Several years ago I was invited to conduct a workshop for a non-competition band. I hadn’t worked with this band before and really had no idea of what to expect. I attended a function the night before where the band had been hired to put on a performance. This was actually very helpful in understanding the challenges that the band was facing. I observed a neatly attired group that struggled with just about every aspect of the instrument and its music. I noted that the sound was very weak, poorly set, and that there were many corks sticking out of various drones around the circle.
The next day I began the workshop by asking several questions. How long had they been together? How long had various members been playing? Where they received their instruction, etc? I wanted to get a sense of the history. If I could find bedrock, well, that’s not a bad place to establish a foundation. From there we could move forward.
I asked about the sound and the corks. The band had made a commitment to play synthetic (plastic) chanter reeds because “cane is just too hard to blow”. I took a risk. I called the Pipe Sergeant up to the front of the room and asked him to strike up his pipes. In so doing, his blowpipe and chanter both popped out of their respective stocks! Everybody laughed, except me. I just smiled, but inside I was thinking “Here we go!”
We put the bagpipe on the table and started by checking all the fittings. All sections were loose and wobbling in the stocks. None of the seals were airtight. We corked the drones and found that two stocks weren’t tied in securely leaving air to escape. Little by little we worked our way through the bagpipe correcting various fundamental issues. All told, the two stocks had to be re-tied, every tenon was loose and losing air, and drone reeds all required adjustment to sound and behave correctly.
After fixing all the obvious issues the piper almost blew his synthetic reed through the bottom of the chanter! I had a number of cane chanter reeds already blown-in and ready to hand out. I took a calculated risk and put one into this bagpipe. I had the piper blow up once again and quickly turned his drones. I turned to face the class and everyone was scribbling notes and looking amazed! The piper couldn’t believe how easy his bagpipe was to blow and how well it sounded.
Of course, this was just one small step along the path. From this point we talked about blowing properly for a particular set-up and blowing steady. We talked about clean strike-ins and cut-offs and playing in unison. The happy ending is that a few years later they decided to compete in Grade 5. After a year or two they were moved up to Grade 4.
The bottom line here is that the proper instruction can make all the difference. Yes, the GHB is complicated. It’s also 100% logical. If there is an issue, there is also a solution.
