Uilleann Classic - Play the Irish Bagpipes

Play the Irish Bagpipes on your iPad!

Uilleann Classic is an authentic sounding set of concert pitched Irish bagpipes in the key of D that are played like the real instrument.

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).

Please see note below about the use of reverb in headphones for iOS 6.

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.

This app emulates the three drones and chanter of a half set of "concert" pitch Uilleann pipes in the key of D.

To get started, make sure that the orientation lock switch on your iPad (just above the volume controls on the side) is in the off position, then rotate the iPad to landscape orientation to play.

How to play

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 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.

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.

Rotate the iPad to Portrait orientation to see the fingering chart. Rotate back to Landscape orientation to play. If youre stuck on either screen, make sure you have the orientation lock switch on your iPad turned off!

On the fingering chart, you may touch the blue Back-D bar image to toggle between whether the bar on the main screen plays the second-octave D note on a touch (default) or release (matches real Uilleann pipes chanter).

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.

Still on iOS4? Uilleann Classic will run exactly the same as the 1.0 version, only the new reverb settings wont be available to you.

Note about the use of headphones on iOS 6 devices

Unfortunately, because of a bug Apple introduced in iOS 6 to the reverb system in iOS, the reverb is broken in headphones and results in the sound being panned far to the right.

Apple has been made aware of the issue and hopefully will fix the issue in a future iOS 6 update.

For now, please turn the reverb level to zero when using headphones on iOS 6 devices to center the sound.