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The Bagpipe Scale
There has been a lot of discussion about what key the pipe chanter is in. All this talk of Major, Minor Scale, Key and Pitch is all irrelevant when discussing the series of notes on the bagpipe, other that trying to adapt one standard to another after the fact. The new standard used in modern western music was not a consideration when the chanter was designed so anything we impose on the old standard is only an approximation and so cannot be used to support arguments one way or another when discussing modern musical forms.
The Highland Bagpipe is absolutely unique in the world of musical instruments. It was designed to play three different pentatonic scales. It was not intended to play all the notes at once in any one tune, rather like on a chromatic instrument if you are playing in C major you wouldn't expect to play any sharps or flats which are there, unless the music modulates into a different key.
The equal tempered scale, which is a fairly recent development, is based on an octave divide into 1200 cents. A semi-tone is 100 cents and a full tone is 200 cents just like on a piano everything is equal, A# is the same as B flat. It wasn't always this way. In the older diatonic scale, which contained Major Tones, Minor Tones and Semi-tones. Instruments in different pitches had difficulty playing together because the arrangement of intervals didn't line up. The Highland chanter is even more unique insomuch as it contains Major tones, Minor tones and instead of semi-tones it uses an interval called a limma. Limmas are larger that a semi-tone and were never intended to be heard in a scale. They are there to separate certain notes in the pentatonic scale to conform with a rule that says the gaps in a pentatonic scale must be a Minor Third.
I will give a slightly simplified explanation.
The octave can be divided into 53 commas. The comma is an interval which works out at approximately 22.6 cents. A minor 3rd = 14 commas. A major tone = 9 commas. A minor tone = 8 commas. A limma = 6 commas. A semi-tone is 5 commas. The Highland chanter can be described as looking like this.
Most of the tones in each scale are minor tones (182 cents) except 1 major tone (204 cents).
The A scale has major tone between 1 and 2
The G scale has a major tone between 2 and 3
The D scale has a major tone between 4 and 5, (this is the Amazing grace Scale, check it out).
All the other tones are minor. This, along with a different interval between the key note and the drone accompaniment for each mode, is what gives each scale it's own character.
I think the pitch off the chanter was determined by it's length, as being comfortable to the average human and was only given a key designation when they started trying to write the music down in staff notation. And then A was probably A in a different standard. Whatever was prevalent in the Highlands at this time, (late 18th century).
I feel the Highland Bagpipe can be thought of as being pitched in the key of E flat (written as D major 2 sharps). If you do the math, our D which is a wee bit on the sharp side is very close to concert E flat. If you play each note up from D to high G and resume on low A up to D, you get what resembles a D diatonic scale except the first interval is a minor tone instead of a major tone. The drones harmonize nicely with an interval of a fifth, which is the basic dominate harmony note in that key.
Modes
In addition to the three different keys, music can be composed which uses a note other than the key note for the home note or the note that the tune wants to resolve to when it ends. In the days of modal music these modes where given a set of names depending on which note in the scale the melody naturally resolved to. The names of the positions on scale are:-
1. Ionian
2. Dorian
3. Phrygian
4. Lydian
5. Mixolydian
6. Aeolian
7. Locrian
So each key carries the potential to use a mode based on any of it's notes which in pentatonic scales would be 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. for some reason number 3 is not usually used but the other 4 occur quite often. So now we can identify tunes of twelve different types, for instance:- Amazing Grace is in the pentatonic key of D Ionian mode. However, most light music tunes are not in a Pentatonic scale but the theory can still apply. Tunes which are usually referred to as being in B minor which is a more modern system than the pipes, are really in D Aeolian. Some tunes are in the key of G but resolve to A, these are G Dorian and so on.
Here are a few clues to determine the Key of a pentatonic tune and this mainly refers to Piobaireachd, which is the music the pipes where originally designed to play. If you look at the chart above, you will see that G only occurs in the key of G and C only occurs in the key of A . A is missing D and G, and G is missing C and F and D is missing C and G.
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