Uilleann Pipe Making in Western New York

I think a lot a lot of people have if not maybe most people have heard the Ilyn pipes they've heard them in movies and on TV but they don't know that they've heard them you know they don't know what it is and I think you know a majority of those people are gonna say well they're bagpipes and they're not gonna know that it's they're Irish bagpipes they're very unique so I think yeah my message would be to just that here they are this is what this is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] every pipe makes at least one note the drone is simply makes one note this is the bass drum it is the largest longest notice pitched drum it's pitched three octaves below the smallest drug this is the baritone drum and this is the tenor drum so there's three octaves of the note D these key pipes here are called regulators so what the player is playing he or she will use their hand or arm to produce chords that accompany the melody of the chanter this is the chanter it has a wooden chanter tongue inside here is where the reed is there's no Reed inside this one and we use woods that are a little bit more accessible these days more affordable and don't really sacrifice the tonal quality so our current sort of popular wood is a wood called Cadillacs it's also called Mexican royal Avenue and it's similar to ebony and then it's dark in color but it's much cheaper it's much more accessible and it's not regulated by any of the government agencies that regulate exotic woods so we can ship it anywhere in the world without any trouble and then we have a whip called bingo which we make two runs and regulators out of and it's a little bit lighter in color it's it's fabulous to work with it it's the right combination of soft and hard and it finishes beautifully [Music] [Applause] the bag is made out of leather this is a cowhide bag and it's saddle stitched which means the needles go through the same hole like this making a figure eight and that's important because the holes are sealed by the thread as they go through so the bag is airtight even though it's sewn together this is the bellows which is two wooden clappers that are nailed to a piece of leather and it has a one-way valve on it sort of just pumps air it's quite a it's quite a setup and it's quite challenging to keep the whole thing up and running and going yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is a piece of cane used for chenery's this comes from Spain so the entire sound of the pipe starts with with this tube right here [Music] this is a pretty typical finished January has the date written on it the date is important because the reads tend to settle in over a period of time so I have a beautiful working read and then about three weeks later it's gone completely to hell so they have to be made so that the aperture is much wider much more open and over time they settle and like this it's the time is the critical factor its its root you're not really not gonna see the most permanent behavior from it for three to four weeks after you make it so you can imagine what kind of a pain but that is here's a here's a wooden read I made out of cedar the wood is cut in such a way that all of that stuff I just talked about really doesn't apply because it's so stable once it's cut that you really don't have to worry about any of that stuff the dimensions are different the feel is different and basically I think pretty much anybody who's using this wood right now is in an experimental stage with this stuff right now I think that once we reach a point where the tone is the same with this material that's that's going to be the breaking point so there's there's only like one two three four five there's only three basic chords here D G and C there's another regulator down here at the bottom the keys are sticking on that one so I'm not playing that one I have it turned out of the way my elbow is attached to the bellows with this belt right here and it there's a tube that goes through through the bottom the tube goes all the way over to the bag and inflates the bag with air and the air goes into the chair and then there's a reed to here which I won't take out because you don't want to jinx it but and then and that's pretty much it but I'm sort of balancing the air pressure for all the various reeds there's three other pipes down here at the bottom called drums and they are each pitched in an octave of D they're continuous when they're on so I turn them on and off with a little switch right here some of the notes require the chana to be on the back here or on the onion and if it's not on the note will be thrown out of tune sometimes you want that for a package but generally it's on and off than me so there's quite a bit and stuff going on here with this thing and if you're not familiar with what it's supposed to sound like I don't know how you could possibly play this thing [Music] we have this machine right here which is a 3d printer it works like it makes it extrudes plastic through a very hot point and pretty much make anything you want from it we mainly use it for a few of the parts that are sort of like the mechanical parts that we would have made by hand like this guy right here goes at your waist like this and this is where the bellows comes out and connects to the bag it's also building drone weights drum Reed's traditionally were made out of cane which is the same thing that I make Montana reeds out of but you can imagine what a nightmare it is when this thing starts to change with the humidity and temperature changes these newer reeds here don't go through so much change after they're made they're very stable so that saves a ton of time my wife came up with these two parts that internally there's a 3d printed u-bend inside of the plastic so in the sound it sounds pretty good so far and these two little parts basically take a very complex system here and consolidate it into 3d printed parts into a smaller space and saves a lot of labour this is another machine we have here which is a CNC router I'll start with a with one of these put in the in the lathe turn it board it out and you end up with this has a hole through the middle and then we take it to the CNC machine over there and the CNC machine turns it into this and then I'll finish it at the lathe and turn it and then it'll go back to the CNC machine and the CNC machine will drill all of these holes carved the key slots and carve away anything that is not supposed to be there this will be at the end of the bass drum this metal part will eventually be fitted on here like this but I'm gonna leave it sit for you know maybe a couple weeks before I fit this guy on here how long does it take you to make the pipe a complete set from beginning Ken well it takes months because the wood once the wood is bored out it has to season so it could really that the answer is a little the longer the better I think that if the wood settles for a few months that you know three months or so after after it's bored out that's a pretty good working time [Music] I like to play I mean in a perfect world where that paid the bills that's probably that and I would focus on them but this is gets it done in the financial minister I don't actually I don't have an operating setback place right now personally so that's a big drawback the truth is that don't that I've become so particular about what I want to play on that I'm not sure we'd be happy until I get that and that's that that could be ego but I I that I think it's important because it's driving this whole operation you know is to get that that sound and that one perfect set of pipes where everything is matched up in the reads your perfect end [Music] you can imagine what it must have been like in the old country when they were doing this to no electricity look those guys who made pipes back in the early part of last century and I'm into this one before but they must have been highly highly skilled individuals if you think about the sort of like the socio-economic place where they lived and stuff their skill set must have been out of this world because of all of the different things that go into making these things this is uh I I really like doing this job this is called silver soldering but I'm gonna contradict myself and say I hate it because I do have a love-hate relationship it's sort of like welding for the scaredy-cat there are a bunch of joints where you have to do that on that on the pipes anywhere where there's a metal joint going into another metal joint you got to do that so there's silver smithing there's turning and there's metalwork there's the read word my wife's a mechanical engineer so we we use the computer a lot with between 3d printing and the CNC machine both of our computer skills have been increased quite a bit we the illin pipes are made in several different keys and we have one that's pitched in B which is much lower and the kids for some for whatever reason I think it's just the overall volume is greater and that's been like that since they were babies like concert pitch in the house is a no-go like for babies and toddlers and even now like they're doing something that's intrusive but we could play the flat pitch pipes in the kitchen all day and never we've never bothered them yeah so you don't have that on this [Music] one thing I've learned is that you reach a certain point and playing the instrument it becomes the most important thing because you you're gonna spend a lot of labour in time building things and if you're not building something that you would personally want to play it you're wasting your time I think if you really want to make the best stuff you have to have a goal or ideal sound and I've had that since the beginning but timber to reach that point where your skillset is able to get that sound it could take a while and it's taken me 13 years for me it was that I wanted that bright wide you know chirpy fat tone and that maybe that's that's probably not what everybody wants it's certainly not popular today in the yelling putters this is the kangri that I was playing on Breeland this morning before you go here and that's a pretty typical of a reed that I make it's extremely long compared to many of this standards Reed's that people make these days but I find that the tone is so much better if the reed is longer so this guy really sounds the demand for pipes I think has gone up it has not receded at all I think the the best makers these days are completely backlogged and they have waiting lists that are completely I mean they sound humorous when they tell you what their waiting list is 15 years for a set of bagpipes you know people I've heard stories of people ordering pipes for their children when they're born to get on the pipe makers wait a minute well somebody well you usually you order a set of pipes and then you stir them attendance along that's what I did and then while you were learning the whistle you learn tunes on the whistle and then they're so they're pretty much translate over then you have to learn the pressure of the bag and make sure that the that you learn that that's the hardest part in the beginning I used to have my brother press the bellows while I press the bag let's see if we can make a noise with this thing you have to have the pressure right I play with a pretty hard pressure some people don't play as hard and it does make a difference I think that there may have been more happening with this instrument that is Venice document or that was passed down I think I think oral tradition has played a big role in what we know about the pipes and frankly I think that there there's a lot that happened with it and where it came from and who worked on it and who how this thing evolved it's so complex to try to go in there and make one from scratch so I that there is there was a lot more happening than is documented or commonly understood about the pipes I think there were more people working on them for sure and I think that there's a lot that we don't know about where they came from if you listen to the sound of the pipes I could I can't think of any other word to describe it than miraculous because to make the bore the shape and there have the read to have a reed that works inside of a pipe with those dimensions where the reamer is placed just that far it's that that is a to me that this a sign that this musical instrument is supposed to exist it's what it's supposed to exist it is it is a beautiful thing that it that it that it in its essence was already there before they started working on it now I know that's pretty heavy philosophical thing but I just the sound of it is so unique and so beautiful and so enchanting those people have called it the sound of Irishness or the sound of Ireland in the Gaelic language they have certain words to describe with the spirit of the music and the essence of the magical quality that comes through when somebody's playing that slow air in a group of people everybody is silent and listening you know that there truly is a powerful it's a powerful experience for people and the sound is part of that part of that and I I'm not a Gaelic scholar but there are that the Irish have words then they recognise this of course they do you couldn't walk away from that and not recognize that that's specialness

Channel: Howard Lester

Views: 2,980

Rating: 4.9365077 out of 5

Keywords: Uilleann Pipe, Bagpipes, Tim Benson, Howie Lester, Folk Music, Irish Music, Fiddle, Celtic

Id: wktvdYpIMnI

Length: 22min 41sec (1361 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019