Great Highland Bagpipes

The Great Highland Bagpipes, or GHB, is the best known among bagpipes the world over. This may account for it fondly being known as simply 'the pipes'.

Though bagpipes have existed for longer than history records, the development of the Great Highland Bagpipe can be traced to both Scotland and Ireland. A modern Great Highland Bagpipe, which developed more recently, is made of a bag, a chanter, and four reeds (a blowpipe two tenor drones and one bass drone).

The pipes are popular by both soloists and pipe bands, and they are played around the world. Notably in Uganda Idi Amin forbade the export of Africa Blackwood in the 1970's so as to encourage the making of blackwood bagpipes locally. Similarly, in the 1920's in Thailand, king Rama VI had his Wild Tiger Corps learn to march to the bagpipes.

The Great Highland Bagpipes are directly associated with piobaireachd or pibroch, which is music written in the classical style, and which goes back several hundreds of years. See our article on piobaireachd for further reading.


The Northumbrian Smallpipes

The Northumbrian Smallpipes are bellows blown. Originating in Northeast England, the Northumbrian Smallpipes are unique in that they are played staccato. Though traditional Northumbrian playing is staccato some musicians will play grace notes in between each note, so that notes run into each other. However, some have been known to avoid doing so as to differentiate between the music of the great highland bagpipe and that of the Northumbrian Smallpipe.

The Northumbrian chanter generally has seven metal keys. It can however be made with seventeen keys so that it can have a two octave range. All of the keys are played with either the right hand thumb, or the left hand pinky.

The ancient Northumbrian bagpipe was quite different from what it has become today. Origin Northumbrian bagpipe chanters had no keys, and only one octave, which sufficed to play the many traditional songs. Recently, a greater range of notes have been added for those songs which are not satisfied with the mere octave range.

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