Elk bugling: What key is the Great Highland Bagpipe in? The GHB is in keys of A flat and B flat major plus, I'd suggest, Macpherson, Ewan. 1998. [http://publish.uwo.ca/~emacphe3/pipes/acoustics/pipescale.html The Pitch and Scale of the Great Highland Bagpipe]. publish.uwo.ca.

What key is the Great Highland Bagpipe in? The GHB is in keys of A flat and B flat major plus, I'd suggest.


Just played out a Piobaireachd on the electric keyboard here in the keys of A major and it sounded pretty good. Then, with the base of my David Naill practice chanter, I plunked out the A major scale while playing it on my chanter (with its two 'sharps')  and they were in tune.

So I think my Naill practice chanter is in the key of A major,  but I can also blow it harder and make the tones come out sharper (and even produce a B flat major scale).

And  I think my pipe chanter for the full GHB is in B flat major (but sometimes even yet sharper, because, I hypothesize, pipers have wanted a brighter sound over the decades  :) ... And I hypothesize that both chanters' Cs and Fs are even sharper and at their own unique frequency in piping, too (is all this correct?) ...

And I have a question about the high Gs, per a number of web sites I've read.

(This information about keys and pitch will be helpful for MuseScore - http://musescore.org/ - composing software with bagpipe register, for example ... ).


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I found some informational web pages about this, when I 'googled' "What key is the Great Highland Bagpipe in?"



This first one offers the frequency of current GHB notes in Hertz ...

Macpherson, Ewan. 1998. [http://publish.uwo.ca/~emacphe3/pipes/acoustics/pipescale.html The Pitch and Scale of the Great Highland Bagpipe]. publish.uwo.ca.



And here are two other useful web pages from Ewan:


Macpherson, Ewan. 2009. [http://publish.uwo.ca/~emacphe3/pipes/ Ewan's Hot Piping Stuff - My Piping Pages]. Western Ontario, Canada: publish.uwo.ca.

Macpherson, Ewan. 1997. [http://publish.uwo.ca/~emacphe3/pipes/acoustics/chromtune.html Tuning the GHB chanter with a chromatic tuner]. Western Ontario, Canada: publish.uwo.ca.



And two other informational web pages:

Bagpipe FAQ (on a Stanford page)







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