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“In the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, if you were
interested in Irish music, you had to know the name of a record
and order it from a shop,” he says. “Mozart-Allan had published
a book called Merry Melodies for the Violin, a small book in various
volumes and one of the volumes contained a lot of Irish tunes. That
was the only manuscript that was readily available in Scotland.”
Through playing the fiddle in the Scotia
Bar on Stockwell Street, Glasgow, Jim Daily met up with Michael
Broderick. Together, they launched The Whistlebinkies.
As a part of developing the group, Jim
Daily bought a practice set of uilleann pipes from Pat McNulty and
took lessons from him for about six months.“The uilleann pipes (literally
“elbow pipes”) are parlour pipes, indoor pipes, and were played
mostly in the kitchens, for barn dances and so on.
“There was a big immigration from Ireland to this country and into
the United States around the beginning of this century. The uilleann
pipes then began to go into concert halls and the instrument was
changed.“Just before the turn of the century, an organ builder,
William Taylor, who emigrated to the United States, started making
concert pitch uilleann pipes
“He widened the cone on them which made them louder and sharper
and the tone holes became bigger. There was more penetration and
they were better able to fill larger spaces.”
Older players, says Jim Daily, view the
uilleann pipes as a solo instrument. “But these days most musicians
want to play with other musicians. You get all sorts of qualities
in the music when you mix with other instruments.
It’s something I see as a positive move. “The uilleann pipes are
in concert pitch and go with other traditional instruments, providing
you can manage to get them in tune. They can play in D and G and
the relative minors.
“The repertoire has been shaped by dancing
and singing. You have a big compass with the uilleann pipes (two
octaves) so the range of the chanter covers the range of the human
voice adequately. A lot of the slow airs, for example, are songs.”
The higher octave is reached by “overblowing”: putting more pressure
on the reed and stopping the chanter off briefly. Says Jim Daily:
“If your pipes are set up correctly it takes very, very little extra
pressure. It’s like when you put a pressure stop on a drone: the
tongue of the drone reed will close and it’ll stay there. When you
close all the tone holes on the uilleann pipe chanter, and you’ve
got it closed on your knee, the lips of the reed close tightly together.
When you release that by putting a little extra pressure, the reed
will speak in the second octave.”
Jim Daily says fingering for the original
uilleann pipe was the same as that for the Highland pipes. The chanter
had an extended foot joint which gave it a note below the tonic
like the Highland pipes. “You could change octave on the old sets
without stopping off the chanter but you got a kind of rising groan,
like when your drones start off.”
If you
could put enough pressure on the reed of the Highland pipe chanter,
he says, in theory it too should play the second octave. “The stiff
reeds would need a great deal of pressure. The other thing is that
the throat of the modern Highland pipe is very narrow: about five
32nds of an inch or 4mm.“I have an old Highland pipe chanter and
the throat is seven 32nds, which is the same as an uilleann pipe.“If
you make a reed with a staple that matches this throat, then this
chanter plays in A and you can change octave fairly easily.
“There’s
less resistance. “I’ve heard that this was also done by partly opening
the top note which causes the wave in the pipe to change. But it’s
kind of difficult to allow just that exact amount of air out to
halve the wavelength and jump the octave.“You could have a key that
opened by just the right amount, a hole under you right thumb possibly.
Some woodwind instruments have octave keys. It’s a hole about one
16th of an inch.”
Fine-controlling
their reeds is something uilleann pipers need to learn a lot about.
“In the full set of uilleann pipes, you’ve got seven reeds to keep
in tune,” says Jim Daily. “Oboe and bassoon players complain about
one.
“You start playing the uilleann pipes with
just the chanter, though. Then you add the drones and you pick up
knowledge up as you go along.
The last
add-on is a set of regulators: three chanters in a stock with the
tone holes closed by keys.The keys are arranged in rows so that
the chanters can be played three at a time to give a three-note
chord.
“Not a lot of people play regulators very
much these days,” says Jim Daily. “It’s less the difficulty of playing
them than the difficulty of having them in tune. If one’s out, it
sounds awful.”
Jim Daily teaches on Wednesday evenings
at The Piping Centre and spends his Monday evenings with Comhaltos
Ceoltoiri Eireann, a traditional Irish music society with three
branches in Glasgow.
With drummer
Jack Casey, Jim Daily plays as Roaring Mary: “We had a singer but
he was a student here at the art school and he’s away back to Ireland.
We don’t have any females in the band but
we liked the name: It’s the title of a tune.”
Jim Daily is also one of two dozen or so
uilleann pipe makers worldwide. “People usually go to the Irish
makers but many of them have huge waiting lists, up to five years.
A large part of my market is the United
States.
I’ve recently had orders from Poland, Moscow, France and Germany.
“It’s not advisable for a beginner to buy
a full set because it feels very awkward with the instrument across
your lap.
You’d start with a bag, bellows and chanter
(a practice set) and add to it later.
“It takes me about a week’s work to make
a practice set. A set of drones is about a fortnight’s work and
a set of regulators takes longer. It’d take me up to two months
to make a full set.”
Summers often find Jim Daily away to his
house in south Galway. From there, he usually attends the Scoil
Samhraidh Willie Clancy (the Willie
Clancy Summer School) run by Na Píobairí Uilleann.
Held each July since 1973 in memory of
the piper Willie Clancy, the summer school in and around Miltown
Malbay in County Clare is Ireland's largest traditional music festival.
“I may not be making as money as I did
when I was an architect,” says Jim Daily.
“But I’m enjoying life a whole lot more.”
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