Tuning Scottish Highland Bagpipe Drones

These are samples of a basic tuning exercise. The drones were tuned to one
another without the chanter sounding (it was removed and its stock was
corked). This is perhaps the easiest way to learn to tune. The hands
are not needed to cover the finger holes on the chanter, so the student
can use them to move the drone tuning slides and hear the changes
continuously.

When 2 drones are slightly out-of-tune there seems to be a vibration or
pulsing sound within the tone. If you have a sound file editor you may
be able to see this effect if you can view the waveform of the sound
files.

As the tuning becomes better, the pulsing slows and stops when the two
pipes are perfectly in tune.

Often you won't know if the slide you are adjusting should be moved
down (making the pipe shorter and its pitch sharper) or up. If you
pick the wrong direction, the pulses will speed up and disappear into
a noisy buzz. This is illustrated in the samples labelled "mis-tuning."

End of tuning bagpipe drones.