Uilleann pipe makers are a rare breed, but the future is looking bright, with talk of a full-time course, writes Siobhán Long

Dying breed or burgeoning art? Plaything of the chosen few or object of affection of an audience on the increase exponentially? At various times, the uilleann pipes have both lain victim and basked in the benefits of the ebb and flow of listening fashion - in much the same way, though admittedly in a slower lane, as modish notions have influenced the role of the bouzouki and guitar in folk music.

As recently as 1968, Na Píobairí Uilleann (NPU) or the Pipers' Club - whose headquarters on Dublin's Henrietta Street has been refurbished and reopens today - could count the number of uilleann pipers worldwide as fewer than three score and 10, while the number of pipe makers could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Now, some four decades later, Irish pipers number over 3,000, with some 6,000-7,000 players worldwide, and although they still belong to an elite community, the population of pipe makers has multiplied to over 50 (with only 25 of those carving a full-time living from pipe making, and a significant number of them resident in Europe and the US).

Master pipers such as the late Leo Rowsome, Seamus Ennis, Paddy Moloney, Paddy Keenan, Davy Spillane and Liam Ó Floinn have contributed in no small way to the rapid rehabilitation of the pipes as a listening instrument. The majestic sweep of Shaun Davey's The Brendan Voyage, composed specifically for Liam Ó Floinn, lured further listeners to an instrument that's as complex as a combustion engine and as temperamental as any A-list movie star. Not an instrument for the faint-hearted, or for mortals with less than Olympian levels of motor co-ordination, the uilleann pipes make short work of the casual player, and frivolously dispose of the musician who fails to afford them a quantum of attention equivalent to the rearing of a particularly obstreperous teenager.

Add to that the fact that there's a 15-year waiting list for a good set of pipes, and it would seem that piping isn't so much an art as a vocation, worthy only of the most vociferous novitiates, prepared to devote much of their waking life to the instrument. Far from basking in the perceived elitism of such lengthy waiting periods, Na Píobairí Uilleann are keen to remedy this situation so that any budding piper in need of a decent set of pipes can lay his or her hands on them in, at the very least, slow air, if not quite jig time.

Piper and NPU chief executive Gay McKeon (himself the father of TG4's 2001 and 2005 Young Traditional Musicians Of The Year, pipers Conor and Séan McKeon) is a pragmatist, and knows the dangers of stewarding the future of an instrument that's more difficult to source than vintage poitín. Despite NPU's own healthy loan library, whereby they loan sets of pipes to young players for a minimum of a year, both his sons had a wait of five and six years before sourcing a decent set, and he knows how lucky they were to hang on to their passion for the instrument during their teen years when every other sound and instrument vied for their attention.

"It'd take a master pipe maker a minimum of four to six weeks to make a set of pipes," McKeon explains, "and that's before they're commissioned by the player who might request adjustments to be made." Hardly a job for the casual labourer.

Tales abound of pipers coaxing and cossetting their pipes back into tune for a plethora of reasons, ranging from the horrors of humidity and how that impacts on the reeds of the pipes, to the varying condition of the keys, the drone, the chanter, the bellows and the bag. Uilleann pipes appear to have more moving parts than a clock, and more sweet spots than a corner shop. Small wonder then that the skills required to create and repair such a demanding instrument are in short supply, in an age of increasing built-in obsolescence.

McKeon and one of NPU's board members, Dave Hegarty of the Institute of Technology, Tralee, have put much thought and attention into finding a solution to our shortage of pipe makers.

With weekly classes in music practice, theory, transcription and reed making, and a comprehensive five-DVD series on The Art of Piping, NPU are keepers of a flame that once flickered meekly but now glows with newfound confidence. McKeon and NPU have already identified, though a worldwide survey, more than 50 pipers eager to enrol in a full-time pipe-making course (if one were available). Hegarty, a piper and engineer on conversational terms with the navigational curiosities of academic course design, sees a future where anyone with an appetite and an ear for piping can enter the fray.

"We have to set up a course that will tackle basic manufacturing techniques, alternative methods and materials," he says, fresh from the intensive preparations he and McKeon have been making to design the first pipe makers' course in the world. Add to that the wood crafting, engineering, leatherwork and tuning artistry inherent in the art of pipe making, and it seems that it's as eclectic a skill mix as you'll encounter anywhere outside of NASA. And there's more.

"The science of metrology (or precise measurement) is crucial too," Hegarty continues, "to reproducing or modifying particular sounds. We've sought agreement from prominent pipe makers about what should be included, and ultimately, the course must fulfil the function of enabling students to theoretically and practically create a set of pipes. The pipes have to function well in session after session, year after year. Our job is to reassure the players of the future that they can lay their hands on a decent set of pipes when they need them."

Pipe making is not just an act of design and engineering, though, and McKeon is adamant that any training course must ensure the future of the soul of the instrument. "A lot of pipe makers have come from engineering backgrounds," he explains. "It doesn't work, funnily enough, to simply be an engineer, and not play the pipes. You need to understand the instrument. If you try to make a set of pipes in a purely mechanical way, the end result is a machine, it's not an instrument."

John Lawlor, head of the school of manufacturing and design engineering at DIT, has rowed in behind this initiative with verve. Far from worrying that a pipe making course might render this art form into some conveyor belt qualification, Lawlor views the marriage of past and present as a challenge to be relished, rather than vanquished. "DIT's conservatory of music is already involved in Irish traditional music studies", Lawlor enthuses, with a passion equalled only by his love of the music itself.

"We don't view education as a business. Education is about personal and cultural growth, and as a consequence society as a whole benefits. As someone who's loved the sound of the pipes ever since I heard the great Liam Óg Ó Floinn play with Planxty, I see this as a great opportunity to marry ancient skills dating back to the 17th century with modern manufacturing processes. Then we can digitise the music, compare signals and accurately measure and recreate sounds.

"What will maintain this ancient craft is the fusion of the modern with the traditional."

Pipe types

Practice set:Beginners' set of pipes, with bag, bellows and chanter

Half set:Practice set with the addition of three drones: tenor, bass and baritone, tuned to bottom note on the chanter

Concert set:Half set, with the addition of three regulators for playing chords to accompany the melody

Flat set:Pitched below the key of D, generally easier to tune and to fit with reeds

• Na Píobairí Uilleann's magnificently restored headquarters at 15 Henrietta Street, Dublin 1, will reopen at 6.30pm today.

• See also www.pipers.ie