There are plenty of exercises and tunes, use what you need Before starting smallpipes, one needs a practice chanter; that is a very quiet and inexpensive instrument for practising at home. The chanter reeds have been designed in combination with the chanters to produce the optimum quality of tone. tutor book is a pdf file, so download it and either print it Eighteenth and nineteenth sets of a similar instrument were called union pipes and a yet earlier incarnation were pastoral pipes.Fair enough. Your choice of fingering system will ultimately depend on your chosen playing style.Although I usually make the pipes of British yew or plum for its richness of tone, other woods are also available. Most music written for the instrument uses only the nine notes of its unkeyed range. For pipes in A, the tenor drone is tuned to the low "A" of the chanter, usually the Originally one of the first documented bagpipes in Scotland, along with the Border pipes, smallpipes were popular in the Lowland areas of Scotland as far north as Aberdeen. These early sets are in higher pitches, but I have developed my pipes in a range of modern pitches while retaining the feeling of the original instruments. Being parallel bored, the muted sound (of 80 - 85 decibels) makes smallpipes a popular instrument to play in folk sessions, alongside instruments such as fiddle, guitar, flute or bodhran etc… Scottish Smallpipes make a more ‘sociable’ alternative to the Highland Bagpipe! Still not a way of acheiving the full border sound you’d get from the border drones, but… You’d be a bit louder in sessions, you’d have the half tones, and you’d still have your smallpipe chanter for when you need that.Here is a quote from Nigel Richard’s web site on the subject:Anyway, going back to the original subject, A is the way to go unless you have a very specific set of friends and repertoire for which you need the D set.APH has not really stated what kind of playing he intends,nor if he is going a set that are bellows or blown.I’d second both of Rook’s suggestions. There is the option to buy the memory stick with all the bagpipe tunes that Vicki has ever recorded - 26 tracks on Scottish Smallpipes, Border pipes and Swedish säckpipa. The problems of instability often associated with double chanters fitted with cane reeds are overcome by the use of my plastic reeds which are very stable.Usually a double chanter is fingered exactly like the single chanter, placing each finger over a pair of holes; however, there are possibilities of introducing harmonies by fingering individual holes, as Callum Armstrong spectacularly demonstrates on a C double chanter:The C chanter has comfortable finger-spacing and gives a sprightly, cheerful sound; I also make an A chanter, with wider finger-spacing and a rich and mellow tone.Another possibility is to fit an English Double Pipe chanter whose harmonies sound even richer and more wonderful when played with three drones as in the Scottish Small Pipe.I enjoy incorporating a customer’s suggestions whenever practical; you can see some of the possibilities on the Latest Developments page, which describes the features Callum and I have evolved. to teach the Scottish Smallpipes using podcasting. As these reeds are not affected by moisture it makes mouthblown small pipes very practical. I’m getting a set of Scottish smallpipes to play, and I thought I might ask people more experienced than I: What is the best key for smallpipes? But I don’t think there’s any reason not to call them border pipes, as that’s what they are called now and most people who listen to Scottish traditional music will know what you mean. D is fine for solos if you are in a competition or want to convert tunes to different keys.If you aren’t a member of The Session yet, you can