BAGPIPE MACHINE
I thought that my recent bagpipes project might be of some interest to Forumers. For the past few years, each January, I have attended several Burns’ Night suppers and the usual thing is to have a piper, in full Scottish regalia, playing the Great Highland bagpipes. One which I regularly attend has no piper, so the thought occurred to build a mechanical bagpipes machine in order to “do the honours” in traditional style. The result, two years later, I have named AngusTurragh, the mad piper of Auchistnaebother.
The project needed a great deal of research to get the scale notation right. The great highland bagpipes have only nine melody notes, played on the chanter. The three large drone pipes play the A note; one bass, the other two an octave higher and tuned to produce a slow beat.
The melody notes are notionally G,A,B,C,D,E,F,G and A an octave higher.
However, these are actually tuned approximately to Ab,Bb,C,C#,D#,F,F#,Ab and Bb.
This is known as a mixolydian scale and bears no relationship with any other instrument. The basic pitch of the instrument is A= 470Hz.
At first I intended to build a machine which would play an actual set of bagpipes, Then I discovered that I would need about 30 inches WG to blow the pipes, which meant using a compressor! Far too unwieldy as a useful instrument. So I decided that brass reeds would have to suffice and the present instrument blows reeds at 10” WG.
The reed pallets are actuated by solenoids under MIDI control.
Scottish bagpipe music is extremely complex. Each note is preceded by one or more grace notes, depending on the style of the music; Strathspey, Piobaireachd, Taorluath and Crunluath being some. Logan’s Tutor for the Highland Bagpipe is a useful book but it still doesn’t tell me how to pronounce these words. Perhaps one of our Scottish members would enlighten me.
Certainly the Internet provides hundreds of bagpipe tunes in MIDI format, so no problem there. It plays Scotland the Brave and highland Laddie plus many other songs with drum accompaniment. The machine had its debut playing a few days ago and it went down a storm.
From comments on MMD some time ago, it could be possible that this is the first bagpipe machine, although it is only really a bagpipe simulator. I am still working on the real bagpipe machine, trying to get reeds that will operate on lower pressure.
Bob Essex
I thought that my recent bagpipes project might be of some interest to Forumers. For the past few years, each January, I have attended several Burns’ Night suppers and the usual thing is to have a piper, in full Scottish regalia, playing the Great Highland bagpipes. One which I regularly attend has no piper, so the thought occurred to build a mechanical bagpipes machine in order to “do the honours” in traditional style. The result, two years later, I have named AngusTurragh, the mad piper of Auchistnaebother.
The project needed a great deal of research to get the scale notation right. The great highland bagpipes have only nine melody notes, played on the chanter. The three large drone pipes play the A note; one bass, the other two an octave higher and tuned to produce a slow beat.
The melody notes are notionally G,A,B,C,D,E,F,G and A an octave higher.
However, these are actually tuned approximately to Ab,Bb,C,C#,D#,F,F#,Ab and Bb.
This is known as a mixolydian scale and bears no relationship with any other instrument. The basic pitch of the instrument is A= 470Hz.
At first I intended to build a machine which would play an actual set of bagpipes, Then I discovered that I would need about 30 inches WG to blow the pipes, which meant using a compressor! Far too unwieldy as a useful instrument. So I decided that brass reeds would have to suffice and the present instrument blows reeds at 10” WG.
The reed pallets are actuated by solenoids under MIDI control.
Scottish bagpipe music is extremely complex. Each note is preceded by one or more grace notes, depending on the style of the music; Strathspey, Piobaireachd, Taorluath and Crunluath being some. Logan’s Tutor for the Highland Bagpipe is a useful book but it still doesn’t tell me how to pronounce these words. Perhaps one of our Scottish members would enlighten me.
Certainly the Internet provides hundreds of bagpipe tunes in MIDI format, so no problem there. It plays Scotland the Brave and highland Laddie plus many other songs with drum accompaniment. The machine had its debut playing a few days ago and it went down a storm.
From comments on MMD some time ago, it could be possible that this is the first bagpipe machine, although it is only really a bagpipe simulator. I am still working on the real bagpipe machine, trying to get reeds that will operate on lower pressure.
Bob Essex
I believe that this is available in 110v versions.
Brilliant bit of kit! I use one to blow my bass chest with huge 6 ft pipes.
Bob