of D.

As you can see on the right, the smallpipes D-chanter is tiny. The hole spacing is not much wider than my fingers held close together, especially for my upper-hand fingers. There’s not much room for error. I almost have to play the chanter on my fingertips.

Changing keys also requires changing chanters. Heriot and Allan made the A-chanter; Hamish Moore (Perthshire, Scotland) made the D-chanter (separate order). The A-chanter comes with two “keys”; press one or the other and, given the right fingering, you get two extra notes out of the chanter: high B and C-natural.

The D-chanter is tiny, almost too small for my fat fingers to play. And yet Brian says that Hamish’s D-chanter has about the widest spread between chanter holes. Playing it takes quite a bit of practice. (A year later, which is when I’m writing this, I’ve yet to play notes crisply with that D-chanter. Granted, I haven’t practiced the smallpipes much at all, regardless of chanter. Time will tell. Stay tuned.)

Plastic Highland Bagpipes

Someone in the band was selling his set of 6-year-old Dunbar P3 bagpipes (J. Dunbar Bagpipe Maker Ltd., Ontario, Canada). These plastic pipes, made of Delrin, look like they’re made of blackwood, though to my eye not nearly as “warm” as real wood. Included were two Dunbar chanters, one with and one without a sole. (The latter is supposedly the latest Dunbar plastic chanter.) I didn’t play the chanters too much, the purchase being in the midst of band season (July 2004). However, the little I did play them, I wasn’t impressed with their sound (tuning). Someday, I’ll spend some time with these chanters, probably adding tape to get them “just right.”

In the bagpipes was a set of Kinnaird carbon fiber drone reeds. Rather than figuring these out, I replaced them with the Ezeedrones I had been using for my “band pipes” setup. In January 2005, I replaced these reeds with a set of Omegas that I had been using in my wooden pipes.

The bag is a Bannatine zippered hybrid hide/synthetic bag (Gortex inside, leather outside). The water trap that comes with these bags is basically a long, wide-spiral spring covered with highly absorbent fabric. The previous owner had “tone enhancers.” I left those in the bag. Despite their name, tone enhancers don’t enhance tone as much as they control the volume of air going to the drones. This control makes striking in and stopping the drones easier and more accurate. Granted, as my bagpipe teacher would say, better would be to learn how to correctly strike in and stop the bagpipes! However, switching back and forth from wooden pipes/leather bag to plastic pipes/synthetic bag is a little too much for my pea brain. So for the time being, I’m using the tone enhancers to cover my sins.

Drone Reeds

The Ezeedrones sound pretty close to cane reeds, though I can definitely tell the difference between the two when I’m practicing. I began using the Ezeedrones when I realized that cane reeds and parade season were mostly incompatible. (Drone reeds would not stay in tune through a whole parade.) For about a year thereafter, I swapped the Ezeedrones with cane reeds whenever I was playing for “myself.” However, life is short. For about two or three years up until May 2003, I was playing only the Ezeedrones. Then I sent the reeds back to Pipe Dreams (the manufacturer, in Glasgow, Scotland) for refurbishing. That’s when I put in Omega drone reeds. For about a year thereafter, I would swap out the Omegas and use the Ezeedrones for parades and for my one season of solo piping competition (2003). I eventually relegated the Ezeedrones to parade season and my “band pipes” (the plastic bagpipes).

The Omegas are “high tech.” No question: They’re durable and they theoretically can be set up for bulletproof, unwavering tone. But getting them “just right,” what with all the adjustments that can be made, is both time consuming and complicated. After five years with one marching band, I joined another. About a month later, I learned that many of the pipers were using Omegas. So, I replaced the Ezeedrones in my plastic pipes with the Omegas. Two months later and I’m still fighting with, i.e. tweaking, the Omegas. A couple of pipers have suggested using the Omegas for the tenor drones and using another reed (such as an Ezeedrone) for the bass drone.

Now the Kinnairds. In January 2005, when I replaced the Ezeedrones in my plastic bagpipes with the Omegas from my wooden bagpipes, I put the Kinnaird drones that came with the plastic bagpipes into the wooden bagpipes. (One can spend a lifetime making these sorts of changes, and I gather pipers do these things all the time.) Obviously, now two months later, I have yet to play the Kinnairds through an entire season. However, one warm January day (in New Hampshire, mind you), I played the pipes outside for over an hour. A bunch of light music, a piobaireachd, and then back to light music. I was impressed with how the Kinnairds stayed in tune and didn’t stop. (I’m a “wet” blower. The condensation from my breath, even during the summer, collects in the drone reeds, shutting them off easily.)

It’s still too early for me to sense how the Kinnaird sound compares with the Ezeedrone sound. However, I do know that, for me and for my bagpipes, going from Ezeedrone reeds to Omega reeds was a large step away from the cane-reed sound I like, and that the Kinnairds are a large step in other direction, back toward the cane-reed sound. Mind you, my bagpipe teacher and I don’t “hear ear-to-ear” with respect to drone reeds; that is, he prefers a different reed set, and therefore different tonal qualities.

By the way, my wooden bagpipes were modified just before I put in the Kinnairds. That “tweak” might have a lot to do with why the Kinnairds stayed in tune so long. I’ll get to this modification later.