Still wondering

I suppose having more notes is like moving from black and white to colour, or from a harpsichord to a piano. If you expect colour, black and white is disappointing. The few-note world is an acquired taste, not for everyone, but it can be immensely rewarding. It fosters a different kind of creativity, opens up different possibilities. Not melodic ones. I am drawn to the harmonic and polyphonic richness unavailable on a singlepipe and suggest it was dropped because the organ took its place giving choirs harmonic support and giving players a polyphonic playground in which the hands are independent voices.

@@chehotrao alive got a mizmar that has reeds a little on the big side. I think. It only has a five or six note range yet intriguingly it can change from Maqam Hijaz to a Major scale. So I have used it for belly dancers. I laughed when the dumbek player decided playing a mizmar must be easy and bought one (2?) for himself. It can be nice to sit on intervals between the pipes. Also play Bulgarian gaida, the Turkish mey, and have won prizes in Grade 4 GHB piping competitions. The arghul: seems to be just a regular bagpipe without a bag like I used to make of river cane. My gaida has a bone and water buffalo horn chanter, with spirals etched in it. Looks Neolithic. A gaida usea a small hole over the GHB F hole and a tube is needed to stick halfway into the bore. I use a duck feather quill. It fits and causes no strain to the bone. Eventually people found out how to play in tune without varying air pressure or reed insertion, that looks painful. But I'm cheating: I vary the pressure on my mizmar to keep it on pitch. Another mizmar of the same design and size had a seven note major scale. I never knew how they were different. There are vase paintings with aulos players using a face band to support their cheeks. That would imply there isn't a lot of pressure change. You blow steady. Were the bands elastic? Come to think of it, that might help. I am fascinated by how carefully the hands of aulos players are depicted. Lower hand, ring finger on top and pinkie on bottom and you have a tabor pipe. Been there. Done that. You can turn a quena into a tabor pipe by taping the top three holes plus top thumb hole. If you have a penny whistle, some scotch tape, and a stick to hit something you can bust out "Little Drummer Boy" all day long. Oblique flutes; get a piece of random PVC about 1 cm bore or half inch to 3/4 (it isn't picky) and long enough to easily reach from your mouth to your index finger at the bottom. Use the oblique flute embouchure. If you got the sizes approximately close you can ride the overtone series like it was a horse and a random piece of scrap pipe at a construction site can play Amazing Grace. Really impressed the construction workers. The major scale is pretty much a natural progression, not something arbitrary The aulos evolved into the launeddas and the mey, the monaulos. But Turks told me to buy a key to keep the police from my door with the zurna. Although the fingering is the same, the zurna has a 10 note range and I can believe the Scots brought zurnas back in the Crusades and stuck them in bags because they had seen Turkish bagpipes that were four or five note mizmars mostly but could make sense of a zurna. They could get the reed. There's 5,000 acres of phragmites on the Chickahominy river. Planted by the first people after Jamestown. it's stalks are as big as your thumb and it was brought over from England as building material. There is a wild patch of smaller stalks around Seattle and I've made zurna reeds from it. Back to the face bands: the reeds must have been hard. And loud. Thanks for the ramble!

Very cool to hear all that from you Michael!! and I would love to listen to more of the recordings of John MacDonald's canntaireachd (if you have more recordings than those 2 that you have already uploaded onto your youtube channel) Cheers!!

@@leecholam Unfortunately there aren't any other recordings of MacDonald singing canntaireachd that I know of. There is Mary Morrison, though. I haven't uploaded her.

Are there any reed-making traditions in South America we could learn from? Forgive my ignorance! The reciprocity of group music making is an area of huge interest to me: how musical activity reflects and reinforces social values. Having only half the notes on your panpipe means you HAVE to cooperate; selfishness, separation, and individualistic behaviours have no nourishment.

@@chehotrao hello mr Barnaby actually we dont have this reed making tradition but i work with river cane (arundo donac and p.australis)since 5 years to make quenas and panpipes from 8000 to 500 years from all cultures from Peru,the nazca panpipes habe this micritones too and olay with some disonances,lets get in contact if is posible,maybe a zoom call or email

Ease is not an absolute, it is dependant on your relationship with the result. You are a master. I am in awe of your attention to detail and respect for ancient evidence in all its diversity and complexity: this is a rare quality among makers, who often look at drawings rather than photos, reading translations and interpretations rather than engaging with original source material with curiosity. It is easier, far easier, to look at the evidence through a smokescreen of other people's work, forever putting human bias, inherited misconceptions, and compounded error between present and past realities. My greatest regret making this video is that there is neither a Max Brumberg pipe nor a Max Brumberg Theophrastian yoke represented. Please could I order (at full price) a couple of yokes of reeds from you, as a performer customer, for whichever of these instruments you are most interested in. There are reeds for skimmers who practice 2 hours a month, dippers who practice 2 hours a week, and divers who practice 2 hours a day and receive fees for concerts and workshops. All three groups are vital for a healthy doublepipes revival and I think we should value their different needs equally, learning through two-way humility on the edge of the unknown. I also hugely respect the need to narrow down options (for high-level results) and choose one path when there are many. Collectively, therefore, it is more efficient if we all choose different paths and share results, building a richer picture, avoiding dogma, fundamentalism, and "bad othering". There are so many variables and life is an ecology, not a monoculture! Lotos Lab needs a methodology leader: how to harness the intercultural creativity, diverse skills, beliefs, and hypotheses of many, in multi-lifetime experiments that benefit from the data generated at every stage. Using technology, like cuneiform star diaries, to keep learning resilient to death and disorder - a scientific lineage connecting us to the Babylonian astrophysicists to whom the Greeks felt so indebted. Here is my level of delight with Max Brumberg reeds: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYqsfJtuo9mJpdk I write this reply from Loch Awe, Argyll, where pipers have for centuries (probably millennia) made children's practice chanters by squeezing oat straws and sticking these in Phragmites pipes, much as the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians did, probably our Paleolithic ancestors too. It is about a thousand times easier to make music on the Hohle Fels radius bone with an oat straw reed, compared to playing it as a flute or as a trumpet. Frankly, the scale possibilities are vastly more compelling too. Playing the Isturitz pipe as a flute or ney requires tampering with the evidence (sharpening the opposite edge) to a degree I find troubling.

If anyone would like to lead Lotos Lab data gathering, harnessing horses of every hue to a chariot of scientific learning that outlives us all, please get in touch. What does a gold standard of experimental method look like for a community of reed makers, pipe makers, and players who are in that chaotically messy place, the frontier of knowlege?

Thank you for your encouragement and good suggestions. At least one video presenting each pipe is the plan and has been since last September. Like you, I miss not having any Max Brumberg instruments to be playing and learning with. That will change... Reed development eats up time with a dragon's appetite! I think the pioneers would all appreciate finding a way to be more efficient, reaching further through teamwork than is possible alone. Lotos Lab seeks to build strength by interweaving customer feedback with research and development - engaging with all stakeholders, logging every experiment (reeds and pipes) systematically and democratically, accumulating collective wisdom, capturing insights from multiple owners, diverse ages, varying levels of expertise, and a multitude of learning styles. Using the digital revolution to raise quality and combat "bad othering". I find that with every additional 10 hours of practicing, new horizons of technical possibility open up. My advice would be to start with the pipe you are most likely to practice, because it is the practising (not the possessing) that reaps rewards. A regular practice - part of your daily routine or weekly rhythm - is what enhances wellbeing. That is the basis on which to choose. There is a huge advantage to having two pipes: harmony and polyphony. The making is also great fun. By mid-August, we should have the first batch of Isturitz pipes and reed-parenting kits ready to ship. The idea there is to have a budget starter instrument with which 8-year-olds and 88-year-olds can lead dancing and accompany singing, belonging to a wider present and deeper past.

I am aware of Greek transverse flutes, Egyptian neys, and the Jiahu flutes (doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00113432 ). The Paleolithic finds can also be sounded like nays, although a squashed straw seems a more compelling solution, particularly for the thinner bones. Reed instruments may have enjoyed greater popularity because they are loud enough to lead community dancing and singing.

I love it too! All of that. In fact I'm here by an improbable reason: I'm studing the British accent, and I came across with a short video of Armand D'Angour and his team and became very interested seeing how Barnaby pronounce the English language, because he emphatize a lot the consonants and vowels and so that give me a good sample of how the words can be stretched and how they can't. So... I'm here to study british English in first place! All else is a plus :-D