BS: Differences in types of pipes

Subject: Differences in types of pipes
From: jimmyt
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 04:38 PM

I saw a little of a documentary about various types of pipes as well as hurdy gurdys, and I wonder how many types of these instruments are in use in traditional music today. I love hearing these fascinating instruments, but have to admit I don't know much about them

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: weepiper
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 05:39 PM

Hoo. Loads. Personally I play 3 kinds of pipes... Let's see. There's your standard 'Great Highland Bagpipe', which is the one you probably think of when someone says 'bagpipes'. This is mouth-blown and has 3 drones (one bass and two tenor, all tuned to A/B flat) which all attach separately to the bag, and a chanter (the bit the tune comes out of) with 9 notes. There are at least two other Scottish bagpipes; 'border pipes' sound similar to although much quieter than Highland pipes, they are bellows blown (you pump them via a bellows with your right arm) and have three drones, sometimes one bass and two tenor, sometimes one bass, one baritone and one tenor, either all tuned to A or two tuned to A and one to E. The drones are all bunched together in one 'lump' from a common stock and generally sit across the player's chest, not up over the left shoulder. They have a chanter similar to Highland pipes but it allows many more 'sharps and flats'. 'Scottish small pipes' look physically similar to border pipes, but sound an octave lower, and are much much quieter. They have a chnater similar to the others except because its central bore is parallel rather than conical, you can't get any naturals/sharps by cross fingering.

Then you have 'Northumbrian small pipes'. Again they are bellows-blown and have drones issuing from a common stock. They are quite quiet. The chanter is like the Scottish smallpipe one but it has lots of keys, a bit like a flute, to enable a much wider range than any of the Scottish pipes. These pipes have a very distinctive sound, kind of 'pootly' or 'blippy'.

'Uillean pipes' are the Irish pipes you have heard on the soundtrack to Titanic and Braveheart. They are bellows-blown and have a weird highly evolved drone system... the drones sit under the right arm, and are so long they have bends like a trombone slide to keep them a manageable size. There are also 'regulators' which are sort of like keys on the drones that you can press with your right arm while playing to change the pitch of the drones. So Uillean pipers can accompany themselves! Again they have a chanter with keys and have a wide range.

I could go on and list the various European bagpipes but that's probably already way more information than you wanted! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: Sorcha
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 05:43 PM

Well, there is copper and PVC........oh, that is not what you wanted!(grin)

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: weepiper
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 05:49 PM

Odd you should mention that... I've seen plans to knock up a set of bagpipes from pvc plumbing pipe.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: GUEST,yum yum
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 05:51 PM

Shuttle pipes, another type of bagpipe. Two drone Irish warpipe (mouth blown) The lowland or border pipes can be adapted to either mouth or bellows blown (I have had both) as can the scottish small pipes. Then there are welsh bagpipes, similar to the highland pipes. France have over fifty different varieties of bagpipe. BUT the Uilleann Pipes are the 'DADDY' of them all.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: GUEST,yumyum
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 06:02 PM

wee piper pipemakers from County Down, NI. Robbie Hughes and Brendan O'Haire made a futuristic (or spaceage) set some years ago. THEY PLAYED! enough said.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: jimmyt
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 06:14 PM

Thanks for the primer. Now to complicate issues, are Great Highland pipes played in sessions or are they strictly for military outdoor parade type use? Then how do hurdy gurdys fit in to the big picture? I know they are not pipes, but are they commonly used in sessions? I have about 25 CDs of Irish and Scottish Music (notice I didn't say the C word to get everyone wound up again like I did a couple weeks ago) and some times there are instruments that I for the life of me can't identify, and I was the kid who in the 4th grade could pick out bass clarinet and bassoon in orchestral works. Could these unknown instruments be the aforementioned types of pipes? Are all of these instruments equally difficult to master? People have told me that Ullean Pipes take years and years to master.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: mooman
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 06:22 PM

Then there are the Galician pipes or "gaitas" as played bu Carlos Nunez, Susana Seivane and others, e.g. Milladoiro. Also a couple of varieties of Flemish pipes, most commonly with a chanter and one drone.

mooman

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 07:12 PM

Getting browsing and you'll find sites with loads of pictures of all sorts of pipes from historic pictures, and existing sets. You couldnt begin to number them. One of the world'sgreat ideas. And no, there's nothing C***** about them.(ducks low)

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: smallpiper
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 07:34 PM

The GHB tends to be a bit loud for session playing and they are in an odd key B flatish (although Hamish Moore now makes sets in A). However I have played them in a session to great effect - they shut the melodian players up! Practically every county in England had their own distinctive pipes at one point in history. And there are hundereds of different continental types.

Hurdy gurdy's sound great when accompanying or just playing along with scottish smallpipes other than that I don't know much about them.

The Uillean pipes are very difficult to play but I don't think that they are the daddy of all pipes rather a recent invention in fact.(being deliberatly obtuse)

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: Leadfingers
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 07:43 PM

Hurdy Gurdy is a strung beasty,sounded by a friction wheel turned by one hand with a sort of keyboard for the other hand.If the recording set up is not right they can sound like,or be mistaken for a Bagpipe to the unwary as there is a constant note from the friction wheel turning,a bit like a drone.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 07:59 PM

There is a tradition of bagpipes of one sort or another in just about every country from Ireland across to Pakistan. The puzzle is that there seems to be so widespreadand impression that they are particularly Scottish.

The other puzzle to me is that, outside this sizeable chunk of the planet (most of Europe and the Middle East), the pipes have never really seemed to take root. So far as I know there are no indigenous piping traditions in Africa, the rest of Asia, America, or Australia (unless you stretch a point a very very long way, and claim the didgeridoo as a rather strange variety of bagpipe, with the circular breathing technique having the effect of turning the body into the bag for playing the drone...)

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: Leadfingers
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 08:06 PM

I did hear that the Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots but added the third drone as a joke-but the Scots haven't seen the joke yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 08:54 PM

As has already been said, most European and Near- and Middle-Eastern countries have bagpipes; it seems most likely that they were originally developed around the Mediterranean. The tradition in Pakistan is a recent one; they play the Highland pipes there, though of course there is an indigenous tradition of mouth-blown double-reeded instruments (shawms, essentially) going back a long way.

The bagpipes probably arrived in Britain in the wake of the early crusades (some people argue that they came here with the Romans, but there is no evidence to support that theory); so far as can be told from contemporary references, they seem to have spread from England into the surrounding countries.

Bellows seem first to have been applied to the pipes in France, when they were fashionable at Court; it enabled genteel persons and ladies to play without distending their cheeks. The principle was subsequently applied to pipes in England, Scotland and Ireland (in no particular order).

The Uilleann or Union pipes, though very young compared to most forms, are probably the most sophisticated if we discount modern electronic developments. Many of the so-called "regional" pipes being produced today are modern re-constructions made from a mixture of old pictures, carvings, and imagination; we really can't tell if they are in any way authentic.

The hurdy gurdy is another matter entirely. It seems to have fallen out of use in Britain long ago, though it persisted in tradition in mainland Europe and enjoyed some vogue at the French court for a while. In the later 18th and 19th centuries, it turned up in Britain and Ireland mainly in the hands of street-musicians and beggars.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: jimmyt
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 11:18 PM

So, If a person wants some knowledge of piping, how valuable is purchasing and learning on a chanter?

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 16 Sep 02 - 12:18 AM

G'day McGrath,

"... or Australia (unless you stretch a point a very very long way, and claim the didgeridoo as a rather strange variety of bagpipe ..."

Of course, such a stretch is not beyond the Irish ... a recent Mudcat thread discussed an Irish academic's assertion that "didjeridu" is really the Irish phrase (~) dudare dhu - "black piper". So far it seems to have foundered on a citation of the earliest printed references to (~) didjeridu ... all suggesting that the word was onomatopoeiac - a vocalisation of a typical sound from the instrument.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: smallpiper
Date: 16 Sep 02 - 04:23 AM

jymmit - Getting a practice chanter will help you learn the fingering and gracings for the highland, scottish small and border pipes but will also frustrate you beyond belief as they sound nowt like the pipes!

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 16 Sep 02 - 06:33 AM

Leadpipes

I take a few classes on Irish traditional music and song with groups of foreign students (various European, some Chinese) studying in the college where I teach. One of the first things I do is to play a CD track of uilleann pipes - and ask them what kind of instrument they think it is. On one occasion I spotted a student, with her eyes closed, making a crcular movement with one hand - thinking of hurdy-gurdy!

Regards

p.s. Can't remember if we acknowledged in another thread that "uilleann" (often thought to refer to "elbow", since its the Irish word for same) is a bit of a misnomer, invented by an ancestor of a colleague of mine, about a hundred years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: Pied Piper
Date: 16 Sep 02 - 06:49 AM

Although there are many different Bagpipes throughout Eurasia and North Africa, they can be divided into a few broad types. In no particular order: 1 Conical bore double reed Chanter and single reed Drone/s(GHB, Giata, Binou,ect)played western coastal fringes of Europe. 2 Cylindrical single reed chanter and single reed Drone(Giada,ect) Hungary, Bulgaria, Macedonia and a lot of Eastern Europe. 3 Double conical bore double reed Chanters and Double reed Drones (zampona ect) played in Northern Italy and the Mediterranean Islands. 4 Double cylindrical bore single reed Chanters no separate drone (zammara ect) played in North Africa and the Arabic speaking world. There is also a sub-strand of type 1 with cylindrical bore double reed Chanters and single reed Drones ( Northumberland and Scottish Smallpipes)played in Northern Britain. But where do the Uillian Pipes fit in all this?. The Uillian Pipes are the most recent version of the bagpipe idea. The chanter developed out of the "Pastoral" pipes played in Scotland in the early 18th century and the regulators were added in the early 19th century. Finally the instrument went to America where its use in "vordaville" necessitated a change of key to D (more volume). All the best PP.

Subject: RE: BS: Differences in types of pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 16 Sep 02 - 08:07 AM

Jimmyt... depends where you are how you start... If you are in the New York area, begin and want to play Uilleann pipes, step one is to order a practice set from Seth Gallagher, I'd go to no one else. Then find a teacher, email me about that... [e-mail], then start saving a lot of cash, as to build a full set you need about what you would spend on a mid size car... if you live outside the New York area, take up the highland pipes. Yes you can play the Highland pipes at sessions, but no one other than bombard and bodhran players can play with you, and just as well... Spanish pipes can be found D and can be played at sessions, but why not move to New York and take up the Uilleann pipes. You can also learn the Uilleann pipes in Ireland, but it is harder to get a good set there.
Cheers Larry
PS Actually the first step is to email me and order the CD Nil Sasta ach Amadain, by the great band Sorcha Dorcha...