An article for Chanter, the journal of the Bagpipe Society,in January 2009, in which I look back at my design of Welsh bagpipes and examine my reasons for dropping it from my range of pipes.

I was keen to read the article in the 2008 autumn issue of Chanter on PIPING IN WALES- A view of the modern pipes scene in Wales, by our Editor John Tose. It is was an interesting overview and I was pleased to see that the piping scene in Wales seems to be healthy and growing.

It is a long time since I had anything to do with Welsh piping and I knew very little about the current scene. In the article he mentioned my early reconstruction of a Welsh pipe. He described it as 'a bit of a dead end due to doubts about the Welsh origins of the chanter'.

At first I was a bit miffed when I read this, but on on further honest reflection I realised that the reason for my miffage was because there was a lot more than just a grain of truth in what he had said. I thank him for prompting me to look back and assess my Welsh pipes.

Delving into my archives I found that I had made sixteen in the eight years between March 1987 and 1995. I then dug out my Spring/Summer 1987 copy of Chanter which included three articles on Welsh pipes- one of which was by me. It was interesting to re-read this and it reminded me of the context in which I started making these pipes. I had begun bagpipe making in 1983 and turned professional in 1985. For the first dozen years or so I was developing a range of contrasting different types of instruments.

The double chanter, which was the inspiration for my Welsh pipes, was discovered around 1913 in a cottage in north Wales and was acquired by the National Museum of Wales in 1937. It has similarities to the 'Arab' or 'North African' configuration of bagpipe chanters and an intriguing feature is that it has 1701 is incised on one of the horns. If it actually is of Welsh origin and if this is its date of manufacture then it must surely be the earliest dated British bagpipe chanter of any type to have survived.

Here is an extract from my article in Chanter

At the 1985 Edinburgh Folk Festival, Peter Stacey of the Welsh group Aberjaber asked me to make him a Welsh bagpipe based on the double chanter in the Welsh Folk Museum, St Fagans. It was something we had discussed several times since we had first met at the Pitt Rivers bagpipe and hurdy gurdy weekend in Oxford in Sept 1984.

Peter wanted the pipes to play in D, to be in modern pitch, to be reliable, and to retain their primitive appearance. The current revival of interest in bagpipes has encouraged the making of instruments of high quality and superior finish. This is good, but it is often forgotten that many of the pipes of the past would have been crudely made- like the unique example in St Fagans. Its construction, however, lends itself very easily to having the chanters made to the required standard, but leaving the yoke, the waxing and binding fairly basic in appearance.

I was sent drawings of the chanter by Roy Saer of the museum. Two cane chanters, each with six finger holes and each terminating in a cows horn, are waxed and bound onto a wooden yoke which shows obvious signs of having once been tied into a bag.

To produce an instrument that meets modern requirements I have made some modifications. I have made a removable yoke which fits into a stock. This allows access to the reeds, which are double. The chanters are of yew with thumb holes for the top octave note. There are two holes for the top leading note, giving one the option of a flattened or sharpened note. The bores are slightly tapered, but they behave like parallel bores, sounding a low note. It is a Small-pipe, but has surprisingly loud as the horns amplify the sound.

I never actually saw the St Fagans chanter, so I worked solely from the drawings that I was sent. At the time I was developing these pipes the original chanter had been removed from display for testing. I imagine that the wax might contain traces of local pollens and that it would be straightforward to analyse the wood, cord and horn to see if they throw light on whether it is of Welsh or or North African origin. I think the chanter is back on display now. Does anyone know about the findings and conclusions? I would like to read about that.

So with the benefit of 14 years of hindsight.... why did I stop offering to make my Welsh pipe? Was it just because of the doubts about of the origin of the original chanter? I has been an interesting and rewarding exercise to mull over this. The fact is that, by the time I had finalised my design, I had diverged so much from the original chanter that I had really rather lost touch with its 'essence'. Some of the range of the pipes that I make are based on museum examples: I copy the original in the greatest detail possible to obtain a faithful reproduction of the original. With others I include modifications to allow the pipes to play in pitches more useful for modern players.

But my Welsh pipe was in no way a copy of the original. I was working to Peter's practical and reasonable specifications and this lead to inevitable compromises in design. If I had made a faithful working copy of the original it might have been fascinating and charming in its own right, but with few possibilities for a 20^th century piper to play along with other musicians. In fact a faithful copy would certainly have been a commercial dead end!

Some of the major changes were.

* The bore. Although I never received a measurement for the inside bore of the cane chanters I assumed that they were wide and were intended for single reeds. In my first design I did use wide bores and single reeds, but I was not happy with their performance. And ultimately this confirmed my guiding belief that in my hands single reeded chanters are uncooperative, unreliable and perfidious. Let others use them. I decided to renounce using single reeds in any of my bagpipe chanters in this lifetime and devote my days to double reeded chanters. I will leave single reeded chanters to any future incarnations that I may be granted. From then on I used double reeds in my Welsh pipes and this necessitated designing chanters with narrow bores.

* Drones and tempering. For me part of the joy of bagpipes is tempering the chanter to the drone- establishing a pleasing relationship of the chanter notes to the drone. Peter Stacey specified that he wanted one of the bores to be used as a drone, so it was easy to temper his single chanter. (The bore that was a drone only had one hole, usually waxed up, which allowed him to drone on E, rather than D, if he unblocked it). I did make one other Welsh pipe with a drone set in a separate stock. All the other ones had the double chanters, but no drone, so I was a bit 'at sea' when it came to tempering them. I am aware that there are many piping traditions where a chanter is played without a drone, but they are not ones I have ever been involved with as a maker.

* Thumb hole. It is a practical challenge putting a top octave thumb hole into a chanter design where the chanters are held in a yoke. The yoke is supposed to be sturdy to support the chanters and yet I had to reduce this support by removing much of the wood in the yoke to allow the thumb contact with the chanters. I never felt that this was an elegant feature of the design.

* Leading note. Horns will always amplify the very bottom note of a chanter.

I decided that acoustically I did not want a bagpipe with a loud and honking leading note. Thus my design did not include one. I was surprised by how much I, as a piper, missed having a it.

I still have my two sets of Welsh pipes and I can account for another one. I wonder where the other thirteen sets are? Peter Stacey played his set on the opening track of Aberjaber's 2^nd LP. (Aberdaujaber. Sian 1410M). The pipes are accompanied by harp and hurdy gurdy and sound delightful. Jean Pierre Rasle told me that Clive Bell has played his chanters without the bag when playing with Jah Wobble. He calls them 'goat pipes'. I do not know if he has recorded with them. They are not recorded on the Jah Wobble CDs that I have. The set with the drone went to an enthusiastic piper in Florida. (While he was on my waiting list he kindly sent me a whole box of fresh Florida oranges for Christmas in an attempt to make sure I did not succumb to a cold or 'flu that winter and therefore lengthen the wait for his pipes). The late David Marshall had me make one for him that looked like an 'Arabian' pipe... I even carved an Arabic inscription on the bells. (It had a woolly bag cover and he sent me a photo of his cat sitting on it). I made one set that was bellows blown. The last set went to Austria to a teenage heavy metal guitarist. I wonder if he ever used them in his band?

It was a great project. The pipes worked well and I was fairly satisfied with my design. It was fun making a pipe where the overall finish was consciously primitive. Peter Stacey was already a fine gaita player and his recording with Aberjaber showcased the musical potential of these pipes and raised the interest in them. He later took up the saxophone and has now moved on to other musical things, though he may still play his Welsh pipes. I did not often play them myself, partly because I really missed having a bottom leading note. As a result there was no one high profile championing them. It was a fairly easy decision to let them drop out of my catalogue in the mid 1990's. And I now see that the moral for me is to never abandon my drone! Or my leading note.

I am glad that things are going the way they are going in Wales. Being an English man living in Scotland I was always a complete outsider to any Welsh revival and, apart from my contact with Peter Stacey, I was working in a bit of a vacuum. It was much later that I met Jonathan Shorland and John Tose and became acquainted with their instrument making. They are obviously right in the heart of, and part of, the revival. A good place to be!

Concious revivals of anything (not just musical) tend have a habit of not always going in the direction that may have been originally intended. One of the initial intentions of The Bagpipe Society was to spearhead the revival of English pipes and soon many of the members became entranced with French piping. The LBPS was founded to encourage the revival of Border pipes. Yet for the first two decades the majority of its members were busy playing Scottish small pipes rather than the louder border pipes. This tendency can give an opportunity to the 'founding members' of any revival to feel frustrated that it has not gone in the way they intended. It is their choice how they react! It is always wisest to see this is tendency as healthy and relish all the resulting diversity, new discoveries and new directions.

We are never in control of the future. Each of us does 'our bit' in the present and after we die things just carry on. Who was the person who made the St Fagan chanter? Was he Welsh, Arab or Berber? Or was he Greek? Did he ever in his wildest dreams wonder what impact this chanter might have in 308 years time? Will any of my 16 sets of Welsh pipes have any impact on life in the future? That is not for me to say. In the meantime I eagerly await the Spring/summer 2317 issue of Chanter. (copy date October 23^rd 2316).

Julian Goodacre January 2009