A new frontier had been crossed. Those ingenious folks at NASA have figured out how the pipes can be played in space.
Suck on it, Chris Hadfield!
Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most…human.
My initial thought (after “Why?”) was – what’s so difficult about making bagpipes you can play in space? It’s in the environment area with ordinary temperature and pressure. Bagpipes don’t care about bring in zero-g. Ron McNair had already taken up an off-the-shelf (toy) saxophone and played it on the Space Station. So what’s the big deal?
So that’s the answer – it’s not “a bagpipe that can be played in space”, because I’ll bet any bagpipes can be. It’s a set of space qualified bagpipes. That means that they cost ten times as much as ordinary terrestrial bagpipes. But at least they won’t outgas.
Yeah, I don’t get what’s so special here. I mean, I’ve played bagpipes myself (it’s how I met my spouse). There’s nothing about them that requires gravity.
Oh, and you don’t “punch” the bag, you compress it between your elbow and ribcage to maintain the air pressure that vibrates the reeds and produces the music (or noise, depending either on the skill level of the player and/or the perception of the listener). Yes, in lower air pressure you’ll have to squeeze harder. Um… wow?
Now, the whole thing about plastic and not becoming contaminated… yes, that is an issue. You don’t want to know what lives in the the traditional leather bag part of bagpipes, really you don’t. There is, in fact, a rare lung infection to which pipers with particularly bad personal/instrument hygiene habits have come down with from time to time. But really, it sounds like standard bagpipes made of a non-traditional but serviceable material. Not really different than the move to using kevlar for the bags instead of leather (a move I was very much in favor of, being far less gross and less prone to rot).
The problem with playing bagpipes aboard the ISS is that the others (i.e., the victims) have no place to go to escape the noise.
Great Thread Title/Original Poster Username, by the way.
Off topic:
Please skip to the two minute mark of this youtube. The Devil’s Brigade clip
What is the title of that bagpipe & drum marching song?
(Bagpipes will surely dumbfound any alien menace we encounter. Or make them more mad…)
Another clip: Black Watch
Them’s fightin’ words.
That brings up an interesting point. I recall watching Chris talk about playing guitar in space and he said it took some getting used to. He said he wasn’t expecting it, but he was so used to playing with gravity that suddenly when his hands were weightless he’d overshoot the frets on the way up the neck or his right hand would go down too far when he was strumming.
Doesn’t surprise me. Lots of things we take for granted in gravity manifest themselves as problems in zero G. I’ve been told that astronauts in zero G get a good ab workout, because you can’t just let gravity pull you down into a sitting position, as you do on earth. You have to pull yourself down into that sitting crouch when there’s no gravity.
So I could see people getting use to strumming by basically letting their hands fall on the downstroke, and overshooting the frets when you come back up against no resistance. But I can’t see how anything like that would affect the playing of a lot of other instruments, bagpipes included.
If zero-gee makes a guitar-player miss his fingering on the neck, it would equally cause a piper to miss his fingering on the chanter, it seems to me.
If your hands don’t leave the stock, I don’
t see why this would happen. Hands on the pipe part of the bagpipe have the pipe itself as a reference. I doubt if the weight of the fingers would make that big a difference. When you’re moving up and down the frets, you’re often moving a lot more, and not keeping contact.
Space funerals.
Granted, I’ve never paid that much attention to people playing the bagpipes, but ISTM they move their fingers about as much as someone playing the recorder. That is, very little and it’s still usually on their thumbs. Having said that, watching a few seconds of the video, it does look like he struggling a bit to keep the bag in one spot and the chanter is sort of floating away when his fingers aren’t on it. I’m sure, with some practice, he’d have it all under control. Just like someone that’s never played probably makes mistakes too. I’d guess the bag slips out from under their arm of they drop the chanter until they figure out how to hold everything just right.
Okay, that makes sense. I’m not a piper, so I defer to your experience. But don’t guitar-players similarly keep their hands (if not their fingers) in contact with the guitar neck?
Truth top tell, I’m a trumpet player (and occasional recorder player). But with those instruments, my fingers are perpetually in contact with the instrument. I don’t see how being in zero G would affect my trumpet playing.
I used to play piano. Now there’s an instrument I could see gravity affecting.
Scotland the Brave.
That’s a people problem, not an engineering problem for the instrument maker.
Naw, you can let go of the chanter entirely, the bag stays tucked between elbow and ribs.
You do get used to a certain weight and balance when playing it, lack that due to microgravity could, indeed, throw a player off for a bit. I’d expect practice in space to take care of that.
Maybe on earth you could practice underwater, like NASA does.
It can only help the sound.
Thanks!