Basic things about bagpipes

Hi. My name is Aivars, friends call me "Piekūns", which for latvian means "falcon". (Picture on the left)
I live in Latvia (northern Europe) & I play bagpipes, flute, kantele and drums on streets, in concerts & restoraunts.
I like to travel to different countries and play my national songs, medieval songs and my own.
Often people ask questions about my instrument. So i made this blog to introduce you a little bit with bagpipes.

Scientific, deeply studied and otherwise very good information you can find in google, wikipedia or elswhere, that`s why i`m not gonna make this blog as a very strictly structured research.

This blog is for introduction, made in very simple language and just for fun.

So... At first bagpipes is an instrument in wich you blow air with your mouth or with some kind of bellows. To the left you can see what are the details of most seen bagpipes.

With squeezing the bag with your arm you cause the air to go through the reed which you can see below. Actually there are different type of reeds but mine looks similar to this one. This is the main thing, which makes the bagpipes sound like they do - very loud, quiet, rasp or soft.

In the next picture you can see how the reed goes into the chanter - a thing which is basically is smth similar to a flute.

By moving your fingers up & down the chanter holes you make the sound go up or down.

There can be no drone, there can be one, two or more of them. It`s the big stick which you don`t touch while you play. It has only one sound each, which is balanced with the chanter. On chanter you make a lot of sounds from C to B and half tones etc., but on drone there is only one sound. Different drones - different sounds :) OK?
Usually in the world you can see bagpipes with three drones which is characteristic to Scottish bagpipe tradittion nowadys but that actualy is only a little part of bagpipe traditions in the world. As i heard lately in the bagpipe camp, the instrument comes from ancient egypt. That`s wow! right? :)

Here are some different types of bagpipes you can find in google:

Serbia (above)

Uilleann pipes
Polish bagpipes

English bagpipes. Quiet indoor bagpipes with a chanter and a single drone, and early sixteenth century bagpipe, with two chanters and no separate drone, with moderate volume

This is how biggest part of people imagine bagpipes nowadays. That`s because Scotland kept the bagpipe tradition and made b/p their national instrument.

Bagpipes with an extra bellow.

Laz tulum (bagpipe) player from Rize, Turkey

Diple

You can hear the difference in playing b/p in different styles by hearing and watching at lest two of these videos:

Scottish:

Corvus Corax (Saltarello - a medieval song):

Kaspars Barbals (Latvian b/p master) playing some latvian traditional songs:


A little bit of humor and other stuff:

I have seen many pictures like this wih man blowing so hard, that his cheeks or upper part of neck go round and i`ve seen it only for Scottish b/p players. I don`t know if it`s because it is hard to play or maybe they are trained to blow in this particular way for that it would be easier to play a longer time without resting face muscles...? Anyway it happens that b/p can be very hard to play, some are easier, but it depends on how they are made. Once i tried to play Scottish b/p, and it was very difficult, but my cheeks didn`t go like that.

Somebody has made b/p-type-of-thing. Found this pic in google. There are two block-futes & a trash bag. The sound deffinetly is not like b/p, but the idea remains :)

Street bagpipers are rare. These guys look like real highlanders :)

It`s a pretty popular instrument in different hard rock and metal bands as well, for example Corvus Corax, In Extremo, Skyforger and other. I like b/p which they use. Often they are BIG and beautifuly custom made.

I have found a b/p male virtuoso named Hevia. He knows what to do with this instrument. It`s pretty hard to learn his songs only by listening. Hevia plays fast, complicated songs, beautiful. He also has electric b/p.




































Here is another one - World Champion Bagpiper, Jack Lee, performing at the Makawao Union Church, march 18th 2006



I encourage you to search for groups, names and pictures in google, videos on youtube and enjoy :)

If there will be anything important to say more about bagpipes, i`ll add it here.