WARBL Forum

How do you know what key and octave to use for WARBL Pipe and whistle instruments to get pipe and whistle apps like Celtic Sounds and Universal Piper Lab to respond properly?

With fully chromatic midi controllers that I am use to it is straight forward with sounds that are full chromatic. They don’t have to line up to a particular fingering system like apparently pipe apps have. Some apps let you change to a keyboard input for chromatic control but others don’t seem to work properly. Celtic Sounds goes nuts for some of the diatonic sounds with a chromatic input but other sounds that are chromatic are ok.

The pipe apps have the key set by default as that is how the acoustic instruments are tuned. Some apps you can see that but apps like Celtic Sounds it looks like it assumes you know. I can’t find any documentation to explain what it needs to function. Other apps have presets for various midi chanters but not WARBL. In another post the is an example of the WARBL GHB set to C but I can’t tell which octave C it is. I am confused.

Yes, those apps can be confusing because they are based on real samples and are geared towards users who are trying to reproduce the sound of the real instrument, in their original key. Celtic Sounds expects notes in the key of D, so you would select D4, which is the default for the tin whistle and uilleann pipes fingering. If you’re using other fingering charts that can produce notes lower than the tonic (which real tin whistles and uilleann pipes can’t do), you’ll have to experiment with what works best for you, because the app won’t play a note lower than the tonic.

However, Celtic Sounds can transpose the entire scale lower or higher by moving the “transpose semitones” slider. This is the way to make the app play in a different key. In other words, you want WARBL to always send notes in the key of D, and but you can then transpose in Celtic Sounds if desired. The app is always limited to a two-octave range for the whistle, flute, and uilleann sounds.

On the Universal Piper web site you can download a WARBL configuration file that will add WARBl to the list of chanters, but I find it easiest to select “MIDI Keyboard or Other” instead of “MIDI Chanter”, which just means that UP will use the notes that it receives rather than trying to transpose them. Then, if you’re using GHB fingering and GHB sounds you would choose the key of Bb (the default) in the Configuration Tool, or for uilleann you would choose the key of D (again, the default). It general takes some trial and error on my part to figure out the settings for a new combination of fingering chart and sounds using that app

Thanks. I searched for hours without results. .

Still can’t get Celtic Sounds to work properly using D4. The minute I touch a key the note hangs like it is not getting note off and when I play another note that hangs also and so on.

About 2 am last night I remembered the problems I had with BTle and apps that used Web midi and sure enough that was the problem I was having with Celtic Sounds. It does not like a BTle midi feed. When I changed to usb to my ipad it worked with your suggestions.

Okay, good, I’m glad you got it sorted. I’m pretty sure I’ve used Celtic Sounds with Bluetooth a few times, but it may depend on the setup.

Checked the Celtic Sounds with my BTLe keyboard CME Air and it worked great with a keyboard so it must be something about the PUC+ feed.