And we're off - an introduction

The idea for this blog came over me as a bit of a mad impulse. I have no idea if it will be a success or if it will be interesting, useful or even if I will manage to sustain it beyond the first few posts. Despite this doubts, I do know that if I don't start, I won't ever get the chance to finish, so thanks to Google for providing such a wonderful free blogging service which allows me to indulge such whims without the effort of setting up another blog on my own server.

This blog is about my attempts to learn to play the Northumbrian smallpipes. A little background seems to be in order at this point.

I live in England, in the East Midlands. I'm a PhD student, and rely on my feet, my bicycle and public transportation to get around as I don't have a car. I'm male, single, twenty-four years old at the time of writing. I play the recorder to enough of a standard for me to enjoy myself and have some fun with some group playing - I recently passed my grade 5 treble recorder, and I play in a couple of groups and at the local Society of Recorder Players branch. I have recorder lessons every week and get on very well with my teacher.

But I wanted to take up another instrument.

Now, I love folk music. I also love early and baroque music, the latter being particularly well-covered by the recorder (and my teacher is a baroque specialist so I get to play plenty of it). For early music I can also play the recorder, or a few other instruments which are moderately learnable for a recorder player - such as the crumhorn, something else I intend to learn one day. Folk music, on the other hand, is generally played on other things - guitars, flutes, whistles, fiddles, drums and bagpipes feature quite prominently in various traditions.

I should note at this point that the more esoteric an instrument is, the more attractive it seems to be. The recorder is quite popular, but still often perceived as a toy instrument - probably by people scarred for life by poor experiences playing the descant recorder at primary school. It's not a toy instrument, and there are a lot of recorder players about. It doesn't play all the kinds of music I like though. I need something to fill the gap. I'd love a crumhorn, and will probably get one one day, but the crumhorn is in many ways similar to the recorder, albeit it has a reed and is shaped like an umbrella handle. A hurdy gurdy would be wonderful, but perhaps that's a little too odd - I'd have to explain the basic concept of what one is to everybody every time I mentioned it.

Enter Kathryn Tickell. I have loved her music for several years. An accomplished fiddler and player of the Northumbrian smallpipes, she produces wonderfully energetic tunes as well as slower airs and things which are quite definitely in the realm of folk music which I love.

Northumbrian smallpipes? Yes! A kind of bagpipe, both a marvellously silly and remarkably ingenious instrumental concept. Take a bag made of leather, seal it as best you can, and attach a pipe to it with a one-way valve to fill it with air. Add a chanter with a double reed and some finger holes, and you've got yourself an instrument which you can play on continuously. It sounds like a blown instrument, but you never have to stop playing for breath, as the bag provides a reservoir that allows you to stop to inhale.

But why stop there? You can reduce the need for other people to share in your glory if you attach some drones to the bag to provide an accompaniment to your playing. If you really want, you can add some extra chanters too (on the uillean pipes, these are called regulators and are played with the side of the hand to add a bit of extra chordal accompaniment to the tune).

And why blow? Hook the intake pipe up to a set of bellows and you don't have to worry about damp on the reeds either, and you can keep your mouth free for singing, talking, witty banter or chastising the musicians you're supposed to be playing with.

At this point, I've reached a quandry: uillean pipes, or Northumbrian smallpipes? There are differences between them. Northumbrian pipes don't have regulators and have a closed-ended chanter. Uillean pipes need to be played sitting down so you can close the end of the chanter against the knee for some notes or to have it silent.

Northumbrian pipes are also supposed to be quiet - about as loud as a violin, which compares very favourably with the loud (and unpleasant) Great Highland Bagpipe much loathed by tourists everywhere there are men in kilts but much beloved by militaries around the world.

Since Kathryn Tickell plays the Northumbrian pipes, I was sold quite easily, and did some investigation. Eventually I joined the Northumbrian Pipers' Society and was able to hire a fairly simple set of pipes from them. These pipes, as expected, are in the traditional 'key' of F+ - so a G fingered on the chanter will come out a bit sharp of concert F, but not quite as sharp as concert F#. Wonderful.

This aside, they're a fine set of pipes, and I set about learning to play them with the aid of John Liestman's wonderful tutor book The Northumbrian Smallpipes Tutor and any advice I could wrangle from any pipers willing to help.

The first few days sort of blur together as a mess of hideous screeching and unpleasant experiences trying to keep a constant drone going, getting the hang of tuning the drones and the chanter and other such new-instrument difficulties. At home for Christmas, I was able to enlist Dad's help to construct a device much recommended by John Liestman in his book - a water manometer. This acts as a pressure gauge to help you learn how hard to squeeze the bag to make the pipes play nicely. Turns out I was being too gentle, and although we only made the contraption this morning I've already been able to gain a noteable improvement, even managing to produce a couple of tunes which my family recognised.

I can't wait until I go home and can practise without anybody listening again, but in the mean time the family are being quite supportive, which is always good. But then if they can put up with my sister self-teaching the clarinet, which is much louder, then hopefully they can handle me and my pipes (and my recorders) for a couple of weeks.

So as I write this first post (don't expect any of the others to be anywhere near as long) I've managed the following:

• A vaguely steady single drone from the low G drone, mostly in tune with the chanter
• Scale of G major on the chanter, one octave and moderately smoothly
• Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (it's the first tune in Liestmann's book)
  

Of course, many problems still remain. Particular problems of concern at the current time:

• How to press keys without the fingers slipping from the finger holes and causing squeaks
• How to remember which of the keys correspond to which note
• How to get used to the idea that for the fingered notes you lift a finger to produce a note, but for the keyed notes you have to press instead

Still, at least the society didn't send me a G set - the finger hole spacing is supposed to be smaller on those, and I'm already pushing it on the F+ chanter.

Tomorrow, more squeaking noises I expect.