practice chanter recommendations?

[OC Richard]

Out of tune PCs are sort of a "pet peeve" of mine.

There's no reason a PC can't be in tune!

But let me start with a bit of background information.

Traditional PCs, what many makers are calling "standard" or "regular" nowadays, were intended to play at around Concert B Flat, the pitch pipers call "466" nowadays.

They are the length they are to get that pitch; they wanted that pitch because that's the pitch that bagpipe chanters used to be at. (Actually, of course, PCs are one octave lower than a pipe chanter.)

The holes were drilled at more or less even intervals, giving a rather sharp D and an especially sharp High G... because that's how pipe chanters were tuned in the old days!

Ironically, as the pitch of pipe chanters has steadily gone up over the last 40 years (to halfway between Bb and B), the pitch of PCs has gone down, due to the introduction of "fullsize" or "large" PCs.

These were introduced in order to have a PC that had the same fingerhole spacing as a pipe chanter, but an inadvertant result was a rather lower pitch, usually around 450, in other words around a quartertone between A and Bb.

So now that PCs have dropped a quartertone, and pipe chanters have risen a quartertone, PCs are now an octave plus a semitone lower than pipe chanters, rather than an octave as in the old days.

Regardless of a PC's pitch, it should be in tune to itself. How can a beginner develop a musical ear if he's playing all day with an out of tune scale??

Another aspect of traditional PCs is their high backpressure, far more backpressure than an instrument of that volume could possibly require. Perhaps this was done intentionally, so that the tyro would develop lip strength as he practiced. This backpressure is achieved by using a very narrow bore in the mouthpiece as well as the chanter, and a long narrow reed.

Anyhow my favourite PC is the Gibson long. It's more like a smallpipe chanter that you happen to mouthblow than a traditional PC: it's far more freeblowing (lower backpressure) and has a clearer more musical tone, due to the larger bore and completely different reed design (a short wide reed like Northumbrian smallpipes rather than the traditional PC reed).

Here's what two Gibson long PCs sound like, played together

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0md2m57tOw

The Gibson, though a "long" PC, is made to tune in around 466 (Concert Bb).

It won't tune in very well with McCallum longs and Naill longs which are very low, around 450 (halfway between A and Bb).