Blair Digital Chanter Settings

[Tom MacKenzie]

I picked up the Blair digital chanter on my trip round Australia last year. What a superbly built machine!

However I cannot figure out these !@#$ settings for grace notes. I cannot get my D grace note to sound at all, unless I lift my finger higher and hold it longer that I usually would. For me this makes it a frustrating experience.

I have tried +ing and -ing the setting but it is not helping. On my DegerPipes there is no problem with getting a clear sounding D grace note.

Maybe it's a optical versus contact capacitance thing.

Please would someone relate to me how you have gone about tuning the settings to your playing. I seem to be at a loss for how to proceed.

Thanks very much.

tomm

[CalumII]

If you look up previous threads about the chanter, I posted about what I did to get the sensors about right. It is a bit of a frustrating process, for sure. I'm not convinced this type of sensor is the ultimate solution, tbh.

[Tom MacKenzie]

Originally Posted by CalumII

If you look up previous threads about the chanter, I posted about what I did to get the sensors about right. It is a bit of a frustrating process, for sure. I'm not convinced this type of sensor is the ultimate solution, tbh.

What I have found is

Originally Posted by CalumII

The three tests I applied to make sure the calibration was working was to

- play a very small gracenote, much smaller and tighter than normal
- play a very gentle strike, just brushing the hole
- very slowly lift and replace the finger, making sure the note change comes when it "should"

It seems to me different people have slightly different "reflectivity" of their skin, so what works for me (or Murray Blair, or the a-pipes guy) will be slightly different to you .

and

Originally Posted by CalumII

Main thing I've noticed - the sensors have adjustable sensitivity, and for me at least, this has to be set very, very carefully. The more relaxed your grip and the faster your gracenotes, the more careful you have to be. I've found Mrs MacPherson to be a very good test of the set up, as are crunluaths. You also need to make sure adjacent holes are responding at the same speed otherwise correct technique gets translated into incorrect sound!

tomm

[CalumII]

Thanks Tom. Yes, those three tests are what I was referring to - if you can get those working you should have an instrument that responds relatively realistically.



As pipers we don't sometimes appreciate just how responsive a reeded instrument is to our fingering compared to many instruments. It's only noticeable when we play something similar, but different...