Shuttle pipes

Shuttle pipes are a type of bagpipes which derive their name from the drones used to produce the harmony.

[1] Rather than the long tube-like drones of most bagpipes, shuttle pipes use a shuttle drone, a cylindrical chamber enclosing a series of folded drone tubes, each terminating in a slot covered by a sliding "shuttle" which can be adjusted to lengthen or shorten the distance traveled by air moving through the tube, thus flattening or sharpening the pitch of the note produced.

[3][4] The bag of the modern shuttle pipe is either mouth-inflated through a blowpipe (or blowstick), or bellows-inflated.

[1][3] The original form is generally believed to have been bellows-blown—a drawing of a set of bellows-blown shuttle pipes appears in a 1618 Syntagma Musicum (Treatise of Music) by composer and music theorist Michael Praetorius (1571–1621),[1] and a bellows-blown French form, the musette de cour, is portrayed by Flemish baroque artist Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) in his early 1630s painting Portrait of François Langlois.

[1][5] The musette de cour was reputedly played by King Louis XIV of France (1638–1715).