Scottish smallpipes for sessions

[Peter_Duggan]

@paddler

The thing that confuses me about all this is not the choice of just intonation, but rather why it is so common in piping traditions to maintain the same drone, say A, regardless of the tonal center of the piece of music being played. I assume that it is basically a requirement more or less imposed by the design of the instrument, and that the musical tradition has evolved to match that.

To me, this is related to your point about different keys sounding different. While some pipers do use different drone tunings for different keys, to me it actually weakens tunes written to exploit the standard ones. So, yes, I’d agree the tradition has evolved to match the instrument(s), as discussed here and probably elsewhere before:

Scottish Smallpipes/Uilleann Hybrid!