Electronic bagpipes

The electronic bagpipes is an electronic musical instrument emulating the tone and/or playing style of the bagpipes. Most electronic bagpipe emulators feature a simulated chanter, which is used to play the melody. Some models also produce a harmonizing drone(s). Some variants employ a simulated bag, wherein the player's pressure on the bag activates a switch maintaining a constant tone.

Electronic bagpipes are produced to replicate various types of bagpipes from around the world, including the Scottish Great Highland bagpipe (also known as piob mhor), Irish uilleann pipes, Galician gaita, French cornemuse, Italian zampogna and Swedish säckpipa.

They have gone from being a rare curiosity to a widely used instrument used for practice, and even performance, by both amateur and professional players.

Electronic bagpipes have been attested as early as 1962, when The Electronic Musical Instrument Manual noted the existence of electronic bagpipes using transistors, caveating: " but there is only one commercial musical instrument on the market and it would seem reasonable to wait for the elimination of some of the less desirable features of transistors..."

In the late 1970s, the late Bazzell Ray Cowan of Austin, Texas, an electronics engineer and piper, developed the first practical electronic bagpipe with an authentic pipe sound, which he called the Bazpipe. According to Mr. Cowan (in an interview in 1993), the project had originally been in response to a bet with another piper at a wedding. The original version consisted of a chanter (the melody pipe) utilizing gold-plated metal contacts, which in turn were connected to a motherboard, transistors and a speaker, powered by a 6 volt lantern battery, all housed in an extruded plastic "bag" the size and shape of a regular bagpipe bag. Eventually, with the advance of technology, he was able to downsize it, till by the early 1990s, it consisted of a chanter topped with a 6 x 4 inch plastic box which housed all the components, including a 2 inch speaker, all powered by a 9 volt battery. By his death in 1996, it had become one of the best-known devices of the genre. Many of the later electronic pipes would be modeled on the Bazpipe.

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