My last post featured my A smallpipe chanter specially made to tune against G drones. I was using my C smallpipe drones which naturally tune to C on the tenor and bass and G on the baritone. Up until this point, as in the last post, I’ve plugged the tenor C and just played the G baritone and C bass. But, based on a comment from Jean in my last post, someone finally made me think it was, in fact, too dark sounding. So, remembering the pins were pretty far out on the tenor and bass I pulled them up to D and now the As on the chanter sound so much better and it is much happier sounding!
So, an A chanter with what amounts to, relative to an A chanter, a D alto, G tenor, and D baritone (no G bass drone, yet).
Yep, I’m playing a special A smallpipe chanter by Seth Hamon that was made to tune against drones playing G instead of the usual A. This requires repositioning a couple of the holes from a normal A chanter because the notes do not play at the same pitch to be in tune against G drones. It is really easy to get me sidetracked on the details so I’ll just stop now with discussing the details. One more thing though, this chanter also has a C natural hole where the C sharp (C#) hole normally is. Bagpipers don’t usually refer to our “C” as C# but that’s what it is. What makes this chanter different is that it plays in A dorian (A B C D E F# G) instead of the usual A mixolydian (A B C# D E F# G). This isn’t unheard of as C natural holes can be drilled for the bottom hand thumb to use (I have one like this) or it can also be keyed. However, my thumb sucks at covering that hole and keys prevent embellishments. So, I had the C natural hole drilled on the front of the chanter instead of the usual C#.
For a first iteration, the chanter is playable. With a few modifications it will be even easier to play (the C-D gap is a bit wide right now). You can hear in the recordings below a couple times where my fingers didn’t land on the bottom hand holes very solidly.
Where do you get G drones? C smallpipes! I cork the tenor C and just play the baritone G and bass C drones.
Here are a whole collection of tunes I’m working on that fit this pipe. There aren’t many standard highland bagpipes tunes that work because they mostly end on low A. So, I get to expand my repertoire to include all those tunes from other Celtic (or not) traditions that end on G. I think most of them are Northumbrian or Irish. The pdf of the collection will continue to grow and the most recent version can always be found at this on the Free Tune books page of my website. It’s mostly compiled in highland style with various grace note patterns I’m experimenting with. Many of the Northumbrian tunes are often played by Northumbrian smallpipes which don’t utilize grace notes to near the extent Scottish smallpipers do, if at all. Remember, the “C” notes all need to be C naturals!