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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