Hi, everyone, Today our kilt-wearing friend Shawn is back to talk about playing bagpipes. If you remember from last week, playing bagpipes was why he started wearing a kilt to begin with. Personally, I love listening to bagpipes. That is the quintessential Scottish sound.
Welcome back, Shawn! What can you tell us about playing bagpipes? Is it difficult to learn? Take a huge lung capacity? Are they loud in your ear? :)
The Great Highland Bagpipes are another Scottish invention that hasn't changed much over the years. It's a very... organic instrument. You need to blow them up pretty much every day to keep them playable. The joints are sealed with hemp string that will shrink and leak air if left to dry out. The hide bag needs to be sealed and conditioned to stay air tight. There are synthetic bags now, but hide bags are still more popular. The traditional sealer is a mixture of lanolin and sheep fat that you have to heat up, pour into the bag, knead and then hang up to let it drip out. Fortunately, I have a bag that doesn't require that. I use a synthetic sealer and conditioner.
The pipes that rest on your shoulder are called drones. Each one plays a single 'A' note. The two shorter drones play the same 'A' note and the longer drone, closest to the piper's head, plays an 'A' note one octave below that. The pipe that you hold in your hands is called a chanter. The lowest 'A' on the chanter is an octave above the tenor drones.
When I first started I thought 'How hard can this be? There's only nine notes!' There's always a catch. :)
The bagpipes are a difficult instrument to learn. As a beginner, you start off with a practice chanter which allows you to learn the fingering without the bag or drones. It looks a little like a recorder. Bagpipes never stop playing so there are no rests. To make up for this, grace notes are used. Grace notes are written as 32nd notes. Some grace notes are a single note and others are a combination of up to about six 32nd notes in a row. This is the first hurdle as even the beginner tunes have at least a few of these lighting fast combinations in them.
After a few months on the practice chanter, you can move on to the full set of pipes. Playing tunes on a full set of pipes is a little like patting your head and rubbing your belly. The tune has a rhythm, of course, but so does the bag itself. You have to alternate blowing into the bag and squeezing it with your arm at regular intervals or the pressure in the bag will drop and the pipes will go out of tune or worse, stop sounding. A piper spends about 90% of the time blowing and 10% squeezing the bag while breathing in.
Tuning a bagpipe is another trick you need to learn. Bagpipes pre-date German notation and standardized note values. The standard frequency of A above middle-C is 440 Hz (cycles per second). The frequency that pipers tune low A is between 470 and 480 Hz which means that the pipes don't play well with other instruments in general. You first have to tune the chanter to itself so that the low A and the high A are an octave apart. Whatever frequency that is, that's what your pipes 'think' A is, even though it's almost certainly not a real A. That frequency is a product of what material the chanter is made out of, who made the chanter, the chanter reed as well as the temperature and humidity of the air. Members of a pipe band will all use the same type of chanter made by the same maker and will all use the same reeds so that they can all be in tune. After the chanter is tuned, you need to tune the drones to match the chanter by sliding the joint in the middle of the drone up or down.
As a side note, the Queen's Piper has to play outside the Queen's bedroom window every morning starting at 9:00 AM. He (it's always been a man and I think it might be a requirement since the Queen's Piper is also required to be Her Majesty's escort when other member's of the Royal Family are not able to be present.) plays one seven minute set of tunes, pauses for a minute and then plays a second seven minute set. If it begins to rain or snow during the first set, he must be able to get his pipes back in tune during the one minute break in silence, which takes a lot of skill.
Huge lung capacity helps but what's more important is a strong diaphragm. Your diaphragm has to match the pressure inside the bag (which takes strength) as well as keep that pressure steady (which requires accuracy). After practicing, I usually feel like I've been doing sit-ups or crunches... it's a workout.
Highland bagpipes are loud. A chainsaw is 105db, a set of pipes is 110db and 120db is considered painfully loud. Today most pipers wear earplugs if they are playing for more than a few minutes. When pipers get older and start losing their hearing, they just play without the earplugs. In the past, infantry commanders took advantage of how loud bagpipes are to give orders to their soldiers. There would be a set of tunes and each one would mean something different... advance forward... advance rearward... flank... retreat... etc. This lead to the bagpipes being the only musical instrument that was banned as a weapon of war. The Scots Guards standard set of pipe tunes still specify tunes that require action.
In case you're interested, my pipes are made by David Naill, model DN4a.
http://www.naill-bagpipes.com/bagpipes.htmFantastic info, Shawn! Thanks for being our guest again today and sharing your knowledge! Does anyone have any additional questions?
