Pastoral Pipes - Tuning

Tuning

The conventional view was that the Pastoral Pipes were difficult to shift between the lower and upper registers. Recent reconstructions and refurbishments have shown that this is not the case. In modern Uilleann pipes, the player will move from the lower to the upper register by stopping the chanter momentarily while increasing the bag pressure, causing the reed to double-tone. However, in the pastoral pipe, the same effect can be achieved by increasing the bag pressure while playing a suitable gracenote. For example, to go from first octave A to second octave A the player can use an E gracenote. Surviving Pastoral pipe manuscripts have many tunes that leap vigorously between registers. The ability to stop the chanter does help, though; it also gives the instrument much better dynamics, as the chanter can be raised and lowered from the knee to modulate the volume. This may have motivated the evolution into the Union pipe by removing the foot joint from the Pastoral pipes.

The Pastoral pipe had a narrow throat bore of 3.5 - 4mm and an exit bore seldom larger than 11mm. Its bore was very similar to later flat set Union pipe chanter bores made in the early 18th century. The reeds had a head width of 9.5mm to 10.5mm and staple bores of 3.6mm. The chanters were made in a variety of pitches with a quiet tone and an E flat pitch being very common among surviving instruments. Later examples include a slide on the foot joint to change the lower leading note from flat to sharp as required and on a further set an on/off mechanism is fitted to control the drones with the two regulators fitted neatly to the top of the common stock and the addition of key in "e" to increase the compass of the chanter in the second octave.