Chris Apps | |
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| Born | 1962 |
Chris Apps (born 1962) is a bagpiper and reed-maker.
Chris Apps | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | 1962 |
Chris Apps (born 1962) is a bagpiper and reed-maker.
Apps began playing the bagpipes at the age of 10. At age 14 he became involved with the Scottish Piping Society of London, for whom he would eventually judge at competitions. [1] [2] In 1986 he was invited to join the Kansas City St Andrews Pipes and Drums Grade I band and lived in Missouri until 1989, when he returned to England. [2]
He has donated chanter reeds to The National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland [2] and has now retired from performing in competitions. He now plays individual gigs around the St. Louis area. [3]
In 1991 Apps founded his own reed-making business. Unable to learn reed-making from other pipers, he went to the Royal College of Music in London and learned to create bassoon reeds. He then modified the equipment for bassoon reeds to create bagpipe reeds. The modified equipment meant that he could create a reed composed of one part, rather than an assembly. [2]
His reeds were used by Clan Sutherland when they won the Grade II competition and Champion of Champions at the Cowal Highland Gathering. [2] He designed the plastic drone reeds for David Naill & Co as a derivative of a second-generation Henderson reed, [4] and after making smallpipe reeds he moved on to cane chanter reeds, which received good reviews. [5]
Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Scottish Great Highland bagpipes are the best known examples in the Anglophone world, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, including Anatolia, the Caucasus, and around the Persian Gulf.
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that plays music written in the bass and tenor clefs, and occasionally the treble. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band, and chamber music literature. It is known for its distinctive tone colour, wide range, variety of character, and agility. The modern bassoon exists in two forms; Buffet and Heckel systems. One who plays a bassoon of either system is called a bassoonist.
A reed is a thin strip of material that vibrates to produce a sound on a musical instrument. Most woodwind instrument reeds are made from Arundo donax or synthetic material. Tuned reeds are made of metal or synthetics. Musical instruments are classified according to the type and number of reeds.
The uilleann pipes are the characteristic national bagpipe of Ireland. Earlier known in English as "union pipes", their current name is a partial translation of the Irish-language term píobaí uilleann, from their method of inflation. There is no historical record of the name or use of the term uilleann pipes before the 20th century. It was an invention of Grattan Flood and the name stuck. People mistook the term 'union' to refer to the 1800 Act of Union; this is incorrect as Breandán Breathnach points out that a poem published in 1796 uses the term 'union'.
The Great Highland bagpipe is a type of bagpipe native to Scotland. It has acquired widespread recognition through its usage in the British military and in pipe bands throughout the world.
A pipe band is a musical ensemble consisting of pipers and drummers. The term pipes and drums, used by military pipe bands is also common.
The Northumbrian smallpipes are bellows-blown bagpipes from North East England, where they have been an important factor in the local musical culture for more than 200 years. The family of the Duke of Northumberland have had an official piper for over 250 years, and in more recent times the Mayor of Gateshead and the Lord Mayor of Newcastle have both re-established the tradition by appointing official Northumbrian pipers.
A double reed is a type of reed used to produce sound in various wind instruments. In contrast with a single reed instrument, where the instrument is played by channeling air against one piece of cane which vibrates against the mouthpiece and creates a sound, a double reed features two pieces of cane vibrating against each other. The term double reeds can also refer collectively to the class of instruments which use double reeds. The timbre of a single and double reed instrument is related to the harmonic series but only including only the odd harmonics due to air column modes canceling out the even harmonics. This may be compared to the timbre of a square wave.
The term double clarinet refers to any of several woodwind instruments consisting of two parallel pipes made of cane, bird bone, or metal, played simultaneously, with a single reed for each. Commonly, there are five or six tone holes in each pipe, or holes in only one pipe while the other acts as a drone, and the reeds are either cut from the body of the instrument or created by inserting smaller, slit tubes into the ends of the pipes. The player typically uses circular breathing.
A single-reed instrument is a woodwind instrument that uses only one reed to produce sound. The very earliest single-reed instruments were documented in ancient Egypt, as well as the Middle East, Greece, and the Roman Empire. The earliest types of single-reed instruments used idioglottal reeds, where the vibrating reed is a tongue cut and shaped on the tube of cane. Much later, single-reed instruments started using heteroglottal reeds, where a reed is cut and separated from the tube of cane and attached to a mouthpiece of some sort. By contrast, in a double reed instrument, there is no mouthpiece; the two parts of the reed vibrate against one another. Reeds are traditionally made of cane and produce sound when air is blown across or through them. The type of instruments that use a single reed are clarinets and saxophone. The timbre of a single and double reed instrument is related to the harmonic series but only including only the odd harmonics due to air column modes canceling out the even harmonics. This may be compared to the timbre of a square wave.
The pastoral pipe was a bellows-blown bagpipe, widely recognised as the forerunner and ancestor of the 19th-century union pipes, which became the uilleann pipes of today. Similar in design and construction, it had a foot joint in order to play a low leading note and plays a two octave chromatic scale. There is a tutor for the "Pastoral or New Bagpipe" by J. Geoghegan, published in London in 1745. It had been considered that Geoghegan had overstated the capabilities of the instrument, but a study on surviving instruments has shown that it did indeed have the range and chromatic possibilities which he claimed.
Tom Clough (1881–1964), known as "The Prince of Pipers", was an English player of the Northumbrian pipes, or Northumbrian smallpipes. He was also a pipemaker, and the pipes he made with Fred Picknell include several important innovations, and have a distinctive tone. He had studied the instrument with the noted piper Thomas Todd, and from his own father Henry Clough. His three surviving recordings, among the earliest recordings made of the instrument, and his considerable body of music manuscripts, including his own compositions, give considerable insight into the traditional playing technique and style of the instrument. This is particularly so because at least four previous generations of the family had been pipers, as was his son 'Young Tom' (1912–1987) – they thus form a continuous link between earliest players of the modern instrument, and contemporary players. In contrast to the widely accepted notion of traditional folk music as an essentially rural activity, he and his family lived in the mining community of Newsham in south-east Northumberland, and were miners themselves. At the end of his life, "Young Tom" recalled piping sessions at the 'Willow Tree' in Newsham, with his father Tom, grandfather Henry Clough, and Richard Mowat all playing – Henry's and Richard Mowat's playing would get more furious and inaccurate as the evening progressed; Tom was teetotal. Young Tom had the job of carrying his grandfather's pipes afterwards. There is a composite photograph of the Clough family at. Here Tom himself is on the left, his pipemaking collaborator Fred Picknell standing behind him, his father Henry Clough and son 'Young Tom' standing towards the right, while an older image of Tom's grandfather "Old Tom", seated piping in the foreground, has been added subsequently. Old Tom died in 1885, and the main photograph was taken in 1924. The other figure, seated on the far right, is believed to be Captain Nicholson of Haydon Bridge, a traditional fiddler.
This article defines a number of terms that are exclusive, or whose meaning is exclusive, to piping and pipers.
Hugh Robertson (1730–1822) was a Scottish wood and ivory turner and a master crafter of woodwind instruments such as Pastoral Pipes, Union pipes, and Great Highland Bagpipes.
Irish warpipes are an Irish analogue of the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe. "Warpipes" is originally an English term. The first use of the Gaelic term in Ireland was recorded in a poem by Seán Ó Neachtain, in which the bagpipes are referred to as píb mhór.
Chris Armstrong is a bagpiper from Scotland and pipe major of the ScottishPower Pipe Band.
McCallum Bagpipes is a company that manufactures Great Highland bagpipes. Founded in 1998, it is based in Kilmarnock, Scotland. The company has worked with bagpiper Willie McCallum to design several products.
Donald MacPherson was a Scottish bagpipe player, and one of the most successful competitive solo pipers of all time.