Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes

Subject: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: mikesamwild
Date: 25 Apr 12 - 10:52 AM

I think people will find this article (March 2012) by Pete Stewart (who played with the Goodacre Brothers)very interesting. It has helped with my understanding of the evolution of the Uillean pipes

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11131902/IBconfernce/common%20bagpipe.pdf

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Apr 12 - 05:19 PM

I found the article interesting, and I enjoyed seeing the old cartoons. However, the author seems to assume that I would know the differences between the small pipes and the Highland pipes, and I don't.

I did a little checking, but couldn't learn enough in a reasonable time to follow the author's logic.

I have no trouble believing that it was wealthy people, with large homes and plenty of land, who were the first enthusiasts of the Highland pipes.   

Thanks for the link.

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 25 Apr 12 - 08:31 PM

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11131902/IBconfernce/common%20bagpipe.pdf

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 26 Apr 12 - 03:00 AM

"the author seems to assume that I would know the differences between the small pipes and the Highland pipes, and I don't."

It was written as a paper to an international bagpipe conference, whose audience presumably would know the difference.

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: mikesamwild
Date: 26 Apr 12 - 06:23 AM

Brian Howard who makes pipes and lives near me says the Ulliean pipes are themost sophisticated pieps and did evolve form such pipes , with rgulators etc. They were the preserve of the rich and even the Protestant Ascendancy to begin with and then got handed down. The earlier travelling players etc would have had the simpler sets to learn on and play.

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: GUEST,Learaí na Láibe
Date: 26 Apr 12 - 07:39 AM

Very interesting and informative article. Thanks for link.

The title will cause some raised eyebrows though. "Mainland Britain"? - a somewhat politically charged geographical entity?

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: Tootler
Date: 26 Apr 12 - 10:55 AM

"Mainland Britain"? - a somewhat politically charged geographical entity?

Politically charged by who? What else are you going to call it?

After all the article makes the point that the common pipes were almost certainly found throughout England and Scotland.

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 12 - 04:09 PM

Tootler quote:

""Mainland Britain"? - a somewhat politically charged geographical entity?

Politically charged by who? What else are you going to call it?"

I'd call it "Britain" or "Great Britain"

Why "Mainland Britain"? Is there an "Offshore Britain"?

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Apr 12 - 07:13 PM

Only a rather uninformed American looking for an ancestral grievance would find anything to complain about in the term "mainland Britain", though it isn't one I'd use myself.

Uilleann pipes are not a direct descendant of the "border" pipes Pete Stewart is writing about. The border pipe has a highly conical chanter, which gives it great power and limited range, like the Highland pipe. (My cats just disappear when I get mine out). The ancestor of the uilleann pipe is the pastoral pipe - both have a much less conical chanter, which reduces volume and the ability to crossfinger chromatic notes, but (with luck) allows the chanter to overblow to the octave. The pastoral pipe itself must have ben derived from a smallpipe - these (like the French musette de cour and the Northumbrian pipe) have a chanter with near-parallel bore, but don't overblow.

Uilleann pipes are not "the most sophisticated", they're just an extreme development in one particular direction. They can't play as chromatically as Northumbrian pipes or the musette, they can't play polyphonically like a two-chanter Southern European pipe, they can't crossfinger like a Border pipe, and they can't shift pitch with a flea-hole like Hungarian pipes. There is no one kind of pipe that represents an overall optimum.

Subject: RE: Recent Article on Lowland Bagpipes
From: GUEST,gutcher
Date: 27 Apr 12 - 04:10 AM

Somewhere I have details of a famed family of border pipe makers c.18thC. who lived in Galloway.
Am now leaving for a ceilidh in the North East and hope to return by Thursday.