Uilleann - Play the Irish Bagpipes (Key of B) icon

App Detail » Uilleann - Play the Irish Bagpipes (Key of B)

Published by: Michael Eskin

iPad App - Designed for iPad

Price: $2.99
Current Version: 4.3
Released: November 18, 2011

What's New

Major pitch bending and reverb audio quality improvements since the last update.

A huge thank you to Jesse Chappell at ThumbJam for helping me diagnose and ultimately fix the pitch bend/reverb issue introduced in the last update.

App Description

Play the Irish Bagpipes on your iPad!

Uilleann (Key of B) is an authentic sounding flat set of Irish bagpipes in the key of B that are played like the real instrument.

The chanter fingerings are based on those used for the Uilleann pipes and will also be immediately familiar to Irish pennywhistle and flute players.

The Uilleann pipes are a bellows driven set of bagpipes with a two octave range. They are most commonly used for playing traditional Irish dance music and slow airs.
The chanter fingerings are based on those used for the Uilleann pipes and will also be immediately familiar to Irish pennywhistle and flute players, who can use the fingerings they already know just by keeping the right little finger down.

The app features reverb, note vibrato, and note bending effects.

How to Play:

IMPORTANT: Since this app requires as many as 9 fingers on the screen at the same time, before playing, disable "Multitasking Gestures" on your iPad (in the Settings app, under the General section, turn the Multitasking Gestures switch to the off position).

Touch the drone puck to start/stop the drones.

To play the chanter, touch the three holes of the left side of the chanter starting with the tips of your left index, middle, and ring fingers.

Next, touch the four holes on the right side of the chanter with the tips of your right index, middle, ring, and little fingers.

Touch the green bar on the left side with your left little finger to play the notes one octave higher.

Touch the 'i' icon at the upper right corner of the main screen to show/hide the live performance controls. All settings are saved and restored the next time the app is run.

Optional pitch bending is done by first turning on "Note Bending" in the controls, then sliding the finger up or down very slightly on the root tone hole for the note or simply tilting the finger as one would do on the actual instrument to half-hole a note.

Touch the blue bar at the bottom left center with your left thumb to play the second octave "Back-D" selectable on either a press or release using the "Back-D Mode" control.

Touch the red bar at the bottom right center with your right thumb to stop the chanter sound for staccato techniques.

Touch the purple bar on the lower right with your right little finger to bend the pitch or play finger vibrato. You may also perform finger vibrato on the chanter for most notes with the right middle and/or ring fingers.

For students of the Uilleann pipes, the app supports nearly all of the alternate fingerings for most notes and can be used as a real practice chanter for the instrument. All 128 possible fingerings have been mapped as closely as possible to match the real instrument.

Sound is based on high quality per-note chanter and drone recordings from my personal concert pitch set of Uilleann pipes.

Chanter image based on my Kirk Lynch concert pitch chanter. Drone puck image courtesy of Mike DeSmidt. Crowley drone sample courtesy of Vinnie Kilduff.