Practice Chanter and Book Advice

[OC Richard]

Thank you OC Richard for that detailed explanation. I haven't heard "crossing noises" but it sounds like I wouldn't like it! Long ago, I did play the clarinet, although I was not very good at it, but I think I remember something similar.

You're welcome!

I bought a clarinet several years ago, like so many others with dreams of becoming Pete Fountain.

It was unimaginably difficult. All I could get were barnyard animal noises. The hardest thing was "going over the break" where you're playing a note as high up the horn as you can go, all fingers off and several keys depressed to open up tiny holes inches from your face, and the next-highest note is all fingers down, several keys depressed to shut the horn down all the way to the bell, a yard distant! So a change in one note went from being wispy to a honking car horn. How clarinet players ever make going over the break smooth I have no idea.

I did find a discussion online how many professional clarinet players use various alternate fingerings to facilitate going over the break. The Highland pipes have a couple things like that, "false fingerings" all the teachers say not to do, but that most good players do without even noticing.

My teacher says I will probably spend a year on the chanter before picking up the pipes.

It's an interesting aspect of Highland pipe pedagogy: there are things where all good teachers are in agreement, and things where good teachers have a spectrum of opinions.

One thing where good teachers are all over the map is the matter of when the beginner should "graduate" from the Practice Chanter onto the pipes, and how this should be done.

The various approaches can be sorted into three basic categories:

1) Calendar-based. "The student should start on the pipes after playing the Practice Chanter for ______."

The blank can be filled in with almost any number, but it usually ranges between six months and a year.

2) Performance-based. "The student should start on the pipes after mastering _______ tunes."

The blank can be filled in with almost any number of tunes, but usually ranges from six to 20.

3) No delay. It's a bit of an outlier, but some good teachers think the beginner should start on the Practice Chanter and full set of pipes simultaneously.
Some teachers think the beginner should, from the get-go, be able to play anything on the pipes they can play on the PC.
Other teachers think the beginner should work on fingering and playing exercises and tunes on the PC while focusing purely on blowing steadily on the pipes.

Which brings up the differences in opinions about what the beginning should be doing on the full set of pipes, when time to start playing them.

Some teachers remove the chanter and just have the student blow the drones, often starting with a single drone and adding the others one at a time.

Other teachers cork off the drones and have the student play the pipe chanter only.

What are we to make of this wide range of opinion? Personally I think it tells me that it doesn't matter.

So I let each student decide when they start on the pipes. Motivation is huge! And if a beginner is all fired up to get a-blowin' on the bagpipes I say have at it.

Other students, oddly, become enamoured with the Practice Chanter and they have to be cajoled into taking up the actual bagpipes.

He says there are good plastic pipes. Still not cheap, but less than African black wood. He says he has a set for when he plays in the rain.

Yes the superb Canadian pipemaking firm Dunbar Bagpipes has become famous for their great-sounding delrin/polypenco bagpipes. They led the way in this regard, having made poly pipes for decades.

Recently a number of UK pipemakers have followed suit, such as McCallum.

At one point I owned three Dunbar bagpipes, two in African Blackwood and one in polypenco/delrin. They sounded the same.

Personally I don't like poly pipes for three reasons:

1) they're heavier on the shoulder than wood pipes

2) they tend to bounce on the shoulder while you're marching

3) condensation collects inside the drones, causing the drone reeds to malfunction after a while

So I'm sticking to wood!

I will say that wood pipes vary greatly in weight. I have three African Blackwood sets now:

-Starck, London, 1940s

-R G Lawrie, Glasgow, 1940s

-Kintail, Glasgow, 1981

and the Lawrie pipes are much heavier than the other two! What's strange is that another Lawrie set I owned was unusually light on the shoulder. I don't know the reasons, but I suppose that the density/weight of the wood varies.