Dick Grindley

Having been fingered at the Collogue to see what I could find of piping interest on the Web for Common Stock, I went away and had a look. There is no particular theme to the following selection other than my own interests but who knows, there might just be something of interest to someone else!!!!! [Have you found a web site which might appeal to others? Let us know - Ed]

Musical Instrument Makers Forum http://www.mimf.com/link.htm

An absolute mine of information for musical instrument makers of all levels, bagpipes come towards the end and it's very easy to get distracted on the way!! The down-loadable Freeware Test Tone Generator in the electronics section works well & can be used to generate adjustable fixed and swept audio frequencies on the PC.

Acoustical Society of America http://www.acoustics.org

A source of a lot of detailed acoustical information I'm sure will be of interest to someone but I'm afraid I got distracted (yet again) by the paper on Low Frequency & Infrasonic Vocalizations from Tigers...!!!

Seth Gallagher's Uilleann.Com Irish Bagpipes Web Site

http://www.uilleann.com/reeds.html

Still can't get those home made chanter reeds to sound right? Seth Gallagher has an attractive reed making instruction site that might just help. Although strictly dealing with the chanter reeds for U i I lean pipes his techniques look identical to those used to make Border & Scottish Smallpipe reeds, it’s just the sizes that are different. His instructions are accompanied by lots of sketches, drawings, hints & practical tips as well as an invaluable final fault finding chart.

Swedish bagpipe music

http://www.docs.uu.se/~crwth/bagpipes/swedish/music.html

Nice site dedicated to one of the lesser known varieties of bagpipe.. Constructional details, history & a selection of typical music are accompanied by easily down-loadable/playable music files.

The Official Web Page of the Shrine of Bad Reeds

http://members.aol.com/cathexisad/index.html

It's nice to know that we're not the only group of musicians to be frustrated/annoyed or just plain p****d off with recalcitrant bits of cane!!

The Universe of Bagpipes

http://www.mcn.0rg/2/0seeler/bagpipes/default.html

If you've ever wondered about other varieties of bagpipe this could be the site for you. Ignoring the CD publicity this site contains detailed information on about 30 different varieties of.bagpipe including description, some construction details, chanter & drone tuning etc

Barnaby Brown's Web Site http://pibroch.net

An easy-to-use site, biased towards the GHB & pibroch as you would expect but with an excellent Links Section. His other site - clarsach.net - is also worth a visit.

Banda Gaites Corvera d'Asturies

http://members.es.tripod.de/bandagaitescorvera/mipagpre.html

A tri-lingual site with plenty of information about this piping and drumming group from northern Spain and a good selection of tunes from the Asturias.

Audio Spectrogram Software

http.7/www. monumental.com/rshorne/gram.html

For those with a fairly fast PC, a sound board, plenty of memory & an interest in just what notes your pipes produce Spectrogram Ver.5.1.2, down­loadable from this site, might just be what you're looking for. Under Windows 95 Spectrogram is easy to set up & operate, one great advantage being the detailed Help file. My first attempt at analysis was on a .wav recording of a simple chanter scale, the Scroll (Waterfall) Display clearly showed frequency components beyond 10kHz and was sensitive enough to demonstrate that possibly even those closed holes & lower open holes still produce notes albeit at a very low level. Investigations continue.