Talk:Zetland pipes

Mr Lerwick's contributions

The following info was posted by Mr Lerwick, but is more discursive than encylcopedic, so I've placed it here for purposes of discussion, and put some of the basic concepts into the main article:

"The original design spun off a few odd pictures I found of the Lady Maket pipes, the "Silver Pipes of Ur," unearthered in Ur and dating back to around 2500 BCE. My initial curiosity was to hear how those might have sounded. I took a Highland tenor drone reed, shortened it up to look like the ones in the old pictures of the Egyptian pipes, found a length of toilet water feed pipe, stuck the reed in the flanged end, and as related in a number of folk and reed instrument making books, layed my fingers out in a comfortable fashion, drilled some holes where they lay, and reamed them out until the scale came into tune. This took place in 1973-1974 in Brooklyn Park Minnesota, USA. I believe them to be the first and so far only indigenous American bagpipe.

While the notion that the Shetlands or any other of the British Isles had piping traditions similar to my Zetland experiments is an anachronistic fantasy, my only serious historical point, to "Highland" pipers of the day, was that the Norse and other vikings had direct access to far more ancient middle eastern and eastern European single reed pipes and it is far more likely that these single reeded pipes were known and played in the so-called "Celtic" areas like the British Isles, than the still prevailing notion that the "Highland" pipes as we know them today, or any of their developmental ancestors, introduced the concept of bagpipes to the Scots or Irish for instance. I was also arguing that these "primitive" pipes had no inherent reason to be "primitive" in terms of musicality, and this too, is no longer debatable via the revival of "primitive" single reed pipes in numerous traditions around the world.

It is now known that such single reeded pipes did exist anciently in the British Isles, and are still played continuously in Wales at least, and certainly there has clearly been a revival of the Norse and Swedish pipes which are said to easily predate any "Highland" piping tradition. The viking influence on the British Isles is at this late date undeniable, and the age of painting vikings as nothing more than raging barbarians is largely over. So, it remains a pleasant possibility in my mind that the Norse and the Dansk brought the bagpipe or at least reed pipe concept back from their world travels and shared it in the British Isles and elsewhere. In any case, music lovers today have since become more aware of the many piping traditions outside of the Highlands throughout the world and through all ages.

Contrary to many "educated" detractors of my early bagpipe inventing notions, I at the age of 16-17, found that it was in fact rather easy to make a basic reed pipe that played musically. The experiment was intended to prove that any ignorant shepherd boy in ancient Egypt could have (and obviously did I concluded) make quite musical pipes with a hot poker (to drill holes with) and some local reed. No secret initiations, no degrees in musical physics were required, and the final instrument could play quite well in tune and be tuned to whatever ethnic or local scale desired. The first trial version was a chanter that came out in C. To that I attached a similar pipe parallel to it as a drone, bound and plugged these up with toilet ring seal wax (essentially beeswax) and for a brief period I played the setup mouthblown and sustained a constant tone with circular breathing in ancient fashion--also to prove a point that it was possible, in fact, easy, to sustain a drone and chanter using the cheeks as a bag in continuous play. This point again, contrary to claims being made by "educated" and "scholarly" researchers and friends who were telling me it was impossible to do so and ancient pipes had to start and stop with breathing.

My later experiments in the 1980's, revolved literally around a lathe, first with aluminum joints fitted with tubing pipes, and then wood-turned versions. These all had one tenor drone. Several variations are floating around of ebony, rock maple, and American green ebony. I believe the original aluminum prototype is in an American bagpipe museum someplace.

In the 1990's I added a bass drone and several wood sets of these exist somewhere out there as I attempted to market the concept. All of these final versions I put in the key in D quite deliberately to play with uilleann pipes and Irish standard pitches. Due to my Highland or "Celtic" scale background Zetlands throughout have used a standard Highland chanter scale and fingering, but the chanter was so forgiving a number of scales or fingerings could be worked out by request for buyer, or modified by the player or owner of the chanter. The final version came out in the late 1990's. This was machined from Delrin on CNC lathes and tool centers, and reeded with Mark Wygent synthetic composite reeds.

All Zetland models have a tonality like a fiddle or uilleann pipe at about the same volume. This too was part of the design concept, to make Zetlands compatible with fiddle and other traditional British Isles instruments.

The final version in plastic was intended to reduce the reed heat/moisture sensitivity problems of other mouthblown pipes and make an indestructable road or touring set of pipes by going all synthetic with reed and pipes. My entire point from the beginning was to make great tone without thousands of dollars worth of wood and workmanship. The last Zetlands featured one low low bass and a tenor drone, and were like all the Zetlands, mouthblown to insure familiarity and compatibility with the "Highland" piping system, the community I felt to be the main market. The one trick of these pipes however, was that the back D or "High A" in Highland terms, was a bit difficult to master for the average Highland blower due to its sensitivity to pressure changes or lightness of blowing, compared to Highland pipes. The chanter is also backwards in behavior, the lower notes blowing flat with more pressure and also being quieter than the upper notes, and conversely, the upperhand is louder than the lowerhand and blows sharper with pressure. This necessitates some piper-retraining and because of the volume/tonal balance of the scale, also adds some musically unique accents on back D in particular during the play of jigs, reels, and quick dance music.

Unfortunately, due to ambiguities in arrangements made by my financial backers for the marketing and manufacturer of Zetland pipes, the mass production of the final Zetland batch never got quite finished. There remains a large inventory of basically finished but unassembled Zetland parts featuring chanters turned, but without holes, in a back room somewhere, probably at CE Kron in Dobbs Ferry New York USA, who very kindly helped manufacture the final versions, as programmed and assisted in design-transfer from my wood hand-turned models by David Atherton, formerly of CE Kron and now on his own at Atherton Pipes in Chicago Illinois USA. My apologies to everyone who've expressed interest, but it seems this concept was about twenty years ahead of its time and I have given up fighting for it.

As of this writing, 31 August 2008, I currently play uillean pipes and haven't had any motivation to go back to the Zetland experiments. There you have it, from the source, the general history of the Zetland pipes.

(Contributed by inventor, RW Lerwick)"