Here We Come A-Pipe-Chiming

This year's pipe chimes performance! We played at the ward Christmas party, delighting and astonishing all in attendance. Kate played with us for the first time, and did a great job. (Aside from a small mishap in the second verse, from which she managed to recover quickly.)

We also attempted to play "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," but it just didn't come together as well so I won't inflict that one on you.



Kate and Santa!

Silent Pipe, Holy Pipe

(The title was Doug's idea.)

This last Friday was our ward Christmas party, where we played the pipe chimes. Doug got a video with his PDA--not great, but you can hear it.



I'm the one doing the pointing. It's hard to tell, I know!



Better pictures! (I think they're having a good time, they're just concentrating.)



That's Don Tracy's twenty-year-old Christmas sweater. Isn't it fabulous?



You can see Doug in the background, trying to film and hold a wiggly baby at the same time.

Originally I had planned something quite a bit more complicated with the bass part, but I didn't test it out with a piano player ahead of time, and we discovered that it just didn't sound right. So we improvised something simple using only three of the six low notes that we'd made. This was probably just as well, as we didn't really have enough people for three more big pipes. Most of our players were doubled up, and Tim and Don each had three.

Big thanks to everybody who helped out with this! (On both sides of the pond.)

We are finally getting some snow today. It's been cold and dry for about a week now. Andy and Kate are both fascinated by the falling flakes.

low notes

For some time now I've been trying to figure out if we could make some lower notes to go with my pipe chimes. It's fun to be able to include harmony, so I figured more harmony would be even more fun. Our ward Christmas party is coming up, and I said I would get some people together to play a song.

We found this file which gives the lengths for the octave below middle C, in 3/4" pipe. (These directions have the pipes suspended with rubber bands rather than drilled and hung, but the measurements are the same.)

Problem: the list is missing a few notes (C sharp, A flat, E flat). We found a formula here but I didn't think I was up to the challenge of actually using it to figure anything out. Fortunately I just happen to know someone who is both mathematical and musical. I dashed off an email to Helen Chick explaining the problem. We met Helen when she was attending our (church) branch in St. John's, Newfoundland, while on sabbatical at Memorial University there. She's from Tasmania and is a professor of mathematics. (She's currently on sabbatical at Oxford and blogging about it. Hi Helen!) Well, she not only filled in the missing notes, she made me a spread sheet where I could enter the length for the lowest note, and it would calculate a full three octaves above that, as well as calculating the node--22.4% from the end--the ideal place to drill for the best sound. Amazing.

Tim Beecher helped us with the cutting and drilling. I say "helped," but he did all the actual cutting and drilling. I wasn't sure what tools would be needed but it wasn't quite as complicated as I'd thought, just time-consuming. We ended up going over to the Beechers' and using up good chunks of their evenings on two different occasions.



I got some copper pipe first. I had read that copper produced a mellower sound. What we discovered was that "mellow" apparently means "not clear," and with the muddiness and all the overtones, we found it very difficult to tell if the pipe was actually making the right note. We cut about six pipes but I wasn't really happy with them.

So next I got some of the other stuff (galvanized?)--which is a lot cheaper, anyway, should have just started with that--and it worked great. In the interests of time, though, I decided that instead of creating the entire bass clef I would pick a song and concentrate on getting those notes first. That was a tough choice. I decided to go with "Silent Night," but I find myself afflicted with something like buyer's remorse and keep wishing I'd picked something else instead. (Next year!)



The two pipes on the right are the highest and lowest notes from the set Helen Vernon made for me. My #1 is a B flat below middle C, but the set my mom got (from pipechimes.com) goes down to A, which is #0. So now I have an A, too. You can see how huge the new ones are. They're louder, too. This may present a difficulty if they just completely overpower the melody.



Andy thinks the pipes are pretty cool!

We practiced last night. I sent out an email and got just barely enough people. Jeanette, Amanda, and Jill were all in the group that got together last year, and then we didn't get to play because there was a big storm and our Christmas party was canceled. Tim Beecher and son Jesse came, and also Alixandria, who's twelve. We went through "Silent Night" till we all felt comfortable with it, and then played some of the other songs that I had written out, just for fun. I think everyone enjoyed it. I'd like to be able to do this more often, and not just at Christmas.

This has been quite the group effort, and definitely a learning experience for me! Now I have to figure out what to do with these copper pipes that I'm not using. Anyone want to make some really big wind chimes?

Musical Pipes

These pipes were made for me by Helen Vernon. My first encounter with musical pipes happened while I was home from BYU--probably for Christmas, though I suppose it could have been summer vacation. We went over to visit the Vernons, who had moved into my family's ward (at church). She had this set of numbered pipes all cut to different lengths to produce different notes. We played songs on the pipes, striking them with spoons, following the numbers that Sister Vernon pointed to on a big pad of paper. She had a bunch of songs written out in this pad, and she said they liked to get the pipes out for group activities. I thought it was great fun.

Later, when I was graduating from BYU and had just gotten engaged to Doug, my family came out to Utah. My mom brought a package that she said was a graduation-slash-engagement present. It was a set of pipes that Sister Vernon had made for me. Nineteen pipes, in a big cloth roll (rather like the crayon rolls that my friend Amy has on her blog), with spoons tucked into the slots. (If she made many of these sets for people she must have been constantly scouring thrift stores for odd spoons.) There was also a set of instructions and songs. My mom said later that she wished she had taken a picture of my expression when I opened the box. I was thrilled. Betsey, who is allergic to cacophony, expressed the wish to not play with the pipes right then, and I said that we couldn't, anyway, since I would have to write the numbers for the songs out bigger so everyone could see them.

Eleven years passed by, and more, before we actually used the pipes. We didn't take them to Korea with us, or Newfoundland. For a time I wasn't sure where they were, but I found them again. We would get them out every once in a while and look at them, and bang on a few with the spoons. It takes a lot of people to play the pipes, and Doug and I, while not exactly anti-social, are not really event planners. Plus they're rather bulky, and heavy, and not the sort of thing that you can just casually toss into a suitcase when flying out to a family gathering in Ohio.

A couple of weeks ago we got a call from a friend at church who's on the activities committee, wanting to know if Doug could perform for the ward Christmas party. I mentioned that I had these pipes that were fun to use with large groups. She said that sounded fun, so I got on the program.

I got some poster board and wrote out two songs--"O Little Town of Bethlehem" (something with an easy rhythm, to start with) and then, in case it went really well and we were feeling ambitious, "Silent Night" with harmony. The day before the party we got out all the pipes and hung them on a broomstick across the backs of two chairs, and played around with them a bit.



Kate got into the act with her spoon, and once knocked the whole broomstick off onto the floor with a ringing clatter. (She was alarmed but unhurt.)

That afternoon we got the news that Sister Vernon had passed away. She'd been battling cancer for quite some time. I never got to know her very well, since they'd moved into the area after I left for college, but I always thought of her fondly. I know she will be missed.

The night of the party, when it was my turn, I asked for "volunteers with a good sense of rhythm." I got mostly kids. (I snagged one of the missionaries to hold my poster board.) They did a good job! As we gamely clanked our way through "O Little Town of Bethlehem," the rest of the people in the gym gradually fell silent, listening. The pipes make a good loud sound, but not loud enough, apparently, to be heard over a gym full of talking people. By the end of the song it was very still. So we did it again.




I didn't think we were up to tackling "Silent Night," so we didn't try that one. But maybe we'll get to do it with some friends before Christmas. Hopefully we'll get to use the pipes more often. I will think of Sister Vernon and try to make good use of her gift.

I found this site pipechimes.com where you can buy a set of pipes, or buy instructions for making them.