Good points.
I suppose as the pipes are essentially a solo instrument, it wouldn't matter
what note they sounded provided the things were in tune with themselves.
That's essentially true for many rural instruments (I remember making penny
whistles from elder wood as a child and goodness knows what key they were in
as it depended on the size of the branches I cut) I suppose.
It's only when two or more get together that differences would show up.
Big difference when any form of mass production came in and everything was
made to the one set of plans.
Do the older instruments that still exist show this or not?
On a similar vein, what did people tune things to (prior to the invention of
the tuning for in 1711).
Colin Hill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Robb" <anth...@robbpipes.com>
To: "Dartmouth NPS" <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2011 10:08 AM
Subject: [NSP] Tuning/pitch
On 7^th Feb Colin Hill wrote:
What I can never understand is WHY the pitch changes.
Thanks Paul (Gretton) for a full & entertaining reply from an
orchestral point of view.
From the point of view of pipes we need to remember that in the 20^th
century professional Northumbrian pipe makers only came in around
1973/4. Before that David Burleigh was still stuffing animals at the
Hancock museum and Colin Ross was a lecturer in sculpture/fine art.
When, in 1967, I first asked about getting a set for myself every reply
was based on the same advice, 'find some lignum vitae mangle rollers
and make your own'. Occasionally it was 'find some ebony ledger rulers
and make your own'.
I would guess that well over 50 people took this advice and made sets
at night classes following (more or less) the plans in the Cocks &
Bryan book.
The result is that there are a fair few sets around which are (to put
it kindly) approximations to the plans but many people still stick with
these sets they or friends have made because they are dear to them.
I have 8 "F" chanters here at the moment. 4 by professional makers have
dimensions & hole spacings with 1mm of each other so could be regarded
as standardised, but the 4 "garden shed" examples vary by up to 5mm
over the single octave G to g spacings.
I well understand the frustrations caused by the variations in pipes
pitch but I suspect the same is true wherever there has been a living
tradition of people making their own instruments on which to play their
own music.
It seems to me that any change towards full standardization to say
concert F pitch could only come about by destroying 80% or more of
instruments in existence (perish the thought!).
Perhaps we just need to accept the situation as it is and make the best
of it. To be honest I find it all rather wonderful and challenging.
Cheers
Anthony
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