Narrow bore chanters

[Jim McGuire]

Brad Angus of Vancouver, WA 360-699-4409.

[snoogie]

I'm very happy with my narrow bore D from Ray. Besides being quieter, the reed is also narrower..this makes it 'different' to reed, not necessary better or worse, just different than the majority of chanters.

http://www.ray-sloan.com/

[snoogie]

Oh by the way, welcome to C&F!

Regarding woods, there is a lot of discussion about the affect of different wood on sound quality, etc...but I don't think there is much concensus. Choose whatever wood you like, which looks best to you and the maker is comfortable with.

Regards,
Gary

[MarkS]

Curious newbie question: Can you play a narrow bore chanter with drones/regs from a full bore set? Do you need to adjust or change the reeds in any way so the drones don't overpower the chanter, or is it not an issue?

Cheers,
Mark

[djm]

Bo, Joe Kennedy has a very good rep for his narrow-bore stuff, but that means you may have a bit of a wait, depending on what you're looking for.
http://www.kennedysuilleannpipes.com/

MarkS, the different parts of wide and narrow bore sets can be physically played together, but you won't get the correct balance of tone between them. Also, you may find the wide bore parts too loud for the narrow bore chanter. Sets are designed as a whole, and trying to slap together different unrelated bits and pieces is not necessarily going to get you a good sounding set.

djm

[patsky]

To be honest, I have never heard a narrow bore D chanter that I like. The best of them sounded very similar to the sound given off by a soda straw.

The Medium/ wide bore Chanter has more tone and volume both of which can be controlled by the type of reed fitted to the chanter. I have a special smaller reed, for my own medium bore Rowsome pipes, that is very soft and quiet so that I can play without waking up the house.

If you want a narrow bore consider going to the flat C or B chanters which are the Cadillacs of pipes. Pipes in these keys have a better tone and are very easy to reed. I also have a Rowsome C set which by comparison makes my D set sound like automobile horns.

All the best,
Pat Sky


All the best,
Pat Sky

[david.b]

Like Snoogie I also have a Ray Sloan narrow bore D chanter. It plays very well, is mellow, more like a flat set and I'm very pleased with the sound. Excellent when you are learning not to be filling the entire house with your mistakes!

[Tony]

Pat, what are your thoughts on a C# ?

[patsky]

Seamus Ennis, Kevin Rowsome, JoeMcKenna and a few others play the C# pipes which qualify as flat pipes and have a beautiful sound. My preference is C, which to my ear, has a fuller sound.

Pat

[misterpatrick]

I have a narrow D in ebony by Brad Angus that I really like. Of course, it's my first and only chanter some I'm not speaking with much experience. The one thing you'll notice is that the holes aren't scalloped like they are on many wide bore chanters. Just these tiny little holes.

-Patrick

[Lorenzo]

I would have to second what Pat said. I prefer large bore for D and a quieter reed.

I don't think large bore chanters are scalloped very often. Scalloping is not preferable, but used to tune the note.

[Tony]

Bo, There's plenty of narrow bore D discussions in the archives.
You can use the search function or click of some of the ones below:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... cfd7b68dc6
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... cfd7b68dc6
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php ... cfd7b68dc6

[Royce]

Thanks all for the tips.

What exactly needs to be altered to make the reed quieter in a regular D chanter? Shaving it thinner, shortening the length, narrowing the width...? Is there a standard template for this or is it just experimentation?

Also, is there any practical advantage to the swan-style pipe going from the bag to the chanter or is this just a visual preference?

Thx.

The important thing to remember is that no uilleann chanter needs to be quieter. More responsive, more in-tune, maybe even lighter or heavier, or just matched to your drones and the rest of the set. But not "quieter." That's not a "quality." That at best a side-effect, usually a detremental one.

If you want any concert D set, wide bore in particular, to be quieter, there is something seriously wrong with your perceptions of the instrument. Nobody says, "I just bought this great saxophone, now how do I make it quieter so I can't be heard in the band and I can practice all night and not bother my wife?"

And nobody goes on to seriously entertain asinine suggestions like stuffing cotton in the bell, or shaving down the reed, or gluing or taping wads of padding on the reed. It's just silly that exactly this sort of mentality keeps manifesting itself in the uilleann pipe, world, well, I guess really only from novices who should probably just be playing nylon-stringed guitar and finger-picking out "Greensleeves."

Really, what's wrong with you people? Even the loudest concert D wide bore isn't a loud instrument! Chuckle chuckle guffaw! Most of you have pipes struggling to be heard over the novice fiddler next to you, choking her little strings down and playing lightly on the very tip of her bow.

A narrow bore D? What's that? Practicing? An uilleann practice chanter? What a concept! What are you practicing? Not to play uilleann pipes! If you want to learn to play a concert D chanter you won't get there playing a throttled down, constricted little narrow bore anything. If you like the flat sound, just get a C set and live with the choice. Get a real narrow bore chanter and set to go with it, C, B, Bb whatever. Narrow bore D's are in fact weak, feeble, unresponsive, castrated, neutered and barely audible over a harp--and not then if the harpist is breathing very heavily. There never was and never was supposed to be a narrow bore D design. It's a back-engineered, foppish, faddish, yuppyish, ignorant, addlepated, uninformed, pedestrian, recorder-based, early-music crowd faux paus that for some reason pipe makers, one or two, have stooped to pander to.

I think the most I could say about the concept of a narrow bore D design, is that somebody who normally plays a full narrow bore set, flat set, C or lower etc, who occasionally wants to play along with others in D, could then respectably perhaps, and quite logically, have a higher pitched narrow bore made simply to match the operating pressure of his narrow bore drones, or at least mimic some of the narrow bore behavior he's used to. It's a basmati, mongrel, half-arsed way to back-pedal into playing with others. You would never just start from there because it's simply wrong, daft, and loonie. It's going to get you by playing with others in concert D pitch, but it will never ever be "as good" as a real wide bore concert D set.

How loud a set of pipes gets when set up to "work properly" is how loud they are, end of story. Modern concert D, widebores, are just louder than the narrower, flatter predecessors. They just are, have been and always will be, because for one thing, that was one of the reasons they were invented. Why would you deliberately destroy the performance, tuning, and stability of your pipes so you can play dress-up at the session, act like you're playing but not let anyone hear you so they can't tell how bad you are? You're deliberately learning how not to play well, how not to sound well, how not to tune well, and how not to perform in public.

It's just "air uilleanns." Buy a keyboard or a guitar and turn the volume down instead. Buy a three-voice button box, and only use one voice--and then tape heavy padding over the grille on that set of reeds so even they aren't audible.

If you say, "I love the sound of uillean pipes, I've always wanted to learn to play them," and then destroy the sound of yours, and learn how not to play them instead, because you ignorantly presume to emasculate your reeds to the point your whole experience is one of attempted base functionality and partially-tolerable tuning, you're just schizophrenic.

To go to all the bother to lay waste to the lumber and assemble a so-called "narrow-bore D" set is a crime against the music and tradition. The end result is a brutalized, dead piece of rainforest with only personal laziness being served. Work a little harder. Learn a little better. Be a little prouder.

Get a normal concert D set if you want to play in concert D pitch.

And if you have a normal concert D set, just concentrate on making them "work properly," not on making them "quieter." If you learn to play them and make them sound good, you won't want or need "quieter."

Royce

[Brian Lee]

There's a great highland piper for ya!

All in good fun royce!

[djm]

Nice diatribe, Royce, but you've got it bass-ackwards. What we call "narrow bore" and "flat sets" today are what was the original or "norm" for UP design until the late 19th - early 20th century when the wide bore was first developed. I'm sure the history of the UPs has been hashed over enough times here about various tunings, etc. but to claim that concert D/wide bores are the only correct form of UPs is dead wrong. Sorry, but going for the smoother sounds of narrow bore is actually getting back to the original nature of these beasties, and certainly should still be considered a valid option today.

djm