Meet The Instruments #1: Bagpipes

[@Motoguzzi750]

Love the sound of those. I play the Border Pipes and the Scots Smallpipes, just love unusual pipes.

[@oliverforeman9781]

Beautifully played, especially when multiple bagpipes are added into the mix! My family was big on folk music growing up and this reminded me of how important it still is today! Wouldn't have the lungs for it, but I loved watching you play it so tremendously

[@Lucius1958]

Love these! I converted an Early Music Shop kit to use membrane reeds for the drones; then I later built a set of smallpipes using membrane reeds exclusively.

[@portulak13]

MANY thanks for your video, your job! It charns!

[@mccypr]

Thanks! Happy holidays! 🌞🎅🏻🎉🎉🎉

[@aaronjaben7913]

very good!

[@picksalot1]

Did a anyone sing while playing the bagpipes, as the bag only needs to be refilled periodically?

[@GreenMatthews]

Not for any real length of time, as you don't actually have that long before you need to reinflate. If you could sing something where you sing for 4 bars then play that might work, but there aren't really any historical references of pipers like this playing and singing - mostly they were played for dancing.

[@josevicentejimenez9070]

I play miniature highland pipes and smallpipes

[@MrPHart]

A question please, do pipes come in different Keys, A-B-C-D-E-F-G or in just (?). Thank you!

[@GreenMatthews]

They do all come in different keys.The ones that I am playing in this video are (from left to right) in C, G and D. Different pipe makers will offer different keys and different types of pipes will often have a key that they are usually in. For example the Great Highland Bagpipes are usually in A and Northumbrian Smallpipes are usually in F.

[@RosssRoyce]

You wouldn’t have to sweat any baroque gracenotes with this style 😁

[@HarpUpPipeDown]

In fact, the oldest record of a piping tradition in Britain comes from a Pictish cross-slab. That aside, wonderful timbre and well played.

[@piperbob2]

As a player of the Scottish highland pipes, I was delighted to see and film "Zephyrus", the English bagpipe orchestra, who performed at Glasgow's 'Piping Live' festival, back in 2012: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fHSzc6mvadpmfLs 'Piping Live', organised by the National Piping Centre, is held during the second week each August, with the World Pipe Band Championship held on the Friday and Saturday.

[@chang1865]

Can you tell me who made your pipe set?

[@GreenMatthews]

The C set with bellows on the left was made by Jon Swayne, the single drone Gs in the middle are by Sean Jones and the double drone D set on the right is also by Jon Swayne.

[@chang1865]

Thanks!

[@CinntSaile]

The "English" (there would have been various styles of pipes played in England) pipes do not predate the Highland pipes by however many years or centuries. That presupposes England was exposed to the bagpipe before the Highlands, or Scotland for that matter, and that the Highlands were somehow isolated from the source or sources of origin of the pipes. That is patent nonsense and is so often deployed, lazily and without evidence, to simply irritate the Scots. What cannot be disputed is the complexity of sound created by the Highland version of the instrument, with it's three drones, and highly developed fingering technique found in the Crunluadh variations of Ceòl Mòr.

[@foundationofBritain]

England was exposed to the bagpipe's before Scotland... there its by far, more evidence not only to back up such a presupposition, but to actually prove it. This dose not take away the fact that Highland pipes are unequivocally Scottish, just not bagpipe's themselves. I think it might actually be unknown where and whom the bagpipe's came from... but it was not Scotland, nor England for that matter ether... its merely recorded as being in England before Scotland, that's it.

[@CinntSaile]

@@foundationofBritain there is zero evidence to suggest England was exposed to the bagpipes before Scotland. This presupposes English links with the Continent predate Scotland's, or that the route of the bagpipe onto this island was through England. This ignores some very important evidence regarding the links of Celtic Ireland and Scotland with the Mediterranean. Gaelic monks from the great religious centres of Iona, Kells, etc, not only founded the German "Schottenkloster" but religious centres across the whole of Europe. This cultural exchange meant the movement of Latin language and Mediterranean instruments into Ireland and Scotland from at least the 6th century AD. Pictorial evidence for this can also be found on Pictish stones showing the playing of the harp and triple pipe, instruments found in antiquity in Greece, and elsewhere, and latter of which continues to be played in Sardinia. It is known that this instrument was superceded, as a marching instrument with cheek straps, by the bagpipe in the Roman army. It is inconceivable that the Atlantic littoral communication route which brought the peculiar form of Middle Eastern monasticism to the Gaelic West by the 5th century, as well as the abovementioned instruments by the 7th/8th centuries (at the latest), would not have been the same travel route for the bagpipe, avoiding the short hop from France.