Bagpipers.Com
Directory of Bagpipe Players
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Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag.
An aerophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound.
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Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes have historically been found throughout Europe, and into Northern Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the Caucasus.
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A bagpipe 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. -
The most common method of supplying air to the bag is by blowing into a blowpipe, or blowstick.
The use of a bellows to supply air appears to have originated sometime during 16th or 17th centuries . Several types of bagpipes use bellows, with the Irish uilleann pipes, Northumbrian smallpipes from Britain, and the Musette de cour in France are the most well known. -
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.
Manmade materials such as Gore-Tex are used for constructing bags but before this luxury bags were made from local animal hides for bags.
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Most bagpipes have at least one drone. A drone is most commonly a cylindrical tube with a single reed, although drones with double reeds exist. The drone is generally designed in two or more parts, with a sliding joint ("bridle") so that the pitch of the drone can be manipulated.
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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. Single-reeded chanters must be parallel-bored; however, both conical- and parallel-bored chanters operate with double reeds, and double reeds are by far the more common.
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Bagpipes can be found in many places around the world. Here is a list of countries that have one or more different types of bagipes.
- Austria
- Balkan
- Belgium
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungarian
- Iran
- Ireland
- Italy
- Kuwait
- Malta
- North Africa
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- Scandinavia and the Baltic
- Spain
- Switzerland
- The Caucasus
- The Netherlands
- Turkey
- Ukraine.
- United Kingdom
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Evidence of pre-medieval bagpipes is controversial, but several textual and visual clues may possibly indicate ancient forms of bagpipes. A Hittite slab dating from about 1,300 BC at Eyuk depicts a possible representation of a bagpipe.
