Ebony Vs Blackwood

[Uilliam]

There's far too much similarity between the dialect pronunciation of Heelan and Uilleann for my liking, given that they were a product of Pastoral pipes as well.
Alan

At last the question on every discerning ITM afficiandos lips has been answered.......The quite ridiculous term Uilleann comes frae Heelan Our gratitude goeth to Alan

As for all this nonsense about certain timbre with certain woods,given that it is not the wood of the chanter that vibrates, the sound comes frae the vibration of the reed and the column of sound waves therein produced..So simple logic would dictate that the type of wood has no bearing on the sound.{ Of course the more fibrous the wood(mahogony eg) the more mute the tone because of the fibres},but by and large the woods used today are more a question of aesthetics than tone.On the more specific Ebony V Blackwood debate ,blackwood is a more oily wood and therefore easier for the maker to work with, Ebony is more brittle and liable to crack and less easier to work with (wood for wood comparison that is)but as that is not the buyers problem we are back to looks.
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam

[Tony]

Ian Mackenzie sent me a prototype stick he used to test out a new reamer he had recently made. It's a day and night sound difference to my Gallagher B chanter as it's louder and plays very lively. Switching reeds between the two makes little difference.

I asked Ian for more information about the wood and he replied:
>It is only a trial job and is a bit out of tune and
>basically just intended as a tester for thickness
>and finger spacing, so didn't expect a rave review.
>
>The wood is black bean (castanospermum) from
>Queensland and is better known as a furniture timber.

The bell (openings) on both chanters are very close in diameter and I tried them with different reeds, but each time the 'black bean' chanter played louder and more vibrant.

Why??
It's a very porous wood (see photo) that I thought would be mellow and full of harmonics. The Gallagher is on the right.


Length and hole spacing:

[Lorenzo]

If a person chooses not to believe that different types of wood
produce different types of tone, they must think Paddy Keenan doesn't
know what he's talking about either when he says he loves the sound
of boxwood.

[Uilliam]

Ian Mackenzie sent me a prototype stick he used to test out a new reamer he had recently made. It's a day and night sound difference to my Gallagher B chanter as it's louder and plays very lively. Switching reeds between the two makes little difference.

Why??

Is this a serious question?
Given that the chanters are made by different makers and Ian is trying out a new reamer the likelihood of both makers using identical measurements millimetre for millimetre are pretty remote,don't ya think?Ye state yourself in your post that the bell diameters are VERY close.??What does that mean?what is the EXACT measurement?In the greater scheme of the Cosmos we are pretty close to the Sun but that is about as useful as the above.
If ye are trying to make an argument that different types o wood effect tone then IDENTICAL data has to be applied to all the samples...

So in answer to yer query Why?then Why on Earth not!! and why do ye think that a porous wood would be full of harmonics and mellow?Empirical data please...that would help your argument somewhat.
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam

[Uilliam]

If a person chooses not to believe that different types of wood
produce different types of tone, they must think Paddy Keenan doesn't
know what he's talking about either when he says he loves the sound
of boxwood.

Lorenzo its not a question of choice.Prove it and I will be happy.As for Paddy Keenan saying this that or the other ,so what!!
I play a boxwood set but I bet if I played a blackwood set I would find lots of little differences ,like looks ,weight,feel etc but note for note I doubt if I would find any difference, but I might THINK the box was better!!Get my drift?
As for Paddy...I spent the most boring hour of my life listening to same talking twaddle in a pub in Miltown one year,so I think ye have to take what he says very much with a pinch o salt or guinness....
Uilliam

[Tony]

OK Liam, point made... cosmos man, cosmos.

They're different bores and that's the reason for such a difference in the sound.

But ...I've said this before several times... take two chanters of different woods using the same reamer and same methods of fabrication (like the same maker doing both in the same batch) and you should get different sounding chanters.

Rogge, Preshaw, Stephenson all make comments about different woods yielding different sounding chanters. Davy liked to use the word strident for chanters made in blackwood. Yes, the selection of wood must have some affect on the tone of the chanter.

[Lorenzo]

Ever play a glass flute? I have. Make a glass chanter and find out the truth real fast.

[bradhurley]

But ...I've said this before several times... take two chanters of different woods using the same reamer and same methods of fabrication (like the same maker doing both in the same batch) and you should get different sounding chanters.

Unless the chanters are made by robots on a factory assembly line to ensure complete uniformity, I don't think you will ever see two perfectly identical chanters from the same maker, it's just not humanly possible. So you can't really test this hypothesis.

In the flute world, you hear all the same arguments from makers and players. But they have the same problem: no two flutes are exactly alike, even from the same maker. The tiniest change in the shape and profile of the embouchure hole, a hundredth of a millimeter here, a thousandth of an inch there, can make a huge difference in the sound of the flute.

I do think the differences in tone that people ascribe to various woods, whether perceived are real, may boil down to the smoothness of the bore of the chanter or the flute. I've played blackwood flutes that sounded mellower than most boxwood flutes I've tried, and when I looked down the bore it was clear that the maker didn't finish it very smoothly. And one of the loudest, most crisp-sounding flutes I've ever heard was a boxwood Olwell played by Chris Layer, a flute that was anything but "mellow" in tone.

(edited to change "thousandth of a millimeter" to "thousandth of an inch"...since movin to Canada 2 years ago I find I sometimes say metric units when I mean English and vice versa!)

[bradhurley]

Ever play a glass flute? I have. Make a glass chanter and find out the truth real fast.

But glass flutes can't be compared to wooden flutes because the glass ones don't have conical bores (at least not the ones I've tried).

The concrete flute experiment was pretty good because the concrete flute was based on a casting of the cherry one. So at least there you're getting close to comparing apples with apples.

You could try making a casting of a chanter and producing a replica from that in some other material (concrete, plastic, etc.), but small imperfections in the casting or the production of the replica could still introduce differences that you would think were due to the material. This is a very complex issue, nobody has the answers yet.

[billh]

This thread has reported assertions and anecdotes from experienced players and makers who believed the material of a pipe chanter is a significant factor in tone; and has reported also the point of view of acoustical physics which refutes or debunks many of the common explanations for such effects.

For those who may want to have it both ways, there is some theoretical acoustical basis for thinking that material matters even in thick-walled wind instruments like pipes, even aside from issues of manufacture and the fact that different materials unavoidably react different to tooling.

[If you don't care a fig about theory, read no further ]

Besides the "macroscopic" surface roughness effects, the effects of surface porosity may come into play; likewise very small movements of the cavity wall, depending on the elasticity of the material , tend to get magnified when they are manifested as changes in the "effective" "acoustic impedance" (read, "effective bore diameter"); a chamber with even very slightly elastic walls acts like a rigid chamber of larger dimension. The explanation for "tonewoods" usually given is rooted in "resonating" instruments like violins, guitars, and pianos, where the vibrations of the material account for most of the propagation of the sound; with pipes of course this effect can be shown to be truly negligible; this means that most such explanations are not on solid ground. However, it can be demonstrated that a stiffer wall may act like a "smaller" bore. There are also "damping" effects, which because they are nonlinear are poorly understood in the case of woodwind instruments. My personal fringe theory is that the thermal conductivity of the wall actually is a big contributor, since PV=nRT and any thermal dissipation in the pipe walls as the local pressure cycles would result in increased damping.

"Density" is a favorite attribute of tonewood associated with particular sound qualities, but I know of no theoretical basis for such an association; personally I think density as such may not matter "at all", i.e. enough for even the subtlest ear or device to notice.

- Bill

[teflon]

Ok well it seems opinions are a little divided.
What about in terms of longevity? Has anyone noticed one type of wood (Ebony or Blackwood) surviving (ie no cracking warping etc) better than the other? I live in a relatively humid climate in Summer.
Ausdag mentioned that his Blackwood set has faired well in Brisbane which can be extremely humid. Any other thoughts?

[billh]

Ok well it seems opinions are a little divided.
What about in terms of longevity? Has anyone noticed one type of wood (Ebony or Blackwood) surviving (ie no cracking warping etc) better than the other? I live in a relatively humid climate in Summer.
Ausdag mentioned that his Blackwood set has faired well in Brisbane which can be extremely humid. Any other thoughts?

Humidity isn't the enemy, it's dryness. Or rather, wide variation of humidity, particularly if it gets very dry.

[David Levine]

This discussion was old a hundred and fifty years ago.
Some says nay and some says aye.
I says Bunker Hill.
And so forth.

[Joseph E. Smith]

This may have little or no bearing on chanters, but makers of wooden instruments like the violin, guitar, mandolin and so on, choose the wood they use to make their instruments out of chiefly for reasons of acoustics. Certainly, cosmetic appeal is also a factor, but it does little good to have a finely crafted, good looking instrument which is made out of lumber that is acoustically 'dead' or undesirable.

If this is the case, then I would hazard an educated guess that chanters cannot be omitted from this scenario simply because the physics behind the acoustics of different woods would not permit it. But, like Mr. Levine put it, this is an old argument, and one that will continue to go until somebody takes it unto themselves to, under controlled circumstances, make a series of chanters out of different woods using exactly the same measurements, tools, finishes etc...and applies the same reed to each, recording the results, analyzing them and finally puting this question to bed with a ginger cookie and a glass of warm milk. Until such a time, all arguments are valid until proven otherwise.

[Joseph E. Smith]

....I wonder if a chanter made out of balsa wood, reamed with the same tool used to ream a blackwood chanter, and made to its specific dimensions, would be equally as loud?