Article Index

The G' and A' Problems

So what is the issue of high G?  It's a question of which fractional relationship should hold between high G and low A.  My Blair HBT-3 tuner is programmed to treat a perfect high G as having a ratio of 1.75:1 (ie, 7/4) to low A, which is a very flat high G (much less than a semitone above F.  A different, and much sharper high G was used by the famous piper Seamus McNeill whose ratio was 1.8:1 (9/5).  Another possibility is a ratio of 16/9 or 1.778:1 giving a high G between the afore-mentioned levels (and rather far from the small-number ratios of the other notes).  Each of these Gs is still a Just note but they sound quite different.  They are so wide apart that they cannot be changed by applying tape (eg, to the top of a "MacNeill" chanter G hole to bring it down to the "Blair" pitch).  I believe that chanter manufacturers currently opt to have the 7/4 ratio for high G.

For high A, the problem is different.  For reasons that are not at all clear, all top pipers seem to agree that it should be tuned slightly flatter than a perfect octave above low A.  I have read that this may be to help the high A stand out against the drones or because pipers fear more than anything having a high A that is too sharp.