Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, Northern Africa, Western Asia, around the Persian Gulf and northern parts of South Asia.
A reed is a thin strip of material that vibrates to produce a sound on a musical instrument. Most woodwind instrument reeds are made from Arundo donax or synthetic material. Tuned reeds are made of metal or synthetics. Musical instruments are classified according to the type and number of reeds.
The chanter is the part of the bagpipe upon which the player creates the melody. It consists of a number of finger-holes, and in its simpler forms looks similar to a recorder. On more elaborate bagpipes, such as the Northumbrian bagpipes or the Uilleann pipes, it also may have a number of keys, to increase the instrument's range and/or the number of keys it can play in. Like the rest of the bagpipe, they are often decorated with a variety of substances, including metal (silver/nickel/gold/brass), bone, ivory, or plastic mountings.
The chalumeau is a single-reed woodwind instrument of the late baroque and early classical eras. The chalumeau is a folk instrument that is the predecessor to the modern-day clarinet. It has a cylindrical bore with eight tone holes and a broad mouthpiece with a single heteroglot reed made of cane. Similar to the clarinet, the chalumeau overblows a twelfth.
The launeddas are a traditional Sardinian woodwind instrument made of three pipes, each of which has an idioglot single reed. They are a polyphonic instrument, with one of the pipes functioning as a drone and the other two playing the melody in thirds and sixths.
The zhaleika, also known as bryolka (брёлка), is a Slavic wind instrument, most used in Belarusian, Russian and sometimes Ukrainian ethnic music. Also known as a "folk clarinet" or hornpipe. The zhaleika was eventually incorporated into the balalaika band, the Hungarian tarogato, and may have contributed to the development of the chalumeau, a predecessor of the clarinet.
The term double clarinet refers to any of several woodwind instruments consisting of two parallel pipes made of cane, bird bone, or metal, played simultaneously, with a single reed for each. Commonly, there are five or six tone holes in each pipe, or holes in only one pipe while the other acts as a drone, and the reeds are either cut from the body of the instrument or created by inserting smaller, slit tubes into the ends of the pipes. The player typically uses circular breathing.
A pipe is a tubular wind instrument in general, or various specific wind instruments. The word is an onomatopoeia, and comes from the tone which can resemble that of a bird chirping.
The bladder pipe is a medieval simplified bagpipe, consisting of an insufflation tube, a bladder (bag) and a chanter, sounded by a double reed, which is fitted into a reed seat at the top of the chanter. The reed, inside the inflated bladder, is sounded continuously, and cannot be tongued. Some bladder pipes were made with a single drone pipe, and reproductions are similar to a loud, continuous crumhorn. The chanter has an outside tenon, at the top, near the reed, which fits into a socket or stock, which is then tied into the bladder.
Pipe and tabor is a pair of instruments played by a single player, consisting of a three-hole pipe played with one hand, and a small drum played with the other. The tabor hangs on the performer's left arm or around the neck, leaving the hands free to beat the drum with a stick in the right hand and play the pipe with thumb and first two fingers of the left hand.
A single-reed instrument is a woodwind instrument that uses only one reed to produce sound. The very earliest single-reed instruments were documented in ancient Egypt, as well as the Middle East, Greece, and the Roman Empire. The earliest types of single-reed instruments used idioglottal reeds, where the vibrating reed is a tongue cut and shaped on the tube of cane. Much later, single-reed instruments started using heteroglottal reeds, where a reed is cut and separated from the tube of cane and attached to a mouthpiece of some sort. By contrast, in a double reed instrument, there is no mouthpiece; the two parts of the reed vibrate against one another. Reeds are traditionally made of cane and produce sound when air is blown across or through them. The type of instruments that use a single reed are clarinets and saxophone. The timbre of a single and double reed instrument is related to the harmonic series caused by the shape of the corpus. E.g. the clarinet is only including the odd harmonics due to air column modes canceling out the even harmonics. This may be compared to the timbre of a square wave.
Welsh bagpipes are a related instrument to one type of bagpipe, a chanter, which when played without the bag and drone is called a pibgorn. The generic term pibau which covers all woodwind instruments is also used in Welsh. They have been played, documented, represented and described in Wales since the fourteenth century. A piper in Welsh is called a pibydd or a pibgodwr.
The pibgorn is a Welsh species of idioglot reed aerophone. The name translates literally as "pipe-horn". It is also historically known as cornicyll and pib-corn. It utilises a single reed, cut from elder or reed, like that found in the drone of a bagpipe, which is an early form of the modern clarinet reed. The single chambered body of the elder pipe has a naturally occurring parallel bore, into which are drilled six small finger-holes and a thumb-hole giving a diatonic compass of an octave. The body of the instrument is traditionally carved from a single piece of wood or bone. Playable, extant historical examples in the Museum of Welsh Life have bodies cut and shaped of elder. Another, unplayable instrument at the Museum, possibly of a later date, is made from the leg bone of an unspecified ungulate. Contemporary instruments are turned and bored from a variety of fruitwoods, or exotic hardwoods; or turned from, or moulded in plastics. The reed is protected by a reed-cap or stock of cow-horn. The bell is shaped from a section of cow-horn which serves to amplify the sound. The pibgorn may be attached to a bag, with the additional possibility of a drone, which is then called pibau cwd; or played directly with the mouth via the reed-cap.
Diplica or diplice is a single-reed instrument from the Balkans, which has been playing in different forms through many parts of Croatia, but now survives mainly in the Baranya region.
The hornpipe can refer to a specific instrument or a class of woodwind instruments consisting of a single reed, a large diameter melody pipe with finger holes and a bell traditionally made from animal horn. Additionally, a reed cap of animal horn may be placed around the reed to contain the breath and allow circular breathing for constant play, although in many cases the reed is placed directly in the mouth. It was also known as the pibcorn, pibgorn, or piccorn. One rare Scottish example, called the stock-and-horn, is referred to by Robert Burns among others. Other hornpipes include the Spanish gaita gastoreña, the Basque alboka and the Eastern European zhaleika. When joined with a bag, Baines refers to the instruments as "bag-hornpipes".
The gaita gastoreña is a type of hornpipe native to El Gastor, a region of Andalucia, Spain. It consists of a simple reed, a wooden tube in its upper part, and a resonating bell of horn in its lower part. Such instruments are only found outside El Gastor in Madrid and in the Basque Country.
Reed aerophones is one of the categories of musical instruments found in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification. In order to produce sound with these Aerophones the player's breath is directed against a lamella or pair of lamellae which periodically interrupt the airflow and cause the air to be set in motion.
The stock-and-horn was a traditional instrument of the Scottish peasantry, very similar to the Welsh pibgorn, consisting of a single-reed reed pipe amplified by a bell made of horn. The original instrument of the Middle Ages had a double chanter with single reeds but was replaced by the single chanter type. The single chanter instrument is described in great detail by Robert Burns in a 1794 letter to a contemporary; Burns describes how he had much difficulty coming by the instrument, and notes that it has six or seven fingerholes on the top, one on the back, and is played with a single reed unfixed to the instrument but held by the lips.
