Live Q&A: Practice Chanters vs. Bagpipe Chanters Explained & A New Exercise to Master Your Top Hand
by Jori Chisholm, Founder of BagpipeLessons.com
Last Updated: August 9, 2024
Join me for a quick live session where I answer the common question about the differences between the practice chanter vs. the bagpipe chanter, and practice pipes vs. bagpipes. I demonstrate the excellent R.G. Hardie & Co. Twist Trap Practice Pipes. Also, I’ll show you my new exercise for mastering your top hand execution by focusing on your weakest finger: your left ring finger. I discuss the importance of maintaining a soft touch to improve clarity, consistency, and overall dexterity.
Watch the video and scroll down to read a summary or the full video script.
Summary
- Introduction to Bagpipes: The role of the drones and the pipe chanter in producing the instrument’s distinctive sound.
- Practice Chanter: A crucial tool for beginners, designed to help learners master finger positioning and basic music techniques in a quieter, more manageable way.
- Pipe Chanter: Larger holes, conical bore, and louder, brighter sound, which are essential for performance.
- Reed Differences: Practice chanters typically use plastic reeds, while pipe chanters use cane reeds, which require more breath control and produce a different sound quality.
- Bore Shape: The conical bore of the pipe chanter effects the sound and why the hole sizes vary along the chanter.
- E-Strike Exercise: Designed to improve finger dexterity, particularly focusing on the top hand, which is crucial for advanced piping techniques.
- R.G. Hardie Twist Trap Practice Pipes: A versatile tool that allows for practice with drones in a quieter setting, offering a hybrid experience between a practice chanter and a full set of bagpipes.
- YOUTUBELIVE: a special discount offer for viewers, as a token of appreciation for their participation.
Video Transcript: Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in live. If you are in the chat, just go ahead and put a comment in there, introduce yourself, say your name, where you’re from in the world. We’d love to hear from you. If you’re just joining me live or if you’re watching on the replay, stay to the end. I have a special offer for you at the BagpipeLessons.com shop, so stick around.
If you are a piper, what I’m about to tell you is probably very obvious, but I get this question pretty regularly through my website, and that is the difference between a practice chanter and a pipe chanter or a bagpipe chanter. On the pipes, we’ve got the bag and the blowpipe, and then the three drones that are up on your shoulder, and the drones make that background sound that gives it that hum, that gives that distinctive sound of the pipes. The main melody is coming out of the pipe chanter, which is out in front of you. It has the holes that you raise and lower your fingers to play the different melody notes on the pipe chanter.
There is a practice instrument called a practice chanter, and if you’re interested in getting started on the pipes, you start on the practice chanter first. So this is what a practice chanter looks like. You got the bottom part where the fingers go, you have the top part that you blow into, and the top part, when you remove it, you got the reed. So here’s your practice chanter reed. This is a plastic one. Most reeds are plastic these days. It just makes that little resonant, little buzzy sound, and then when you put it into the practice chanter, so you can play it that way. Nobody plays it that way. You put the top over it, and it doesn’t touch the reed. It just goes over it. There’s a little chamber in there.
So when you’re starting out on the pipes, you get the practice chanter. The holes are nice and small. You can see that there. Yeah, these holes are countersunk, which means they’re slightly wider at the top to make it easier to feel. And that’s where you learn your fingering. If the bagpipes are your first instrument, this is where you learn a little bit about reading music, playing with rhythm, tapping your foot, that sort of thing. And I usually recommend that you learn a handful of pipe tunes so that when you’re ready to transition to the pipes, you’re not totally starting from scratch.
This is the Infinity pipe chanter from R.G. Hardie. This is my favorite bagpipe chanter. And you can see here that the holes are way bigger. So like this low G-hole, I can fit my pinky all the way in there. It’s a pretty big hole, right? So if you have the practice chanter and the pipe chanter next to each other, you can see there’s quite a difference there. So we can get a nice view. Yeah, big difference. So, why don’t they make the pipe chanter holes smaller? Well, it has to do with the sound that you’re trying to produce. Let me pull a Foundation reed out of my Tone Protector Reed Case here. Squeak! Squeak! Go way louder. This pipe chanter reed is made from cane, which is like a bamboo kind of material. And the idea is that it gives us that really bright, projecting, crisp sound that we love from the bagpipes.
So, if you blow on here, it’s probably going to blow out my microphone and we’ll see what happens here. Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Whoo! Yeah, it’s really loud, takes a lot more pressure, produces a lot more volume, and it has a different quality of sound than we have on the practice chanter. The practice chanter is a practice instrument. It has that low-pitched, buzzy, warm sound. It’s not a performance instrument. There is a category, if you’re going to enter bagpipe competitions, for the practice chanter competition. This is really for people that are just absolute beginners. I never played in a practice chanter competition. I kind of don’t really see the point, but maybe if you just want to get started there on that competition route.
So, we don’t really care what the practice chanter sounds like, but the pipes, we want that big, bright sound that we get from the pipe chanter and those big holes and that big, bright reed. The other difference is that, just the way the physics of the pipe chanter works is that this is a conical bore, meaning it’s a cone. So, it’s really narrow at the top and then it widens out, and you can see it’s really, it’s quite wide at the bottom. I can get my finger all the way in there. So, that wide bore narrows just like a cone shape, an inverted cone, whereas in the practice chanter, it’s a straight bore. It’s just this skinny little, almost like a little bit wider than a tube of spaghetti, but it’s got quite a narrow bore all the way down.
So, if you’re interested in that, you can get online and you can read about the physics of conical bores and straight bores. That also explains why in the practice chanter all the holes are basically the same size. And then on the pipe chanter, the holes get bigger as you go down. There’s just really nothing you can do about that. It’s the physics of the conical bore.
So that is the difference. No, you cannot use a pipe chanter as a practice chanter. It just doesn’t work. First of all, you wouldn’t want to. It’s way too loud. You have to blow way too hard. It’s not practical. It also doesn’t serve the purpose of being a practice instrument, which is easy to blow and quiet and easy to play and comfortable where you can focus on the fingering. But I do get that question pretty regularly on the website, especially when people hear about the Infinity chanter and they love the idea of the Infinity chanter. These holes are smaller than most of the other pipe chanters on the market. But you’ll see that they are still bigger than the practice chanter.
There is a really cool option here. R.G. Hardie has this cool instrument, which is called the Twist Trap Practice Pipes. So this is a set of bagpipes. And they call it the Twist Trap because in their practice chanter top, this is the Twist Trap practice chanter that I showed you earlier. In the top, there’s a little water trap in there. And you can twist it to open it up. And it catches some of the spit and condensed moisture from your breath. Keeps it from getting on your reed. So they call these the Twist Trap Practice Pipes. So like a bagpipe, it’s got a blowpipe, it’s got a chanter, it’s got the bag, and it has two drones. It has a really cool sound. So let me just show you what this sounds like.
Yeah, so cool sound. It’s got the drones, it’s got a mellower sound, so these are actually more like a set of small pipes. And Scottish small pipes don’t have that big bright loud pipe chanter sound. They have a quieter, buzzier, lower pitched chanter sound, and that’s what these have. And a cool thing that R.G. Hardie has done: this chanter that comes with these Twist Trap practice pipes, you can remove it and you can remove the top, and the top and the bottom go together, so it is a practice chanter. So what some people were really hoping they could do is take their Infinity pipe chanter from their bagpipes and use it as a practice chanter. That doesn’t work, but with the Twist Trap Practice Pipes, it does work.
So this is a great option if you’re looking to get a practice chanter and you want to have a cool set of pipes that you can practice playing and tuning the drones and have that cool continuous sound from the back. So there it is. I do have these in my shop. It’s a very cool setup. They’ve got a great sound. It’s got a good pitch if you want to play with other instruments, fiddle, guitar, piano, that sort of thing. It’s got the nice lower pitch to be in tune with concert pitch and also the volume is better. It has a common stock so it means it has one stock for both drones. You pull that out and there you can see these drones actually use these red practice generators for the drones. Very cool.
So you can see how the bag really comes in handy because if you have the two drones and then a chanter with the reed on each one, it’d be really hard to have those all in your mouth and get pretty crowded in there. So the bag allows you to do a couple things, one is that it allows you to have multiple pipes. Here we have two drones on the Highland pipes. You have three drones plus the chanter. So it allows you to have multiple reeds all plugged into the bag, and you only have to put one thing in your mouth. And that’s the blowpipe. And secondly, the bag acts as an air reserve and a buffer so you can have a continuous sound even when you’re taking a breath. So as long as you’re maintaining the right air pressure with your arm on the bag, and squeezing the air out of all the pipes and the reeds, you can take a breath. So that’s a cool feature. So I really like these Twist Trap Practice Pipes. They basically take zero maintenance because the bag is synthetic. All the parts are plastic, made out of that high quality acetal, or some people call it delrin or Polypenko. All the reeds are plastic. There’s nothing natural here except for the bag cover, the fabric of the bag cover. So zero maintenance, cool sound, so these are the R.G. Hardie Twist Trap Practice Pipes. Woo-hoo. Cool.
All right, what else was I going to show you? I’m going to make a longer video about this exercise, but I have a cool top-hand exercise that I’ve been working on and it’s for improving the lightness and the looseness with your top hand. A lot of people have trouble with the top hand of their pipes, especially when they’re on the pipes and the hands are getting tired and they’re squeezing tight. And for most, for everybody, your ring fingers are your least coordinated fingers, and your non-dominant hand is the weakest out of the two. So for most of us who are right-handed, your left-hand ring finger is the weakest one. So I’ll make a full video on this at another point, but I wanted to share with you what I’ve been working on.
So if you were to just play just the E with it, with it just a low A tap, so this is not just working on your E strikes, but what you’re working on is keeping that top hand nice and relaxed and loose. If you’re doing this, really trying to push out a strong low, that’s no good. Remember the two pillars of good form: keep your hands soft and keep the fingers in nice and close to the chanter. So not hard and stiff and not squeezing hard and not raising super high. Just a nice relaxed, I like to use the natural bounciness and springiness of my finger, not slamming it down and not pressing it down but just letting it kind of bounce. This is a good thing to practice on the chanter, also on the pipes. Even if you don’t care about E strikes, which you should, but if you don’t particularly care about the things in this exercise, if you master this exercise, this is going to help you with your top hand dexterity. If you can play this exercise, it means you’re keeping your hand nice and relaxed.
So the next step is going to be to do a low A and then an E. Now dot the low A and cut the first E before the strike. Great. Next we’re going to do the strike with a G gracenote on it, something like this. If you know Amazing Grace, this is the same movement we have in Amazing Grace, but instead of on D, we put the low A in front of it. Now dot the low A. Great. Now it gets really hard, but this is really where you want to push yourself to master the next three steps here. So if you play hornpipes, there’s this thing called a hornpipe strike. Some people call it a hornpipe movement or a doubling strike or a pele, and this is two gracenotes followed by the strike.
So just to review: first we did the simple strike tapping, then we did a gracenote strike with the G gracenote. Now we’re going to do a G gracenote, F gracenote strike. So it’s like an E doubling and then the strike. It’s possible you’ve never played one of these; they’re pretty rare. Again, this exercise is not about playing this movement. It’s about mastering your top hand and improving your dexterity on your top hand. So doubling strike, G gracenote, F gracenote strike at the low A. Okay, now dot the low A. I’m going to put a link to this in the video description below and you can download this exercise.
So this is mastering your top hand ring finger, which means you’ve mastered good form and you’re maximizing your speed and consistency and your dexterity of your top hand. This is a great thing to work on the practice chanter and then try to transfer it over to your pipes by focusing on using your shoulder and your upper back muscles to squeeze the bag and keeping your bicep relaxed so that your forearm and your wrist and your hand can stay relaxed. So that’s going to help.
Cool, well that’s all that I had for today. If you’re watching on the replay, go ahead and put any comments, any questions you have in the comments. We’d love to hear from you, where you are in the world, what you’re up to. I know it’s a really busy time of year. Competitions are happening all over the world and good luck to everybody who’s going to the Highland Games, going to festivals, competitions. If you’re competing in Scotland at the World Pipe Band Championships or some of the other big events there, have a great time. Good luck. I’d love to hear from you. If you’re a fan of my YouTube channel and you’re out there in the world and you’re doing some cool stuff, let me know. Post a comment in one of the videos.
If you’re using our Tone Protector, InTune Mic, or any of my other piping products as part of your winning strategy, we’d love to hear from you. Send us an email, post a comment. I have a special deal for everyone who stayed to the end at my BagpipeLessons.com shop, which is BagpipeLessons.com/shop. I’m going to give you 20% off on any of our products. So this is Tone Protectors, InTune Mic, Bagpipe Gauge, Piper’s Ultimate Reed Poker, all the Tone Protector Packets and extra batteries, the Piper’s Advantage Bagpipe Phone Mount, the Perfect Angle Blowpipe Positioner, you name it. All of my products, 20% off. So go to BagpipeLessons.com/shop and type in the coupon, YOUTUBELIVE. There you go.
YOUTUBELIVE, and that gets you 20% off our products in the shop. So get yourself loaded up. And that’s my thanks to you for watching and for being part of my channel. Good luck, everybody out there.
We’ll see you next time. Happy piping and mahalo.
Thank you.
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