This Friday's lesson was focused on the chanter and working out the kinks in the new march I'm learning.  This new march is technically easier than say, Muir of Ord, and 79ths Farewell to Gibralter.  Those other two were a bit much for me at my stage of learning.  While the 79ths I could play from memory (most of it) the timing and dot cut was still a ways off from being correct.

This new march "Prince Charles Welcome to Lochaber" is a nice musical tune, fun to play and has just the right amount of difficulty right now.  It is another dot cut tune but the arrangement is such that it doesn't play mind tricks on you like 79ths did.  At this stage of the tune I have all of the fingering down pretty good, the embellishments are good, just need to work on the timing and tempo and clean up a few spots here and there.

The last couple of months at the office has been extremely busy, probably the busiest we have been in 13 years of operation and that has put a damper on my ability to practice when I get home, I'm just dead tired!  Even so, I still have to fit some practice time in here and there.  With the weather getting better (slightly) and the days getting longer I am now able to pipe outside, which is nice since I can march back and forth in the yard.

Next week I don't have a lesson on Friday, Helen will be at the BC indoor competition up at SFU in Vancouver.  I went last year and it was held in a small high school and was very chaotic, this year having it at the SFU should be much better.  I'm bummed that I won't be able to go.  Maybe next year!

This week I received a dozen new chanter reeds from Chris Apps of "Apps Reeds".  They came in a nifty little reed case which is pretty cool all by itself.

Any how I had read that other McCallum owners were very happy with their App's reeds and I was getting low on my current supply of Ross so I thought I would give them a try too.  I ordered a dozen medium strength reeds directly from Chris and it took about a week for them to arrive.

Helen and I popped one in my chanter and gave it a whirl, the first thing we noticed was that they were very easy, much easier than I was hoping for.  We poked the reed to open it up a bit and that helped but we ended up needing to tape the chanter G and F holes to deal with other issues.

Even so, I think I am going to return half of them and ask for some stronger reeds, these are way to easy and won't last long with me.  I don't like gut busters, but I don't like way easy reeds either.

I will play with the App's reeds for a bit to get used to them, I won't give up on my Ross reeds because they too sound pretty decent.  Time will tell.

... is something most people wouldn't normally attribute to piping, or specifically what you often do to a cane chanter reed.  Some would say that you shouldn't ever lick or pinch your reeds. There are, however good reasons to do so, more on that subject later.

Today was my first lesson with Jori Chisholm in Seattle.  I didn't really know what to expect and just went in with an open mind and figured I would just go with the flow.  The first half of my lesson was more of a "get acquainted" period, we chatted about our interests, why I wanted to learn to play the pipes, how he got into piping, why I drive a big blue dodge diesel truck... stuff like that.

After we got that out of the way Jori had a look at my pipes, overall I think he was pleased with them.  There were three things I wanted to address regarding my pipes during this visit.

1) My chanter reeds

2) My Posture when playing

3) My chanter position (related to posture)

The first thing Jori looked at was the reed I had in my chanter and the 2 extra I had in my reed box.  The two in the box were pretty hard, I think he ended up working on the one I already had in my chanter.

Jori scraped the sides of the reed with a razor knife to take some of the bulk off the lower section of the reed, he then took a dental rubber band and wrapped it around the bridle of the reed to ease it up a bit.  What I really appreciated during this process is that Jori explained each thing as he did it.  What the effects of doing this or that would have in relation to how the reed operated and sounded.  I really could relate to that level of information, it made other aspects of piping and pipe setup come into focus.

Then a quick "lick and pinch" and I put the chanter back in the pipes.  Oh, the lick and pinch thing?  OK, here's the deal.

When you play the pipes your warm breath creates moisture in the bag and warms up the reed and makes it vibrate better.  If you have a dry reed to start with and just start playing, the reed will absorb enough moisture in about 20 minutes to settle the reed and start sounding good.  By "licking" and "pinching" its like you had been playing for 20 minutes already, in other words why expend the energy in getting your reed to the point it is sounding good and settling in when you can start out that way from the beginning? 

Lick and Pinch... we are not talking about slobbering all over it and squeezing the beejezus out of it, just a dainty touch to the tongue and a ever so slight squeeze.

I blew up the pipes, struck in and played a low A and High A alternately while he adjusted my drones.  The difference was very apparent, much easier to blow and the tone was sooo much better.  I was very happy!

One unfortunate side effect of my trouble with reeds lately was I was blowing way to hard, WAY to hard!  Jori explained more fundamentals on blowing and gave me some suggestions on what to look for and how to work on steady blowing on the high A.  If I recall correctly, the goal is to find your optimum blowing pressure at high A and maintain that same pressure for all of the lower notes. 

The reason you pick high A is because you can hear the differences in blowing pressure at high A much easier than you can with any other note, and it takes more blowing pressure to sound high A than any of the other notes, AND you want your blowing to be CONSISTENT all of the time across all of the notes.

Jori had a manometer which he plugged into my outside tenor drone, 30" of pressure was my sweet spot.  Playing a tune and watching that meter, and having Jori adjust my drones was a lot to keep focused on but it was fun to try!  This is my Manometer, simple to make and very sensitive to pressure.

I could have never done all that with with my reed the way it was the night before, but I was able to play High Road to Gairloch at least twice through and a few High A and Low A transitions without too much effort.

With that out of the way we addressed my posture and it would appear my blowstick is a little to long. Fortunately I had purchased an adjustable blowstick a few months ago so I will try that and see what sort of effect that has on my chanter position and posture.

With the pipes taken care of we moved onto the chanter work. There wasn't much time left so it was a short session, probably 10 minutes at most.  Jori had me sight read through the "Muir of Ord", this is a tune that I just started on with Helen about two weeks ago but as luck would have it the only time I actually worked on the tune was with Helen during my lessons.  Needless to say I picked my way through the tune stopping at each note and embellishment, it was a little nerve wracking but I made it to the end of the tune.

Jori commented that my fingering technique is good and what would really help me is to get my sight reading up to speed since when I figured out what the embellishment that was to be played, I played it well.  That was a huge confidence boost to me so I was really happy to hear it.

I commented that I thought the 79Th's Farewell to Gibraltar was harder than the Muir of Ord and Jori said it was the other way around!  After discussing this with my instructor Helen I think we both (Helen and I) agree, a measurement of difficultly is more than just the notes and embellishments, it is the arrangements of those notes and embellishments and how they link up and are played that can make a simple looking tune, actually more challenging to play.

So my new "march" for March is "Prince Charles Welcome to Lochaber", it is a tune that would fit between 79Th's and Muir in terms of difficulty.

My next lesson with Jori is in 4 weeks.  Now I know what to expect and I'm sure things will get more challenging the next time around.  I recall the comment, "I like to pile things on", Hmmm, I think I better get busy practicing!

The thing about cane reeds is that they never last as long as you wish they would.  Just about the time you get them sounding good without turning red and then blue in the face, they give up on you.

Sure, you can poke, pinch, and manipulate them but that only buys you a little bit of time, in the end they die a horrible squawking, or squealing... death.  It is always a good idea to work with a new reed well before your trusty old one dies an untimely death.  By working a reed, or two in a little bit at a time, you won't have to blow your guts out working with a new, strong, and difficult to blow reed.

Sadly, I'm not one of those "look ahead pipers", although I do try to be proactive, I'm not nearly experienced enough to poke, pinch or manipulate a reed into even barely passable shape.

Today's lesson started out working on three new reeds I had in my reed box, my current reed was well on its way out (judging from the wincing Helen was doing, it was long gone, a while ago!).  Any how Helen worked on getting the three reeds into playing shape, they are gut busters but I'm a pretty strong blower so it will take a few days for me to work them in.

I did order up a bunch of App's reeds.  I had some good feedback from several other players with setups like mine and they were all very happy with the sound.  I'm looking forward to getting my new stash of reeds.  I have been using Ross reeds up to now and I have no complaints so far, all of my reeds from Ross have been very good and I will continue to use them.  Experimenting with different things in piping is a good thing, and reeds can have the most profound affect on the sound of a set of pipes.

We'll see what the Apps reeds sound like, I'm excited to get my hands on them.  Meanwhile I have three new reeds to work in.  Time to get out there and start huffing and puffing!

Oh, I just couldn't think of anything else to write about this week.  Nothing much to report, except for a new piece of tech hardware to add to my piping addiction!

I have been lamenting that I did not have a decent way to record my lessons or practices. With my up coming sessions with Jori Chisholm I felt getting a portable recording device was going to be even more important.

I did some research and asked around to see what other pipers were using and finally settled on the Marantz PMD660 Digital Recorder.  This is a really nice piece of hardware, professional grade and all digital, even has phantom 48vdc mic inputs so I picked up a pair of matched MXL 603 stereo mic's and some XLR patch cords.  I'm all set for on site and at home recording, I can get 48kbit MP3's in stereo, very high quality PCM files as well.

Today I brought it over to Lopez to record my lesson with Helen just to get used to how it operates.  It is very easy to use but will take a little fiddling to get the input levels figured out for chanter and pipe recording.

One handy, and humorous feature is 2x audible playback.  Makes you sound like Chip and Dale, and Helen is very funny sounding at 2x speed... "ok, enough torture for today, ahem".

Well you just have to hear it to get the full effect.  Speaking of hearing things, if I get anything decent enough to listen to I'll post some sound files.  You may be in for a long wait though.