Now let’s tune the drones. So, take the InTune Mic off of your chanter and let’s start with the outside. I’m looking for the tenor tuning to be displayed right in the center on that sort of arced line and also showing on the tenor line that it’s straight in the middle. 

My pipes still don’t sound in tune because I’ve only got one drone in tune. Let’s move on to the middle tenor. Now the key thing when you’re using the InTune Mic is you want it to be as close as you can to the top of the drone without actually plugging the hole. Just about half an inch away.  And what that means is that the microphone is only going to be hearing that drone, and that is key for the tuner to work properly. The tuner can only listen to one sound at a time, either a drone or the chanter. So, that’s the genius of the InTune Mic is that it allows you to get that mic right up to the sound of that drone. 

I’ve actually made some sound recordings on my phone using the InTune Mic and when you have the mic right above the drone like that, that is all that you hear. Just imagine plugging one of your ears – completely blocking it off and then putting your other ear a half inch from the top of the drone, all you’re going to hear is that drone. That’s what the mic allows you to do so that your tuner hears just that drone. So, here we go now tuning the middle tenor.

There we go. And now finally, up to the bass drone.

Pretty good. Now, one of the things that you know about bagpipes is that the pitch does change as you play, as the pipes warm up, as moisture comes into the reeds, so things will change. So, the nice thing about using the Braw tuner and the InTune Mic is you can do things pretty quickly. 

But if you really want your pipes to be really perfectly in tune and last for the duration of your performance or practice, they’re going to need to get a little bit warmed up. So, the great thing about the InTune Mic is that you can clip it onto a drone, you can clip it onto your chanter, and because it’s really, really light, you won’t even know that it’s there. There are no wires, so you can wander around, you can march back and forth, you can wander and do your pibroch thing, and the mic will not get in your way. You can have your tuner somewhere that you can either look at it, or don’t look at it. 

So, this is how you get tuned up if you’re playing on your own. Meaning the exact pitch of your low A and of your drones is not that important within reason of course. But if you’re 484 one day or 482 another day, that’s not a big deal and of course, the pitch goes up and down with temperature, with humidity, with the ease of your reed, how hard you’re blowing, so the exact pitch maybe isn’t that important but getting everything in tune is important. 

If you’re playing in a pipe band, you do have to match a specific pitch. So, often when you’re playing in a band, the pipe major will say, “Okay we are going to be at 482.” So, what that means is you want to get your drones to 482, you want to get your chanter to 482, whatever that number is. Often when a pipe band is tuning, we’ll warm up for a while then we’ll get a reading off of one person.  Often it’s the pipe major or it might be someone else in the band who’s sort of a leader in the tuning and tone department and we’ll get a reading off that person’s low A. 

Maybe we’ll check a few other people and we’ll find out what the pitch is going to be for the band today. So, whatever that number is, once you have that number, you can program that right into your app. So instead of using the current average, you just plug in whatever that number is by clicking set manually, and you would type in 482 or whatever that is, then you can use that to tune your drones. 

So, this is a great way to use the InTune Mic in a band situation. If you know the number, you can plug it right in. Maybe you don’t know the exact number but you’re going to go off the pipe major. In the old days, one person would get tuned up and then they would go around the circle and play with other players and you would tune by ear and try to make adjustments so that everyone matches. 

So, what you could do now: once the pipe major or whoever’s leading the tuning team is in tune, you can just get a reading right off their low A or you could get a reading right off of one of their drones with your InTune Mic and calibrate it that way. So, you could use the current average feature by measuring the pitch of a drone or a chanter of another person in the band or you can just plug in ‘set manually.’

So, now I’ve put it out of tune, so let’s go back and I’m going to recalibrate my low A and then I’m going to tune the chanter. The other thing that I found is by clipping the InTune Mic to the bottom of the chanter and having it behind you, that seems to be the best place to get the cleanest reading if you’re playing in a pipe band situation. 

If you’re playing at home and you’re the only bagpipe around and it’s reasonably quiet, having it on the front is just fine. But I find that in a band situation having it behind the chanter so it’s in between your body and the chanter seems to get a really good clean reading of the sounds coming off your chanter. So, what I’m going to do, I’m going to play for a little bit, then I’m going to do the auto calibrate on low A and then I’m going to see what’s happening with the notes on my chanter.

So there you can see what’s happening with the tuning of my chanter and the Braw bagpipe tuner is just amazing. That you have that feature where it listens as you play, it averages the readings and it keeps updating them as you’re playing, as your pipes warm up, and it displays all of them in one go. So now you can really see okay what’s going on there.

I would always start with the notes that are the most out of tune. So according to the reading there, my D is a little bit sharp so I could add a little bit of tape onto my D, the low G is a little bit sharp I could add some tape onto the low G, and then my high A, the tuner is showing it a little bit flat. 

Now I actually like my high A to be slightly flat. Maybe not quite as flat as it is there, but most players who get a really good sound, they tune their high A just a little bit flat. That’s not built into the tuner, so you can listen to players who get a good sound, you can ask them.  I would say just to the left of that center line it’s going to be good on high A. 

The high G is a little bit flat so I might want to take a little bit of tape off there. So that’s what the Braw tuner lets you do is see sort of the overall pattern and as you get more comfortable and experienced using the tuner, you will be able to figure out exactly what needs to happen based on a certain tuning profile. 

If everything looks really really good but one or two notes are sharp, put a little bit of tape there.  If everything looks really good but a couple notes are slightly flat, you maybe look down, take a little bit of tape off. If you see a whole bunch of notes are sharp, especially on the top hand, you might want to raise the reed because raising the reed is going to flatten all of the top hand notes. 

On the flip side, if you see that the top hand notes tend to be flat, you might be able to push that reed deeper into the chanter and that’s going to sharpen those. So, adding tape or removing tape changes the pitch of individual notes and then syncing the reed will sharpen the entire group of notes at the top of the chanter. It’ll sharpen the high A the most, the high G next most, and as you go down, each note is affected a little bit less. Raising a reed will flatten the notes, it’ll flatten the high A the most and then the high G the second most and so on. 

By having the display of all nine notes, you can kind of see the big picture of what’s going on. Do I need to move tape or do I need to change the entire top hand by syncing or raising the reed? 

I hope this has been a useful introduction for you on how to get started using your InTune Mic to tune your pipes using the Braw bagpipe tuner. Check out my YouTube channel where I’ll be posting more videos about how to use the InTune Mic with some of my other favorite apps. 

If you’re interested in the InTune Mic, you can get it at BagpipeLessons.com/InTuneMic. 

Thanks.