Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Where Tuners Work Best

To facilitate the 1.25 hours of tuning per piper per set, Some Kind Soul invented a bagpipe tuner.  Several souls have invented them, actually.  There are many different kinds.

The process is to hold the tuner near the end of the drone/chanter while you are playing (it takes two hands to play; already this is difficult) and determine if the drone/chanter needs to be adjusted longer or shorter (that is to say, flatter or sharper).  The tuner "hears" the sound coming out and tells you how much it is out of tune, and which way (sharp or flat).

I had not been able to find my tuner since Festival of the Trees in December, so I had been using Small Son's tuner instead. 


No biggie. His tuner is nicer, anyway, and he's not using it.  He's serving a church mission in Montreal, Canada, and speaking Mandarin.

Last week at practice, my pipes just were not playing and/or tuning well.  The reed was replaced (with an easier reed, something I for which I have been begging for months), drones were re-hemped, and still the sound was not at all lovely--even for bagpipes.  So finally the pipe major opened up the bag (the bag has a zipper on the side; handy, huh?) and reached in.  He pulled out . . . a tuner.

It was not even moist.

Then I remembered that after Festival of Trees, I needed to put my tuner somewhere in order to take it with me. 

       The pockets of my vest are too small.
       My sporran was full of iPhone.
       If I put it in the bag cover, it would fall out and be lost or trodden underfoot.

So I opened up my bag (it has a zipper on the side; handy, huh?) and put my tuner inside.  And promptly forgot about it.

Once all that had been corrected, my pipes sounded lovely, and were so much easier to play.

Tuners work better on the outside of the pipes. 

Just sayin'.