So before the concert in Cincinnati we did a workshop at the venue where a woman showed up with a bagpipe she was having trouble with. It was a Hummelchen bagpipe and historically accurate though it was made of blackwood and took a plastic practice chanter reed. The way I understand it this instrument was described by someone in the 1600’s and drawn so we know what shape it was and what kind of music it would have played. I was fascinated by it since it played a nice minor scale and sounded very quiet and decided I would try to make one. I looked around on youtube and found this excellent video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw4vu8yOJtk Another friend of mine lent me this medieval Flemish bagpipe for which to make a new blowpipe and I realized that the two instruments were almost the same. At least they had the same bore, length, and similarly sized tone holes. The reeds were totally different though and I don’t make the bassoon style reeds favored by the makers of so many of these historical reproduction instruments so I used the practice chanter reed I had on hand. The sound was kind of like a smallpipe and it does a couple of accidentals which is great but you have to use an open fingering which is awkward for me. The maple Hummelchen chanter I made turned out to sound a lot like the one I saw in Cincinnati and I’m going to put some kind of coating on it and do some touchup work before I take pictures.