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MIDI Bag Pipes

The MIDI Association

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It always amazes us that you can find a MIDI version of almost any instrument. So we decided to look at what’s available for MIDI bagpipes.

There are actually a good number of choices.  

The technochanter

The Technochanter is portable and fits its in your pocket. It’s also battery powered and runs on one standard AAA 1.5V alkaline battery or one AAA 1.2V NiMH rechargeable battery. It includes authentic onboard bagpipes sounds including drones sound with different drone configurations

You can listen to the sounds and built-in metronome via the headphone output so you can practice bagpipes anywhere without disturbing anyone. 

Redpipes 

The drones, the chanter and the overblowing function of the Redpipe are pneumatically controlled by pressing the bag. The leather bag is stuffed with filling material.


Sounds:

Scottish Great Highland Bagpipes

Smallpipes

Medieval Bagpipes

Gaita

Fingering: 
Open
Half open (GHB)
Extended (chromatic)
Renaissance
Medieval Bagpipe in minor
Gaita


Other features:

    • Metronome.
    • Pitch adjustment.
    • MIDI output so you can control software instruments such as Studio Piper.
    • The capability to switch from just scale to the well tempered scale.
    • Ability to overblow by 1/2 Octave by opening the upper thumb hole or by putting more pressure on the bag.
    • Realistic vibrato playing has been implemented.
    • Switchable between the mixolydic and the ionic mode.
    • Runs on two AA 1,5 V Akali-Mangan-Batteries.

MIDI Bagpipes Control Surface 

 

This app is a Irish/Scottish Bagpipes fingering based MIDI control surface for the iPad that can be used to play your hardware MIDI synthesizer/sampler modules or other MIDI apps.

The chanter fingerings are based on either those used for the Irish Uilleann or Scottish Highland bagpipes.

The app doesn’t produce any sound on its own, it is designed for playing hardware and software VST-style MIDI synthesizers via a CoreMIDI compatible interface connected to the dock connector or virtual MIDI instruments like Roland Sound Canvas for iOS, Universal Piper, or Sonosaurus ThumbJam running on your iPad.

The app supports sending data on two independent MIDI channels, one for the chanter and the other for the drones. 

Universal Piper 

Universal Piper is a software synth dedicated to bagpipe that claims to have the largest bagpipe library available. It’s available as  OSX Audio Unit and VST and Windows VST 32 and 64 bit as well as on iOS.  You can try it for free and one license allows you to use the software on any platform. 

  • A library of 15 bagpipes
  • Natural tuning of every bagpipe
  • Genuine drones start
  • Chanters and drones recorded note by note
  • Extended two octaves range for every bagpipe

BEGINNERS

ADVANCED

  • Build your own bagpipe
  • VST and Audio Unit Plugin with automation
  • Advanced midi setup

Universal Piper list all the MIDI bagpipe hardware that is available and comes pre-configured to work with most of these. 

MIDI INSTRUMENTS

Universal Piper is compatible with every MIDI instruments.

For quick start, Universal Piper is provided with pre-configuration for most of the MIDI practices and bagpipes with their corresponding fingerings:

  • Degerpipe : standard, extended,
  • Degerpipe II : standard, extended,
  • Degerpipe II+ : baroque, bechonnet, medieval, gaita, gaita extended,
  • E-Pipe 15 : standard,
  • Master Gaita : standard, asturian, french, GHB, galician, galician extended,
  • OpenPipes : Bb3=MIDI 60,
  • Redpipe : GHB standard, GHB minimal, GHB extended, France, gaita extended,
  • Technopipe : GHB, asturian, galician closed, galician open, french half-closed, veuze, welsh, SSP, baghet, biniou, belarus, swedish, estonian, medieval, northumbrian, bulgarian, english
  • Trino : Standard,
  • Hevia : Standard
  • P2chanter : GHB and smallpipes
  • Generic Midi Chanter : Bb3=MIDI 70
  • Blair chanter : this chanter is not yet included by default in Universal Piper installation. 

If your MIDI chanter is not in the following list, you still can configure Universal Piper to use it.

Not compatible with technochanter, which is NOT a MIDI chanter.