Not at all. That’s exactly the point: they’re too perfect.
If the chanter’s unkeyed (ignoring the ubiquitous C key), you could play it in a different key, but not Fm: Em or Am, maybe Bm. Gm works if you have the Fnat and Bb keys necessary for it.
If you have a fully-keyed D chanter, in theory you could play in Fm, but the instrument isn’t really set up for playing with due ease that way. It would be, as they say, a bear. I wouldn’t even bother, myself.
I heard there are some electronic bagpipes called Redpipes, and if I remember well, I once read in the band’s website that the guy playing Uilleann Pipes used Redpipes…
There is also a product by the name of vPipes. Impressive enough for what it is, and almost surprisingly “lifelike” until you make it play in lower chanter/drone pitches like A or G, or higher than E. I have a friend who had a set of vPipes, but he got rid of them as he decided that, in his opinion, vPipes and uilleann pipes are actually completely different instruments, and he needed to devote himself to one, or the other, if he was going to be any good at either. He decided to stick with the original real deal.
Felicitous greetings to ye Q,as the unofficial welcomer to the board following my unfortunate run in with el moderatorio I start by being nice to ye and giving ye the benefit o the doubt…who said they are difficult to play ? hmmm methinks it is people who canny play them. 
Pipes have their wee foibles but nothing that isnae doable.It ain’t rocket science…ye lift a finger after blowing air through a reed and ye get a note.Simple.Whit ye do after that is entirely up to yersel…The element of the mystic meg comes into play wi a lot o folks in this scene,ye know whit I mean..ye see them all the time at sessions…that knowing little look or smile which says" big ego ain’t I clever"..Noo then…a little suspicion comes into ma wee brain when I see a 1st post like this…yoor wife must either love ye to bits ,which is nice or she doesnae exist,not so nice.Who in their right mind would go oot and splash a small fortune on a set o pipes without having a wee consultation about it.(unless she loves ye).which leads me onto the question who made yoor pipes? if it is a set frae Geofrey and co. then ye will find it difficult tae play cos they don’t work.
That aside I thought I would go to the link ye gave to have a wee listen…Eluveitie is the bands name and I have to say I thought it wis dreadful.But that is bye the bye.I think the drones ye are referring to in the piece is a Hurdy Gurdy Drone…more interesting by far are the comments underneath which run into pages…Seems to be a bit o a war going on there indeed.So why on earth on yoor 1st post do ye put something like this up?
This thread seems to be naievity in the extreme…instead of looking for the negatives ye should give yoor wife a big kiss and join NPU,get the beginners DVD roll up yoor sleeves and get on wi it.Yoor skill at the Swedish pipes may or may not help or hinder ye.Time will tell.
Or, suspicous wee sod that I am, maybe ye are a big bad troll…I hope I am wrang.Mr Gumby got it right in a sentence.
Good nicht to ye ma Swedish munchkin. 
Uilliam, I thought your name had to be invoked 3 times - “Uilliam … Uilliam … Uilliam!” - before you appear, in a puff of smoke and all.
Ye have tae say it backwards..mailliu..thrice over at full moon in the forest o gloom whilst playing the secret tune on the piob uilleann…then depending whit mood I am in I will appear in a puff o smoke ( being a firefighter an all) …or not . 
Thanks for your advice, sir. I really appreciate it. Just one thing, I’m not Swedish, I’m Spanish (and I’m currently living in Germany). I just play Swedish bagpipes because I love their mellow, sad tone
It wasnae really much in the way of advice,more of a sounding aff exercise.Anyways the welcome is real enough and I am glad yoor not a big bad troll…anyways Good nicht ma we Spanish Munchkin whit liveth in Germany and if ye want tae buy a historic sketch signed etc and support the lepers in Sri Lanka then it will only cost ye £5 +pp.The same goes fer the rest o ye oot there in cyberspace.This is ma monthly reminder appeal beg hawk etc.PM me if’n ye want more details. 
I agree with both Nano and Uilliam. The drones do sound like hurdy-gurdy. But also electronic. With a parasitic track like this, who knows what’s on it? The “tune” is in Fminor/FDorian - which implies a set of pipes in Eb. Doubtful. So if it’s uilleann pipes, it’s pitch-shifted up and mangled. Or it’s not uilleann pipes at all, maybe vPipes, and/or the drones are shifted hurdy-gurdy and/or synth or looped samples (my first guess), or trained singing water buffalo, or what-ever.
Agh, so I was wrong. So I was. Damn. I know what I meant, anyway. Right, Eb. I gotta find me a Transpose-a-tron somewheres.
Oh, wait. I have an Eb flute. So…“duh” on me.
More precisely, it implies an Eb chanter with F drones. Equivalent to D chanter with E drones. Not very likely, IMO. Not with all those fun fun FX buttons and knobs and menus to play with.
In that case, and given the prominence of hurdy-gurdy in the band, I’m now guessing: Redpipes tuned up for playing FDor in EDor or DDor fingering, played over looped hurdy-gurdy drone samples tuned or pitch-shifted to F. No uilleann pipes at all.
Which wis ma point…why wis this particular piece selected as a valid discussion fer us? Quite apart frae being a shiite bit o music (unless o course ye are into shiite pieces of music ,in which case ye will have enjoyed it immensely) there is the quite obvious continuation of WW2 going on in cyberspace with the attached comments to the page. Most of it is quite unpleasant reading which linked to the cacophony o sound going on makes fer a really depressing experience.Lighten up fer feck sake…
the piobs are about happy smiley thingys not doom laden neo or not so neo nazis doing there bit fer absolutely no one on this planet.Can we kill this feckin bit o nonesense the noo… the piobs are easy peasy tae play …making music..that is the difficult part.
This is the kinda folks we are… this is Friday night at the North East Tional,this is the gang warming up at the opening gig,the mantra is " insert name"ie “padeeee”
bit like Friday night in Govan afor an Old Firm game…
Peace and lurve to ye all 
I think most of the stuff you read on forums about pipes being difficult to play is from folk who either have underestimated the effort needed or who are making excuses or in denial about not putting the effort in. That might sound pretty harsh but it’s pretty true with any instrument really. Pipes are hard if they are badly set up - that’s for sure, and they’re not like a guitar or box that you can pick up and get a decentish sound pretty quickly, but most instruments have their own challenges. Maybe people think of thinks as hard because the bar has been set so highly be their favourite players but it’s worth remembering every one of your favourite players was a struggler at one time.
One common problem and one I experienced for along time is the inability to relax your finger while at the same time, working your arms .
RORY
Funny ye should say that… coz in my fotie above of the pipers( just after their masterclass wiv Padeee and) afor the concert they are indeedy relaxing their fingers.Well spotted Rory ye are anorak o the week… I also notice in yoor signature fotie of the All Ireland Fleadh winner o the Piob Competition, that the crowd are also all exercising their hands and fingers some even clapping to get the circulation back..does that make me an anorak too… 
Yes, I agree. To be honest, it’s been a struggle for me to apply some basic consideration and keep my engagement of the general queries coolheaded, and separate from my gut reaction to the YouTube clip and particularly the discussion - if it may be called that - that accompanies it so distastefully. I’ve given our newbie the benefit of the doubt and allowed for the sake of argument that the choice would be just one more example of the unfortunate fruits of misled inexposure to the real thing. But sometimes one wonders. Suffice it to say that a better example would have elicited my truer sympathies.
I think that one of the things which makes the uilleann pipes more difficult than, say, the Highland pipes is the relative paucity of well-written tutorials and lack of consistent pedagogy.
I remember taking a Logic class at university and there was a thing about drawing circles: one circle contained one thing, the other circle another, and there was sometimes a point where the circles overlapped thus containing both.
This is what came to mind back in the mid-1970s when I began learning uilleann pipes, whistle, and flute on my own (there were no players about), because all the books I got my hands on either seemed to be written by trad musicians unfamiliar with musical notation, or by “classical” musicians unfamiliar with traditional performance practices. I saw rolls and cranns written a dozen different ways, all of them different from the way any traditional musician actually played them. There seemed to be two circles with no overlap, and I realised that books which explained and notated traditional Irish piping techniques as actually played did not exist.
Then I began attending tionoil and quickly found that many teachers lacked an awareness of how they themselves played, as they would consistently incorrectly describe their own actions, and/or they lacked a musical vocabulary to enable them to verbalise their techniques. On top of that, each teacher would play everything differently from every other teacher, having conflicting “rights” and “wrongs”, leaving the beginner to wonder what it was all about.
Now don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that the diversity, chaos, clannishness, secretiveness, and mysticism which marks uilleann piping is a bad thing, only that it makes the path of the beginner more difficult.
why?
because while yer playing them, you have to answer folk that walk up &
ask “what is that?”
requiring masterful concentration & dexterity