Honoring The Legion Of Honor - Murat Shrine

Highlanders
Hello Nobles!
Band Activities
The Murat Highlanders will travel to Ft. Wayne, IN, on
June 9 to participate in the Fort Wayne Scottish Cultural
Society Indiana Highland Games. This is a fun day
that features several pipe bands, Highland athletic
competition, Highland dance competition, and
Women’s Rugby. In addition to several food, drink
and merchandise vendors, there is a Bonnie Knees
Contest and the fabled Haggis Toss.
Bagpipe Basics/You can tune a bagpipe?
This is a question many people ask and yes,
you can tune a set of pipes. The drones are tuned
to the pitch of ‘low A’ on the chanter. The two tenor
drones are tuned one octave below the chanter and
the bass drone is tuned one octave below that. The
drones can be moved up or down at their joints to
change their pitch. Moving the joint up flattens the
tone and moving it down sharpens the tone.
Electronic tuners can be used to set these at precisely
the right pitch.
The chanter can also be fine tuned, first by
moving the reed upward or downward within its
seat to flatten or sharpen its overall tuning.
Individual notes on the chanter can be adjusted also.
Remember, there are nine notes made by various
configurations of the fingers on eight holes.
Normally, a bit of thin tape like electrical tape is
used. This is placed over various holes on the
chanter to bring those notes into tune. In radical circumstances,
material can be removed from the
chanter to flatten a note. Most pipers would rather
avoid taking the knife to a $200 chanter.
Of course, the bagpipe tuning constantly
changes during playing, being affected by temperature,
humidity, internal moisture and the physical (or
mental) state of the piper. Pipers have even attributed
tuning problems to sunspots or phases of the
moon! Bagpipes are very temperamental instruments
and require a good ear to keep in tune!
While it is relatively easy to tune the individual
bagpipe, the whole process really gets ugly when
tuning the entire band. That will be the subject of a
future article. Stay tuned.
BECOMING A HIGHLANDER
The band is always looking for new members.
Musical experience is very helpful. We supply
instruction for piping and drumming. If you are
interested, please visit one of our meetings or practices.
Our business meetings are the first Monday of
each month at 7 p.m. in the Nile Room, which is in
the lower level of the Shrine Club. Practices are the
second and fourth Mondays at the Gatling Gun Club.
Joe “Wee Piper” Ketterman
Rookie practice and instruction begins at 6:30 p.m. and the
entire band rehearsal begins at 7 p.m. For additional information,
contact Joe “Wee Piper” Ketterman at (317) 849-1807 or
jmketterman@aol.com.
JUNE 2007 17