For the drummers, does this help?

Band, Snare

I’ve been thinking about more ways I might contribute to the greater piping (and drumming) community. How useful would a repository of recorded tunes (with rolloff count) be to drummers? I’m not the best player in the world but I’m not THAT terrible. Surely others could contribute also. Record the tunes and post them to a website (this one?) for people to download, like drummers, who could then play along without having to have a piper on retainer. Would that be useful?

Concerning the recordings, I’d have to:

1. get some earplugs going with a metronome ticking away.

2. remember to count the roll off

3. not totally suck

4. perhaps focus the recordings more on the chanter and less on the drones (I’ve been doing it the other way around because drone reeds is a big focus of my blog)

5. play at a tempo useful to drummers (I’m a soloist, our band has no drummers)

6. actually play tunes drummers use in competition

7. what else…..?

All free of course. This post is all about realizing all these things based on my first few attempts at a collection of 2/4 marches where I at least added the roll off count to the beginning, but that’s about it. Tempos probably change a bit (a lot). Any drummers out there care to comment? Thanks!

Here’s my first shot at a bunch of tunes that I sort of know to maybe help somebody:

Angus Campbell’s Farewell to Stirling

Arthur Bignold of Lochrosque

Balmoral Highlanders

Cowal Gathering

Highland Wedding

Mrs. Duncan MacFadyen

The Clan MacColl

 

Adrian Melvin chanter reeds and more Rocket reeds to play with

Great Highland Bagpipe Solo, Reviews

Here’s a few clips of my carved up Colin Kyo chanter with an Adrian Melvin ridge cut reed. In an unmodified CK chanter the bottom hand comes off too sharp because the reed can’t be sunk enough to bring the top hand up sharp enough. In talking with Adrian, the reed I’m using is older and his newer ones balance much better in the CK chanter, so we’ll be ordering some direct to give them a shot for the band. CK chanters have a narrower reed seat than most chanters so if you play just about any other chanter, it isn’t necessarily something you’d have to worry about, especially since they’re better balanced now than before. His reeds have just a great crack on them. Having ordered easy strength, dry it was too hard but slobber on it a bit (quite literally) and squeeze the thick part of the ridge a few times and voila, perfect strength without any loss of crack. The crack and response from this reed is superb. Might give them a go if you haven’t already. Additional to the Melvin chanter reed, this post features Atherton MacDougall spec Rocket tenor drone reeds and a Naill spec Rocket bass drone reed in my 1950s Hendersons. The MacD bass reed was tuning on a nanometer so I switched back to my standard Naill one.

King of Loais, PM Calum Campbell’s Caprice, The Big Yin, and Scotaire Hornpipe – the first tune was chosen to feature the F which is just really sparkling with these Rocket tenors and Melvin chanter reed, as are B and D. I don’t know if it’s the chanter reed, the drone reeds, or both, but live this pipe is singing.

Skyeman’s Jig (arr. Duncan Johnstone) – out of John MacFadyen’s first book mentioned in the previous blog post. First jig in a set of jigs that ended in my drones being too far out to post the rest of the set (about time to reseason the L&M bag on these pipes, they’re getting temporally unsteady) and additionally the kids got home, opened the door, yelled at me, slammed the door, and I boogered up a few times, so, you just get the first tune, lol.