by Bob OrdComposed by: TraditionalWild Hills o' Wanny & Roslyn Castle THE NORTHUMBRIAN BAGPIPE AND ITS MUSIC ======================================
By Bob Ord Having grown up with the sound of the Northumbrian Pipes in my ears, I wished to reproduce their sound using the Music 5000. Originally descended from a French Court instrument called the "Mussette" and the "English Shuttle Pipe" the Northumbrian Bagpipes are bellows blown rather than mouth blown, and being an indoor instrument they are not as loud as their Highland cousins. Like the Highland Bagpipe the Northumbrian Bagpipe has a chanter on which the melody is played. Unlike the Highland Bagpipe the drones which play an accompaniment, do not lie up against the left shoulder but across the chest. After looking at the waveform of the chanter upon an oscilloscope, I did a Fourier Analysis to extract the required harmonics to produce the sound of the chanter, which resulted in the following instrument definition. 2 CHANS 1 CHAN Clear Flat Soft 120 AMP ON RM 2 POS 2 CHAN Hollow Flat Onoff 120 AMP -2 POS The same procedure was done for the drone which yielded the following: 2 CHANS 1 CHAN Clear Flat Onoff 110 AMP ON RM 2 POS 2 CHAN Hollow Flat Onoff 120 AMP -2 POS As far as realism is concerned the words used to define both the chanter and the drones are sufficient to fool my father. "So what", you say. He makes and plays the Northumbrian Bagpipe. Those of you who would like to use the sound of the Northumbrian Bagpipe in your music will have to bear in mind the following: The seven key Chanter can only play the following notes above middle C. 0:D E +F G A B C +C D +D E +F G A B Hence tunes in the keys of G and D can be played. Since the fingering of the Chanter is a closed fingering (i.e. with fingers on all holes no sound is made from the Chanter), it is possible to score rests and to separate the notes with a small silent delay. For this pause I have used '-2 Len' in the score for the Chanter. I have used the 'Echo' instruction to give the performance of these tunes presence, using one echo with typical reverberation settings. The four Drones are tuned: a) -1:D can be retuned to E b) -1:G can be retuned to A c) 0:D can be retuned to E d) 0:G can be retuned to A All Drones can be turned on or off independently. Scores for the drones generally take the following form: %STAFF SCORE48,3BAR -1:144,G(DG)| number tune bars + 1 FOR(~G(~D~G)|)FOR For a tune in the key of G major. |
Source: AMPLINEX 010 disk, file $.NBAGPIP |
Published in AMPLINEX 010, March 1989
