By DEBORAH SAYER, News Assistant
Thursday, January 25, 2007
ABOUT THE BUSINESS
NAME: B.C. Childress Bagpipes
OWNER: Bruce Childress
EMPLOYEES: one
ADDRESS: 18 York St., Kennebunk
TELEPHONE: 985-2942
E-MAIL: bruce@bcpipes.com
WEB SITE: www.bcpipes.com
HOURS: By appointment
ABOUT THE UILLEANN OR IRISH BAGPIPE The Uilleann pipes feature a conically bored melody pipe called a canter that is fitted with a double reed and series of finger holes to produce different musical tones. Three attached single-reed drone pipes (named for the drone bee, because of the hum) provide harmonic tones, each equipped with valve keys that control air flow for sound variations.
Modern sets of the bags also come with three spring-loaded, stopper-tipped regulator pipes that are activated by depressing keys, much like playing an accordion. At the heart of the instrument is a bag, traditionally made of leather, that is air fed by a set of built-in bellows, one fitted around a player's rib cage via a belt and the other attached to the arm and activated by the player's elbow.
This somewhat complex system of working parts necessitates that the player remain seated to perform. Unlike other types of bagpipes, Uilleann pipes can play two octaves as well as staccato notes.Considered parlor pipes because they are often played indoors, Uilleann pipes offer a nice accompaniment to guitars, accordions and the like.
Their unique sound is featured in one scene of the movie Braveheart, as part of a funeral dirge. Though the scene depicts traditional Scottish Highland pipes, Uilleann pipes are actually providing the sound.
Bruce Childress admits a fondness for the pipes, bagpipes that is.
Childress, 49, of Kennebunk has been playing the bagpipes for more than a quarter century and making them since 1987. In 1996, he left a position as an electronic engineer to make the bagpipes professionally.
"In terms of notoriety and sales, (the business) has been a success," said Childress, noting that while craftsmen rarely earn large monetary perks from the job, they are compensated by making a living doing something they love to do.
"I've loved music since I was a child," said Childress, who's been a student of guitar and other stringed instruments since age 8, including the hammered dulcimer, which he said is "the precursor to the piano" and played with mallets.
He plays the pipes about 30 minutes each day for pure enjoyment and as needed to test the sound of bagpipes throughout the creation process. "I do play them but pride myself more as a maker of the pipes than a player of the pipes," he said.
Adding to the richness of the finished product is Childress' love of the history of these instruments and his insistence on accuracy in detail, staying true to technique when practicing this centuries old craft.
"Just about every country in Europe, North Africa and the Near East has their own version of the bagpipe," said Childress, who can make a variety of the instruments but specializes in Irish bagpipes called Uilleann pipes (sounds like Illin).
Unlike Scottish Highland bagpipes, which are played standing up and require a precise balance of mouth-blown air into a leather bladder and network of pipes to create the unique sound, Irish pipes are constructed of a complex system of pipes that provide melodic and harmonic tones that is air fed by a set of bellows pumped by one's elbow.
"There's a saying in piping circles," Childress said. "The Highland pipes take two hands and 15 lungs to play and the Irish pipes take two lungs and 15 hands to play. You have to be coordinated (to play the latter)."
Childress puts in near nine-hour days to create the bagpipe sets that come in various states of completion, from practice sets to half and full sets featuring North African blackwood or rosewood pipes that are fitted with brass or nickel-silver mounts, ferrules and keys, the latter of which are hand-rolled and silver soldered. He also uses imitation ivory for the stoppers and buttons on the instruments.
All the work is custom, with musicians able to select from a variety of decorative embellishments.
News assistant Deborah Sayer can be reached at 282-8228 or e-mail
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