Pastoral Pipes - Bagpipes for all!

The pastoral pipes are a very rare breed of British bagpipe. They were the ancestors of the lovely irish uilleann pipes, the sound of which is utterly distinct from the Highland pipes, and has been described as a "honeyed hive of sound"

Many people get completely hung up by the word "bagpipe" and all its associations; sporrans, glens, shortbread and so forth. Well, they really need to get over it because they're missing out on something fantastic.

So, the pastoral pipes came along in the early 18th century when they were promoted as something that every gentleman ought to count amongst his accomplishments. At this time there was nothing particularly gaelic about them, but by the end of that century they seem to have transmogrified into the Union Pipe, which may or may not have had something to do with the Act of Union. And then, in the 20th Century, they were again adapted and became the Uillean pipe of today.

One of the challenges of bagpipes is that you have no embouchure - so no tonguing notes, and no help to leap around between octaves. The Uilleann pipes are played on the knee, so the end of the pipe is closed, and you raise the fingers for a note, so stacatto is possible, and you can raise the pressure to jump octaves. This help isnt available in the pastoral pipe, but somehow they did it, as the surviving music attests. It would all have been in the reed.

Unfortunately, no reeds survive. Now the reed not only generates the sound, but it constitutes part of the bore of the instrument. So the reconstruction of the instrument from surviving chanters is handicapped from the start.

This chap Anderson http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/music/index.html speaks authoritatively about pastoral pipes. Chris Bayley has made them in the past, and he was very helpful to me in the bag design and construction. There's also a substantial article in Wikipedia.

The pipes are a project of Dave Armitage, my tutor at the London Metropolitan University woodwind department. He has a vision that they could become popular again, perhaps played in sessions, if they could fit in better with other instruements, and over come the problems of the octave leap.

My pipes are making good progress. They all told me to buy a bag, but I had to make one. It really hurt! You have to pull the threads through 4 layers of leather and after a bit your hands fall to pieces.

The drone stock it not yet fitted to the bag - it means one less complication, and a source of leaks while I learn what to do with the chanter.

And then there's the reed making - worth a blog in their own right.

Watch this space! Pastoral pipes are sound of the future!