Colin,
Some four to five years ago Mike Nelson devoted a great deal of time
and effort to producing a set of pipes suitable for use in schools. The
chanter was made from a plastic composite material so were parts of the
drones. The idea was that the pipes should be produced as cheaply as
could be consistent with sounding as close to normal pipes as possible.
The pipes had to be made to stand the knocks and pressures put on them
by the children.
I remember Mike saying that there were several problems with actually
getting the chanters etc. into production but these were overcome and a
protoyype set was produced for evaluation. Anthony Robb became
involved and I remember him playing a set at the Rothbury weekend
course.
I have not been involved closely with piping for 2or 3 years now so
can someone update us on how the sets progressed and has the scheme
been a sucess in schools?
Prehps there is a place for beginners sets, or part sets, to be made
from composite materials as there must be those who are put off taking
up the pipes because of the relativly high initial cost.
Dicuss!!!
Regards to all,
Guy Tindale
Original Message
From: cwh...@santa-fe.freeserve.co.uk
Date: 07/03/2009 18:31
To: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subj: [NSP] Re: malcom#39;s final solution
Excuse my ignorance on this but, many years ago (and I do mean MANY
-
possibly back in the 70's or 80's), there was a discussion regarding
making
plastic chanters for NSP as an aid to teaching in schools (thus
swapping the
pipes for the ever present recorder for music lessons etc).
I notice quite a few Scottish smallpipes now have the plastic option
but I
haven't seen plastic NSPs.
Plastic, of course, encompassing a number of man-made materials - as
with
clarinets etc.
Obviously, production of plastic pipes would be quite useless if the
chanters have to be tuned on an individual basis (and probably take
more
time - plastic not being as amiable to work with as wood).
Is this one of the reasons why it never happened - that, even in
plastic,
each chanter would have to be tuned by hand?
Just wondering.
Colin Hill
- Original Message -
From: Philip Gruar phi...@gruar.clara.net
To: Malcolm Sargeant malcolm.sargea...@ntlworld.com
Cc: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu
Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 2:09 PM
Subject: [NSP] Re: malcom's final solution
Dear Malcolm,
Yes of course - I read your post more carefully after sending mine,
and
see that you were in fact referring to an old chanter rather than
something one of our current pipemakers had done. Sorry to have
reacted
over-hastily!
I agree that some research and collating of measurements may be
interesting and useful, though of course finger hole positioning
is, and
always has been with all wind instruments, a compromise between
theoretical calculated positions and positions where the player's
fingers
can move most easily, and then undercut and adjusted for accurate
tuning -
making compromises and decisions to accomodate the balance between
pure
and tempered intevals. I do drill my fingerholes in the same very
carefully measured places on all my chanters, though these have
been
refined and slightly changed over the years. However, the
undercutting and
fine tuning is always subtly different. I'm afraid I don't think
chanter
tuning can be reduced to an exact science, precisely the same on
every
instrument!
Philip
- Original Message -
From: Malcolm Sargeant malcolm.sargea...@ntlworld.com
To: Philip Gruar phi...@gruar.clara.net
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 9:00 PM
Subject: Re: [NSP] Re: malcom's final solution
Dear Philip thank you for your mail. the half inch tone hole sizes
came
from a Fred Picknell chanter about 100 year old and been in
constant use.
This chanter belongs to Tommy Breckons and is in use today. I have
had it
here at Scunthorpe to fettle and believe me it does play. The
1/2 is a
guesstimate and of course not to be taken as scientifically as
this
survey could be. Thank you and please try to be positive, no one
is going
to come to any harm over this.
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