Are there different kinds of Bagpipes?
There is a very wide variety of pipes played throughout the world. The most popular is commonly known as the Highland Pipe or the Irish War Pipe, or sometimes as just the Great Pipe (Piob Mhor in Gaelic). Other kinds from Britain and Ireland include the Scottish Small Pipes, the Irish Uilleann or Union Pipes, and the Northumbrian Pipes. Nearly every culture in Europe and the Middle East has a native bagpipe, though some have nearly died out. For example, the Spanish play a type of bagpipe that they call a Gaita, and the Italians have a pipe called a Zampogna. The different kinds of pipe often have different numbers of drones and use different note fingerings on the chanter. Some, such as the Northumbrian and the Uilleann pipe, have a large number of keys on the chanter; others have few or none. A few pipes, such as the Uilleann pipe, even have simple valves (“regulators”) on some of the drones to allow the piper to alter the chord of the drones while playing.
