Bagpipes Pro4.7

Bagpipes Pro is five extremely realistic sounding sets of bagpipes for the iPad that are played using standard Scottish piping fingerings.

The instrument may be transposed up to +/- one octave in semitone increments as well as tuned up to +/- 50 cents.

It includes five authentic sounding sets of Scottish, Irish, and Swedish bagpipes.

The five sets of bagpipes are:

Great Highland Scottish Bagpipes - The most popular Scottish marching pipes, in the traditional key of Bb.

Scottish Border Pipes - A Scottish smallpipe in the key of A with a sound distinctly different from but similar to the Highland pipes.

Scottish Smallpipes - A Scottish smallpipe in the key of A, one octave lower than the Border Pipes, and has a rounder, bubbly sound.

Irish Uillean Pipes - Bellows blown pipes in the key of D

Swedish Säckpipa - A set of Swedish bagpipes in E, with a very haunting sound.

All of the instruments use fingerings based on the standard Scottish Highland bagpipes chanter.

IMPORTANT: Since this app requires as many as 8 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).

Start/stop the drones playing by touching the drone puck. Select standard or alternate drone note from the controls.

Use the Transpose slider to set the overall instrument transposition in semitones. Touch the transpose value to the left of the slider to reset the transposition to zero.

Use the Tuning slider to set the overall instrument tuning offset in cents. Touch the tuning value to the left of the slider to reset the tuning offset to zero.

To play the chanter, touch the bar at the top left with your left thumb. This bar is the hole normally on the back of a real chanter and must be covered for the lower notes to play.

Next, touch the top three holes of the chanter starting with the tips of your left index, middle, and ring fingers.

Finally, touch the bottom four holes of the chanter with the tips of your right index, middle, ring, and little fingers.

Touch the "i" to show/hide the live performance controls.

Touch the "?" for on-screen help.

Audio samples for the Säckpipa provided by Jonathan Parker from an instrument made in 1986 by Leif Eriksson.

Drone puck image courtesy of Mike DeSmidt.

Version History Bug fixes 4.7 07/07/2025 Doubled the width of the detect zones to make it easier to play with flatter fingers, more in the traditional style.

For best results when playing with flatter fingers, turn off the on-screen controls. 4.6 07/30/2018 Bug fixes and performance improvements. 4.5 07/27/2018 Additional chromatic notes available using standard fingerings. Can now play all the instruments in either major or minor modes. 4.4 06/01/2018 Fixed wavering GHB drone. 4.3 05/28/2018 Updates for iOS 11

Removed AudioBus and GarageBand support 4.2 10/22/2017 Name changed to "World of Bagpipes Pro". 4.1 03/10/2016 Major update for iOS 8 and 9.

The app now supports both Audiobus and Inter-App Audio for use with GarageBand and other multi-track recording apps.

This means that Bagpipes Pro can now be used as an Inter-App Instrument for multi-track recording of your playing using Apple's GarageBand for iOS.

The instrument may now be transposed up to +/- one octave in semitone increments as well as tuned up to +/- 50 cents. 4.0 03/04/2016 Added additional chromatic note options for Great Highland Pipes, Border Pipes, SmallPipes, and Uilleann pipes:

Based on the standard GHB fingering where the lowest note on the chanter is named G and the drone is named A (independent of the actual pitches produced), the fingering for the new notes are as follows:

(X = closed, O = open, listed thumb first then the fingers from top to bottom of the chanter)

Bb: X XXX XXOX
C: X XXX XOXO
F: X XOX XOXO
G# (high): X OXX XXXX

The Sackpipa is really it's own thing, and didn't get any new notes in this update.

Added alternate fourth interval drone option (Eb for Great Highland Pipes, D for Border Pipes and SmallPipes, G for Uilleann pipes, A for Sackpipa)

Additional bug fixes and improvements for iOS 9

A huge thank you to Orlan Charles in Brazil for requesting the new features. 3.1 11/06/2015 Added Uilleann pipes as an new instrument option

Bug fixes for iOS 8.3 3.0 06/17/2015 Completely new version 2.0 adds four new stereo reverb options for a huge, full sound: (iOS 5.0 or later required for reverb features)

Room sizes:

Church
Chamber
Hall
Room

Bagpipes Royale supports individual reverb send level sliders for the drone and chanter as well as a slider overall reverb levels.

All reverb settings are saved/restored.

New more animated-sounding drone sample for the Great Highland Bagpipes.

Still running iOS4? This version of Bagpipes Royale will run exactly the same as the 1.0 version, only the new stereo reverb settings won't be available to you. 2.0 07/12/2012 1.0 10/31/2011