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Piping Again!
Jun. 6th, 2008 02:09 pmI picked up my pipes today for the first time in awhile. It felt good—the old rhythm of inflating the bag, striking in the drones and sounding the chanter still comes as second nature to me. Not surprising, perhaps, because it's really only been a few months since I was able to play for any length of time. This is the longest I've gone without playing, though, since I started; I gave the chanter and uniform I was using back to The Frost back in March because I knew I wouldn't be using them anytime soon, and I'd never got around to buying my own chanter because it just never seemed to be a good time.
Anyway, I ordered my own chanter (along with three new reeds, some black waxed hemp* and a couple of tunebooks) a couple of weeks after I returned the one I'd been using, but the sod I ordered it from never actually shipped the thing. I never heard a word from him about why, either, in spite of calling his shop once and leaving several messages via his online store's message system. Last week I finally got fed up with waiting, notified him that I was cancelling the order if he didn't tell me what was going on in three days and, after hearing nothing, had the credit card payment cancelled. I placed the same order at another place that afternoon—the place I probably should've ordered from to begin with, since they've never let me down before. A few minutes later they actually called me to say that the chanter I'd ordered was out of stock, and asked if I'd like to choose another one. I did so, and yesterday my order arrived. I tinkered with the chanter and reeds for a bit yesterday, of course—had to hemp the chanter so that it would actually stay put in its stalk on my pipes, for example—but I didn't really have a chance to just have fun with my new "toys". This afternoon, though, I managed to play for about 45 minutes. The first bit wasn't that pleasant, since the pipes can be an unforgiving instrument to players who have neglected them, but I managed to get everything more or less in tune and still had enough stamina left to play for awhile.
Like I said, it felt great. Mind, various muscles used when playing the pipes are now complaining quite grumpily at me, especially my upper left arm and my jaw and neck muscles! It's going to be awhile before I get back to where I was, endurance-wise, but at least I now have the means to do so. Overall, I think it went fairly well and I think I'm going to be playing pretty often from now on.
*Note for non-pipers: thinly-spun hemp twine, both waxed and unwaxed, is commonly used by pipers to make sure that the reeds used in bagpipes stay where they're supposed to stay, as well as to fill in the gaps where air might leak out on the sliding bits of the drones and where the drones, blowpipe and chanter attach to the pipe bag. Overall I favour the waxed kind, since it doesn't swell as much as the unwaxed variety does when it gets wet, but for the drone slides themselves I usually use just the unwaxed yellow kind because the waxed kind tends to stick.
Anyway, I ordered my own chanter (along with three new reeds, some black waxed hemp* and a couple of tunebooks) a couple of weeks after I returned the one I'd been using, but the sod I ordered it from never actually shipped the thing. I never heard a word from him about why, either, in spite of calling his shop once and leaving several messages via his online store's message system. Last week I finally got fed up with waiting, notified him that I was cancelling the order if he didn't tell me what was going on in three days and, after hearing nothing, had the credit card payment cancelled. I placed the same order at another place that afternoon—the place I probably should've ordered from to begin with, since they've never let me down before. A few minutes later they actually called me to say that the chanter I'd ordered was out of stock, and asked if I'd like to choose another one. I did so, and yesterday my order arrived. I tinkered with the chanter and reeds for a bit yesterday, of course—had to hemp the chanter so that it would actually stay put in its stalk on my pipes, for example—but I didn't really have a chance to just have fun with my new "toys". This afternoon, though, I managed to play for about 45 minutes. The first bit wasn't that pleasant, since the pipes can be an unforgiving instrument to players who have neglected them, but I managed to get everything more or less in tune and still had enough stamina left to play for awhile.
Like I said, it felt great. Mind, various muscles used when playing the pipes are now complaining quite grumpily at me, especially my upper left arm and my jaw and neck muscles! It's going to be awhile before I get back to where I was, endurance-wise, but at least I now have the means to do so. Overall, I think it went fairly well and I think I'm going to be playing pretty often from now on.
*Note for non-pipers: thinly-spun hemp twine, both waxed and unwaxed, is commonly used by pipers to make sure that the reeds used in bagpipes stay where they're supposed to stay, as well as to fill in the gaps where air might leak out on the sliding bits of the drones and where the drones, blowpipe and chanter attach to the pipe bag. Overall I favour the waxed kind, since it doesn't swell as much as the unwaxed variety does when it gets wet, but for the drone slides themselves I usually use just the unwaxed yellow kind because the waxed kind tends to stick.
