A warm reception for Chanter

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A Warm Reception for Chanter

Reviews and Reviewed
The first issue of Chanter was very well received and warmly welcomed by members of the Bagpipe Society and commentators in the folk press and other journals. Contributions for Chanter have been coming in at an encouraging rate. There is no doubt that members have a great wealth and depth of knowledge that they wish to share with each other. Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency. For Chanter to carry on being a useful journal, we need as many informed and interesting contributions as possible. We are particularly interested in expanding the reviews section. If you come across a new, or unusual, record of bagpiping, or including pipes, why not write a review of it for Chanter? This need not be a long-winded, literary commentary; it might include only: the title, performers’ names, instruments used, type and origin of material, the name of the record company, and the name and address of the distributor. Stefan Hannenigan is currently working on a comprehensive discography of bagpipe recordings, but it will be some time before we see the fruits of his labours. In the meantime it would be a great service if we could include at least some brief mention of all new releases.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee: Journal and Newsletter
Chanter is not the only publication of the Bagpipe Society. a Newsletter is also produced, appearing about six times a year. The latter carries news items about members, concerts, seminars, etc.: it also includes reviews of books and records. Chanter appears twice a year and aims to include material that will be of lasting interest. We hope to encourage the submission of well-researched articles. While we do not wish Chanter to become dry and academic, we do hope that it will have a certain seriousness of content making it a publication of more than ephemeral value.

New Editorial Address
All contributions for Chanter, including advertising material, should be sent to:

Peter Stacey
Journal Editor
62 Seymour Street
Splott
Cardiff
CF2 2NS

Deadlines
The next issue of Chanter should appear on June 1, 1987. Articles and advertising material should arrive no later than April 20, 1987.

Advertising Rates
£6.00 quarter page
£10.00 half page
£14.00 whole page (A5)
Please make all cheques payable to: The Bagpipe Society.

Address for Membership
If you are not a member of the Bagpipe Society and would like to join please write to:

Dave Van Doorn
49 Osborne Road
Hornchurch
RM11 1EX

Apologies!
Perhaps we can blame it on teething problems, but one or two little (or not so little) mistakes crept into the last issue of Chanter. The most glaring domino was to omit a statement of the main aim of the Bagpipe Society from the list of the Society’s objectives reproduced in the constitution in Simon Owen’s article ‘The Inaugural Meeting of the Bagpipe Society’. The list of aims should have been headed with this important statement:

‘The aim of the society is to promote communication, in all possible ways, between bagpipe players, makers, researchers and all those interested in bagpipes.’

We also owe apologies to John Goodacre on several counts: (1) For describing him in the editorial of Chanter vol. 1 no. 1 as the author of the Workshop article ‘Pipe Maker Beyond Leicestershire’ which was written by his brother Julian. (2) For not including the full and punning title of his composition included in the last issue of Chanter in Judy Tarry’s article ‘The Blowzabella Weekend Dance Tune Competition’. This should read ‘The Fruits of Newbury, a New Bourrée’. (3) For misprinting bar 6 of ‘The Fruits of Newbury, a New Bourrée’. This should read

[image of music notation]

A Word of Thanks
We would like to thank all the contributors to this issue of Chanter and extend special thanks to André de Vries and Buddy Wells who have worked behind the scenes on typesetting and paste-up.

Peter Stacey

The Groeswen Glove — or how to make a really nifty bagpipe for less than fifty quid

About five or six years ago, I was heavily involved in a really nice early music group called ‘The Dunstable Consort’. I also had a lovely recorder group at school and was looking for ways to extend them. Along came a musical instrument called a Cortol. It was described as a copy of the medieval instrument, the Kortholt. It was a wind-cap instrument, with fingering very similar to the recorder. It sounded ideal, so I ordered two.
Unfortunately, little lungs do not make good wind-cap players. They turn purple in the face and collapse. The two cortols languished in the cupboard whilst I toyed with the idea of turning them into a bagpipe. First of all I tried an old Tesco carrier bag. It worked but the crinkling sound was off-putting. The cortols languished for a few more months and then one night whilst doing the washing-up, a vision came to me. Why not use a rubber glove for the bag. And so Mark 1 was born. It was too hard to mouth blow, so I used an airbed foot-pump. The two cortols came out of the fingers, one of them have most of its holes blocked up with Blu-tack to provide the drone. Tuning was murder but when it was in tune, it sounded as sweet as a nut. It’s gone through quite a few changes but I think Mark 7 is pretty good. This is how to make one.

The Manifold device or stocks
Take a four-inch piece of drain-pipe. Stand in it three four-inch pieces of plastic pipe, the sort used for central heating and toilet overflows. Also, two four inch lengths of copper micro-bore. Fill up the spaces between the pipes with plastic casting resin, the sort that you get from craft and modelling shops. Don’t fill the drain-pipe right to the top. Leave about an inch of the pipes showing. When the resin has ‘gone off’ create a valve by sticking a small square of rubber (from a rubber glove of course!) along the edge of one of the micro-bores. Super-glue is great for this job. The valve fits on the flush end of the stock, not the end with the protruding pipes. Now I’m sure that was as clear as mud but rest assured, that’s the hardest part.

The Glove
Only one type of glove appears to work well! Luckily, this is the type that I first used, otherwise I would probably have given up on the project a long time ago. It can be found in Spar shops under the Spar rubber glove label, or in old-fashioned ironmongers where it is called a Span glove. Get a large pair in yellow; pink looks silly! Connect it to the stock with two large jubilee clips.