Musical pipe

“ Nevertheless, as matters stand at present, the moment that the wind is introduced, all the pipes would speak at once, to obviate which a moveable piece of wood, or sounding-pallet is inserted in the groove, the control over it being exercised by means of a wire connected with the key-note: the result is, that when the note is pressed, the wire acts on the pallet, allowing the air to escape into that particular groove, and thus produces a musical note, or, we may say, notes; for, as there are several pipe-holes to each groove, all those pipes would sound simultaneously. ”

“ If its origin was as previously suggested by Collins, there is occasion to believe the shepherd’s simple life afforded it first existence; in the native and wild notes of the pastoral reed, may be discovered the germ of a science as various as its effects are beautiful. We shall for the present presume the simple Pandean pipe was the first effort of the construction of musical instruments; its soft tone being analogous to the dulcet harmony of the voice. We are led to suppose this from the evidence of ancient statuary, where those pipes are frequently discovered ”

“ What we do know, however, is that men playing the pipe are portrayed in sculptures the date of which is fixed by the best authorities as about 4000 B.C., and we conclude that in Chaldaea, Egypt, Assyria and Persia at least, the pipe—but not necessarily the bagpipe—had become a recognised musical instrument. ”

“ They fall into two distinct classes, the single and the double pipes. There were three principal single pipes, the monaulos, the plagiaulos and the syrinx monocalamos. The double pipes were used by the great musicians of ancient Greece, and notably at the musical contests at Delphi, and what has been said above concerning the construction of the aulos refers mainly to the double pipes. The monaulos, a single pipe of Egyptian origin, which, by inference, we assume to have been played from the end by means of a reed, may have been the archetype of the oboe or clarinet. ”

“ The celebrated mathematician, Daniel Bernouilli, discovered that an organ-pipe can be made to yield a succession of musical notes by properly varying the pressure of the current of air blown into it. If the pipe is an open pipe, and if we call the frequency of the primary note obtained when the pipe is gently blown, unity, then when we blow more strongly the pipe yields notes which are the harmonics of the fundamental one ”

“ Each individual has one pipe only, and, as above stated, can only play one note. But the Bechuanas have enough musical ear to tune their pipes to any required note, which they do by pushing or withdrawing a movable plug which closes the reed at the lower end. When a number of men assemble for the purpose of singing and dancing, they tune their pipes beforehand, taking great pains in getting the precise note which they want, and being as careful about it as if they belonged to a European orchestra. ”

“ This practice is in a large measure confined to regimental pipe music. Such tunes as “I’m wearying awa’, Jean,” or “Miss Forbes’ Farewell to Banff,” have no earthly power of adaptation to the notes of the bagpipe, and the performance of such music on that instrument is a violation of good taste and all musical propriety. One cannot help being struck with the peculiar good taste that pervades all the compositions of the M’Crimmons, the famous pipers of the Macleods, and how wonderfully the music and the instrument are adapted to each other throughout. ”

“ Four of the tubes have small lateral finger-holes which, when closed, lower the pitch a semitone. These holes are on the second, fourth, sixth, and seventh pipe, as shown in the engraving. When the holes are open, the tones are: and when they are closed: The other tubes have unalterable tones. The following notation exhibits all the tones producible on the instrument:
The musician is likely to speculate what could have induced the Peruvians to adopt so strange a series of intervals: it seems rather arbitrary than premeditated. ”

“ A push pipe [111] is just the thing for a black-face musical act.
[111] A push pipe can be bought for $4.00 of the L. E. Knott Apparatus Co., Boston, Mass.
Fig. 110j. how the push pipe is played
The Curious Xylophone. —How to Make It. —This instrument, which is pronounced zil-o-fon ́, is cheap to make or buy [112] and is easy to learn to play.
[112] Can be bought of any dealer in musical instruments or of the L. E. Knott Co., Boston.
To make one cut off fifteen bars of a stick of maple 1⁄2 an inch thick, 7⁄8 inch wide and make the longest one 5 inches. ”

“ Slip a piece of rubber tubing over the end of a pipe, allowing an inch or so to project. Take the [Pg 307] free part of the tube by two opposite points between the first fingers and thumbs and pull it until the edges are stretched tight. Now blow through it. The wind, forcing its way between the two rubber edges, causes them and the air inside the tube to vibrate, and a musical note results. The more you strain the rubber the higher is the note.
The larynx works on this principle. The windpipe takes the place of the glass pipe ”

“ The Chinese instrument is an assemblage of pipes of various lengths from which musical tones of different pitches are produced,—it is a mouth organ. Our modern organ is likewise an assemblage of pipes, and differs only from it in respect of number and degree. Perhaps the blowing across the open end of a pipes was the earliest mechanical way of producing a flute sound. The little19 river reed pipe of Pan is therefore selected as the type of all flutes; the principle is the same whatever the variation in method of sounding. ”

“ Music and dancing are greatly studied among the Fijians, and any one who knows a new dance is sure to earn plenty of goods by teaching it. Their musical instruments are very poor, consisting of drums, pipes, and trumpets. The first-mentioned instruments are nothing more than wooden cylinders, through one side of which a groove is cut about an inch or so in width. The pipes are of two kinds; namely, a sort of pandean pipe made of several strips of bamboo fastened together, and the flute. ”

“ General Gates P. Thruston suggests that the stem holes of the disc pipe being funnel-shaped, it may safely be regarded as an old type.
“Mr. J. D. McGuire writes: ‘The shape is so suggestive of the jewsharp, an instrument used extensively in trade with the Indians, as to indicate that the pipe itself is modeled after the form of this 53primitive musical instrument, even though the file marks, so common on many of the pipes, are absent from those coming under the writer’s observation.’
Fig. ”

“ For some time before we fell in I heard from all quarters strange, unearthly noises, and in every direction I turned I saw, at quite a distance from each other, kilted figures walking up and down bearing their wide-branched bag-pipes, each one emitting the weirdest wails imaginable; they were the pipers of the Sixteenth pipe band tuning up. However, when we started off the sound was quite different, for the pipes and kettle-drums make merry marching music. I know of no other music that can make tired men march so briskly and with such a swing as that of the pipes. ”

“ In India we find flutes which seem to show a compromise or blending of the tip-blown and side-blown methods. In the India Museum some pipes may be seen with a curiously shaped hollow tip, cut with a slant curve, across which the player blows. These several ways are but different illustrations of one and the same principle—that is to say—the stream of air blown across the hole creates suction in the pipe, which reaching its limit is constantly broken with a rapidity of action resulting in periodic vibration of definite sound or pitch. ”

“ From father to son, from teacher to scholar the tradition of pitch was carried on. The string affected by heat and moisture and by the strain when twanged, never remains accurately to pitch. Although pipes and strings have run a parallel course, we do not find that the lyre players actually cared to refer to pipes as guiding them in setting the pitch. Yet it was the custom, so Plutarch tells us, for reciters and orators to have a pitch pipe sounded by an attendant to keep their voices to a prescribed pitch, and he mentions an ivory pipe being used for the practice. ”

“ So the Chinese foot predetermined the standard both for the reed pipe of bamboo with a tongue of metal, and for the reed pipe blown across as the pandean pipe is blown across: which pipe from immemorial days has remained in the imperial archives, as the unalterable standard of pitch—unalterable because nature does not alter. ”

“ Advance is very slow.
We should remember the great gap of time—two thousand five hundred years—before men arrived at the55 idea of a simple lever key to extend the scale of oboes and flutes by one note; and then think of the possible interval between the time of early common use of pipes comprising four tones in their range and the advent of a pipe with one finger hole and one more added tone. May be in the popular tradition, some young god invented it. Think of the commotion amongst the Greeks when a daring innovator added one more string to the lyre! ”

“ The reed initiating the tone by the player's breath is a broad, single, striking or beating reed, so called because the vibrating tongue touches the edges of the body of the cutting or framing. A cylindrical pipe, as that of the clarinet, drops, approximately, an octave in pitch when the column of air it contains is set up in vibration by such a reed, because the reed virtually closes the pipe at the end where it is inserted, and like a stopped organ pipe sets up a node of maximum condensation or rarefaction at that end. ”

“ Here in the fourth court the drums that maiden fingers beat are booming like the thunder; the cymbals are falling, as the stars fall from heaven when their merit is exhausted; [5] the pipe is discoursing music as sweet as the humming of bees. And here, again, is a lute that somebody is holding on his lap like a girl who is excited by jealousy and love, and he is stroking it with his fingers. ”

“ On my models, I sometimes make a difference of a whole tone in each note of the scale produced. In default of any true knowledge of Greek practice, I think that we may fairly attribute to the artist some such design in the construction of the pipes.
It is a natural conclusion that the first invention of man in the way of flutes would be a single pipe for the production of one, two or three notes ”

“ The rhythmic beat of drums and cymbals, the shrill, strident notes of the fife, the quaint, quavering tones of the pipe and clarinet, mingle in a strain jocosely mirthful, rather than truly gay, and becoming more insistent as it advances. ”

“ It is obvious that to have a perfect chromatic scale a separate string or pipe is required for each note in such instruments as the organ and pianoforte, while it is obtained in those of the flute and oboe class by making additional 371holes in the tube at the correct intervals and covering them with close-fitting pads with levers (keys) within convenient reach of the fingers. (Having mentioned the oboe, it may be remarked in passing that its tone has been called “bagpipe music sublimated.”) ”

“ As with the drum among percussion instruments, so this instrument among wind instruments occupies a place of honor. The invention of the drum sums up for us all previously existing rhythmic musical impulses, and this collection of whistles gives us an instrument on which the production of a sequence of different tones or musical scale is possible. It has been given the poetical name of ‘Pan’s Pipes.’ These ‘Pan’s Pipes,’ of more or less primitive construction, are found quite generally among the savage tribes of the world. ”

“ Can you not imagine him seated thus, drawing the weird yet sweet notes from his pipe, as first one pair of shiny eyes peered through the leaves or around the rocks, then another, and another, until gradually the creatures surrounded him? That music has charms has never been disputed. ”

“ The general effect of such comparatively simple tones is very smooth but somewhat dull, and they seem to be deeper in pitch than they really are. Flutes and wide-stopped organ pipes have few effective partials, and are much inferior in musical effect to open organ pipes and to the piano. The tones of the voice, violin, and horn, are more complex still, and are characterised by fuller and richer qualities. When the partials above the 7th are strong they beat with each other, and the quality becomes harsh and rough as in reed instruments. ”

“ The most common are the harp, fiddle, cittern or lute, hand-organ, the shalm or psaltery, the pipe and tabor, pipes of various sizes played like clarionets, but called flutes, the double pipe, hand-bells, trumpets and horns, bagpipes, tambourine, tabret, drum, and cymbals. Of the greater number of these we have already incidentally given illustrations; we add, on the last page, other illustrations, from the Royal MS., 2 B vii., and Royal MS. 14 E iii. In the fourteenth century new instruments were invented. ”

“ More power may be secured either by drawing additional stops, thus throwing on more sets of reeds, or by opening the knee swells which either throw on more reeds (sometimes octave couplers) or else open a swell box in which some of the reeds are enclosed, the tone being louder when the box is open than when closed. More tone may also be secured by pumping harder.
4. The essential characteristic of the pipe-organ is a number of sets or registers of pipes called stops, each set being capable (usually) of sounding the entire chromatic scale through a range of five or six octaves. ”