Duda Duda Day

This edition is from our archives, so it is presented as scanned pages rather than text.

The Drone
I have only one drone but I’ve got blocked-up tubes where I could plug in a few more. I use aluminum tubing from a model shop. It’s the sort that is normally used to go around the drive shaft of a model boat. I have three pieces, one with a circumference of 1.9 cm and two with a circumference of 2.1 cm. Fit a cortol reed into one of the larger pieces. Wind some carpet tape around the pipe until the drone fits into one of the large pipes in the stock. Connect this piece of pipe to the other large piece using a small piece of rubber tubing. Slide the smaller piece of tubing into this piece. It slides up and down to facilitate tuning. Thus you have a drone pipe with a flexible bend in it. It may interest you to know that if you put the end of the drone in your mouth when you’re playing and kind of wobble your mouth à la jaw harp fashion, you get a bagpipe with a rhythm section! Try it with your pipes some time! Just for now block up the other two large tubes in the stock with wine corks.

The Pump
Use a standard Li-lo foot pump, the all-rubber type. The plastic type gives more air but it’s too noisy. You have to add some rubber tubing to the pump, otherwise it’s not long enough to reach from the floor to your arm-pit.

The Chanter
As I mentioned before, it’s a cortol, from Musica Ltd., 27 Fore St, Topsham, Devon. It’s a really nifty instrument as it has a doubled back bore like a bassoon, thus giving it a range of nearly two octaves and fully chromatic! Don’t forget to order a spare reed for your drone. Link it to the only obvious place left on your stock with another piece of rubber tubing and a little ingenuity.

Playing
Tuck the stock firmly under your left arm, pump slowly with your left foot, tune in, turn on and away you go.

Phil Edwards

Duda, Duda, Day . . .

‘There’s no such thing as Polish bagpipes,’ said my Polish friend with an air of finality. ‘Why then,’ I countered, ‘does the stamp on this letter you sent me show a picture of some?’ Faced with such irrefutable evidence, he promised to investigate when he got home. Some months later he returned bearing a bag of bits and pieces. ‘I got you these,’ he said, ‘and I’ve heard a tape of some being played, they sound horrible.’ Some things are the same the world over!

The result of assembling these bits is shown in Fig. 1.

(Figure showing assembled bagpipe labeled “ASSEMBLED BAGPIPE” - Fig. 1)

Figure 2 shows the individual components which will be considered in turn.

Chanter
The chanter is quite roughly made from stained, rather poor quality wood. The fingerholes, 6 + h (according to Baines’ nomenclature) are ungraded in size, but are all steeply slope-cut towards the reed end. Two vent holes lie terminal to the fingerholes and are followed by a tenon which fits into a huge ‘horn’, made from wood and bound with brass sheeting. It is possessed of a chain, although no obvious point of attachment on the chanter exists for it. The chanter reed is a single beating reed of cane which sits well down in the neck. The stock is in the form of a stylised goat’s head and is let into the top corner of the square, sewn vinyl bag.

Drone
The drone stock emerges from a stock in the other upper corner of the bag. Into this fits the compound drone assembly, consisting of three short wooden tubes bound together by brass rings, the bores being connected by brass U-tubes. No provision is made for tuning the drone by the usual fashion since none of the parts is movable, so presumably the drone must be pitched by means of the reed alone. The drone reed is monstrous and is made from a drilled piece of softwood. A wax blob adheres to the tongue, but no bridle is present. Tuning, therefore, is likely to be both inaccurate and time-consuming. Attaching to the end of the drone is a large metal-bound cow horn with a chain linking it to the rest of the components.

Blowing
The air supply comes courtesy of an enormous bellows which plays directly into a stock on the side of the bag.
The positioning of the stocks does not allow for a comfortable arrangement of holding and controlling the bag during playing. Since the bellows plays directly into the bag it must be held more to the front of the body than is usual, so the overall effect is rather clumsy.
The actual details of playing this instrument remain rather vague at present, since it was supplied with a broken chanter reed which I have not, as yet, replaced. The fingering is likely to be semi-closed if not fully closed, in order to maximise the tone and volume of the single-reed cylindrical chanter. However, the presence of vent holes in the chanter precludes the use of the bell as an imaginary drone as can be achieved in some other closed-fingered pipes (such as Julian Goodacre’s Leicestershire smallpipes). Perhaps there might be some reader(s) who can elucidate the salient points outlined above that I seem unable to resolve at present.

Simon Owen