Here I was, wondering about the Piobaireach high G. I was under the impression that the Piobaireachd high G was the 16/9 ratio to the fundamental coming in at ~4 cents flat of equal temperament. However, when I tuned my chanter as such (it would barely get sharp enough), it sounded pretty bad. However, Hugh MacCallum’s on his World’s Greatest Pipers album is awesome at the 4 cents flat tuning. So, I tuned the Piobaireachd high G by ear instead and found it tunes just where the light music high G tunes at ~31 cents flat, only it sounds different (sharper to my ear, of course, given my previous misunderstanding). Below you’ll find a mp3 of the normal high G followed by a Piobaireachd high G and also a fourier analysis of the time domain signal normalized to the fundamental high G note. Note the Piobaireachd high G is in red and the light music in green; and because their spectra overlapped exactly (proving they both tune at ~31 cents flat) I had to offset the light music one (green) up 20 Hz to make it easier to see their relative ratios. Colin Kyo chanter, Gilmour reed, Gellaitry pipes with Redwood reeds.

High G MP3

So, there’s a debate going on whether sympathetic beating of the drone reeds leads to more stability in tuning. I say it practically doesn’t happen, but I won’t go there. Instead, here is a recording from inside the bag, just for giggles. Cool uh? or I guess for you Canadians, cool eh? :o) I don’t think the recording means a whole lot in the context of the debate, ah but whatever, you may draw your own conclusions.

A Father of Piping, Brian Barrow (from inside the bag)

My list of excuses:

This is about 8 minutes into a 9 minute practice session because it’s late and I actually wanted to go to bed instead, but I figured this would be interesting enough to warrant the loss of sleep. So, the drones aren’t in perfect tune, and they go out towards the end. Sorry about the high A crow at the end. My bad. Gannaway bag, Crozier Cane tenors, Kinnaird bass (the cane wasn’t stabilizing fast enough), in Gellaitry pipes with a carved up Naill chanter and a crowy reed.