What Sort of Air Do You Breath in it?

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“What sort of air do you breath in it?”

            The bag on a bagpipe must be filled with something or it would remain as silent as a supernova in the emptiness of space. Breath not ether fills the Great Highland Bagpipe.  The bag expands with the infusion of breath and contracts with a diffusion of sound. The bag acts as reservoir of wind containing the breath as a potential source of energy to activate the four pipes of the instrument. However, the bag is in a constant state of flux between a potential state and kinetic movement, passivity and activity. The bagpipe works by applying continuous arm pressure to the bag but this pressure must be applied in balance with the infusion of breath which is the true in-source of energy and activity. Mastery of this passive-active breathing technique must be gained through years of practice where one pays singular attention to the sounding of the pipes listening for a constant and unwavering Om-like droning sound in conjunction with a harmonious union of  every note on the pipe chanter scale.  Pipers call the instrument in this state a “balanced set of pipes.” It is a paradox. Strict attention to the “in-balance” sounding of the instrument is where the amateur piper and the professional piper stand in distinction. It is the amateur piper who has ruined the reputation of the instrument through an inattention to “breath” but it is the cloistered professional piper lost in a world of ethereal matters who has done nothing to redeem its reputation in the public’s eye or rather ear.

            Many pipers also learn a technique called circular breathing. This technique is used when one plays the chanter alone without a bag. It involves inhaling through the nose while simultaneously exhaling through the mouth into the melody pipe or small pipe chanter to produce continuous sound. One might think of the inhaling-exhaling simultaneity as akin to wave-particle duality but that is a topic for another day. The small pipe chanter is used as an instrument mainly for learning various tunes. It is not for performance but for practice hence it is more commonly called the practice chanter. However, if one added a small drone to the small pipe chanter one would have a type of bagpipe, with the human acting in persona autricularius much like the Satyr Marsyas who would later become the world’s first piping champion or martyr. With the added drone, the chanter ceases to be an instrument of learning and now becomes an instrument of performing in a truely Dionysian manner. Appollians, however, prefer the harp and some pipers prefer the bellow. It is a paradox.

            With the continuous sound generated by a breath that neither inhales nor exhales one might think that one has achieved a miracle and in fact conquered death itself. So the breath, one must now speculate, must be something like the mysterious ether described by nineteenth century spiritualists and documented in their eirey photographs of spooky spirits spewing forth great jets of ectoplasmic condensations.  The breath not ectoplasm activates the bagpipe and we pipers are not yet spirits despite our predilection for spirits like scotch.  We know we are alive, speaking on behalf of pipers everywhere, when we infuse our instrument with our spirited breath and the instrument is perfectly in tune and the reeds are all well-balanced and no one is around to complain about the sound. In-balanced, well-tuned, spirited, pipers literally vibrate in perfect resonance with an in-tune instrument. We commune with the instrument in a type of cosmic oneness as one might do in a state of enlightened scotch bliss. Nirvana is like one big tuning-fork with a sporran flask.

          On-the-other-hand, the other afterlife has its fair share of pipers too if one is to believe the depiction by Hieronymus Bosh of a bagpipe Anti-Christ in hell. Even death appears to play the bagpipe according to one illustration in the Hans Holbein etching series Danse Macabre. If one were to believe Bruegel, pipers it would seem, according to his depictions, were a notoriously lusty bunch of medieval rock stars ruined by folly, licentiousness and that thing we call an instrument which doubled as a whoopee cushion on a stick in Germany. What ever you call it, more than one person has claimed that I am going to hell for various reasons. It is a paradox but let us not get too literal with  16th century visual puns and Christian sermonizing and give the devil his due before he pays the piper.