Scottish smallpipes

The Scottish smallpipe is a bellows-blown bagpipe re-developed by Colin Ross and many others, adapted from an earlier design of the instrument.

There are surviving bellows-blown examples of similar historical instruments as well as the mouth-blown Montgomery smallpipes, dated 1757, which are held in the National Museum of Scotland.

The innovations leading to the modern instrument, in particular the design of the reeds, were largely taken from the Northumbrian smallpipes.

The advantages of bellows-blown pipes, such as greater stability of tuning (due to smaller fluctuations in humidity and temperature of air across the reeds) and the possibility to sing or talk whilst playing make them by far the most popular variation, however mouth-blown smallpipes are fairly common.

One example is the "ADAD" style, with bass, baritone, tenor, and alto, as seen here:[3] With longer tuning slides or the addition of tuning beads (used widely on Northumbrian smallpipe drones), drones can easily be retuned to a pitch one or two tones higher.

However, according to the evidence provided by surviving manuscript collections of music written for these pipes (particular those of Dixon, Peacock, and Riddell), their style was built around variations, runs, and arpeggios, as opposed to the surviving Highland music which is dominated by stylised gracenote techniques.

Leading players include Hamish Moore, Iain MacInnes, Allan MacDonald, Gary West, Fred Morrison, Fin Moore, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Michael Roddy, Callum Armstrong, Ross Ainslie, Gordon Mooney, EJ Jones, Ailis Sutherland, Glenn Coolen, Barry Shears, as well as the late Martyn Bennett.