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A little bit now about another kind of pipe of which I am also fond...
Bagpipes, or Highland Pipes:
The Great Highland Bagpipe (Gaelic : A' Phìob Mhòr) is probably the best-known variety of bagpipe. Abbreviated GHB, and commonly referred to simply as "the pipes", they have historically taken numerous forms in Scotland and Ireland.
A modern set has a bag, a chanter, a blowpipe, two tenor drones, and one bass drone. The scale on the chanter is in Mixolydian mode, which has a flattened 7th or leading tone. It has a range from one whole tone lower than the tonic to one octave above it (in piper's parlance: Low G, Low A, B, C, D, E, F, High G, and High A; the C and F could or should be called sharp but this is often omitted). Although less so now, depending on the tuning of the player, certain notes are tuned slightly off just intonation (for example, the D could be tuned slightly sharp for sound effects), but again, today the notes of the chanter are usually tuned in just intonation to the Mixolydian scale, which has a flattened 7th. The two tenor drones are an octave below the keynote (Low A) of the chanter) and the bass drone two octaves below.
Modern developments have included reliable synthetic drone reeds, and synthetic bags that deal with moisture arguably better than hide or older synthetic bags.
A set of bagpipes minimally consists of an air supply, a bag, a chanter, and usually a drone. Most bagpipes also have additional drones (and sometimes chanters) in various combinations, held in place in stocks—connectors with which the various pipes are attached to the bag.
Air supply
The most common method of supplying air to the bag is by blowing into a blowpipe, or blowstick. In some pipes the player must cover the tip of the blowpipe with his tongue while inhaling, but modern blowpipes are usually fitted with a non-return valve which eliminates this need.
An innovation, dating from the 16th or 17th centuries, is the use of a bellows to supply air. In these pipes, sometimes called coldpipes, air is not heated or moistened by the player's breathing, so bellows-driven bagpipes can use more refined and/or delicate reeds. The most famous of these pipes are the Irish uilleann pipes and the Northumbrian smallpipes in Britain, and the Musette de cour in France.
Bag
The bag is an airtight reservoir which can hold air and regulate its flow while the player breathes or pumps with a bellows, enabling the player to maintain continuous sound for some time. Materials used for bags vary widely, but the most common are the skins of local animals such as goats, dogs, sheep, and cows. More recently, bags made of synthetic materials including Gore-Tex have become common.
Bags cut from larger materials are usually saddle-stitched with an extra strip folded over the seam and stitched (for skin bags) or glued (for synthetic bags) to reduce leaks. Holes are cut to accommodate the stocks. In the case of bags made from largely-intact animal skins the stocks are typically tied into the points where limbs and the head joined the body of the living animal, a construction technique common in Central and Eastern Europe.
Chanter
Main article: Chanter
The chanter is the melody pipe, played by one or two hands. A chanter can be bored internally so that the inside walls are parallel for its full length, or it can be bored in the shape of a cone. Additionally, the reed can be a single or a double reed. Double reeds are used with both conical- and parallel-bored chanters while single reeds are generally (although not exclusively) limited to parallel-bored chanters. In general double-reed chanters are found in pipes of Western Europe with single-reed chanters found elsewhere.
The practice chanter
The chanter is usually open-ended; thus, there is no easy way for the player to stop the pipe from sounding. This means that most bagpipes share a legato sound where there are no rests in the music. Primarily because of this inability to stop playing, grace notes (which vary between types of bagpipe) are used to break up notes and to create the illusion of articulation and accents. Because of their importance, these embellishments (or ornaments) are often highly technical systems specific to each bagpipe, and take much study to master.
A few bagpipes (the musette de cour, the uilleann pipes, the Northumbrian smallpipe, and the left chanter of the Surdulina, a type of Calabrian Zampogna) have closed ends or stop the end on the player's leg, so that when the player covers all the holes (known as closing the chanter) it becomes silent.
I have always had a love of the ‘pipes’, and being a wooden instrument to the degree that they are, as well as being air supply, it’s only natural that I give a bit of attention to them here on my Briar pipe site.
References
^ Podnos, Theodor. 1974. Bagpipes and tunings. Detroit Monographs in Musicology 3. Detroit: Information Coordinators
^ The Eleven Comedies, Aristophanes
^ (Life of Nero, 54)
^ (Or. 71.9)
^ Elizabeth Aubrey The Music of the Troubadours 1996.
^ Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. Prologue to "The Miller's Tale", line 565.
^ [1] The Great Highland Bagpipes
^ John Derrick The Image of Irelande London, 1581.
^ CNN - WorldBeat Spotlight - Bagpipes resonate through rugged coastline of... Spain - November 5, 1999
^ PolishRoots - Surnames: Origins & Meanings
Bibliography
Hugh Cheape, The Book of the Bagpipe (Belfast: The Appletree Press, 1999).
Francis Collinson, The Traditional and National Music of Scotland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).
Francis Collinson, The Bagpipe (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).
John Gibson, Old and New World Highland Bagpiping (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002).
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