Uilleann - Play the Irish Bagpipes

Play the Irish Bagpipes on your iPad!

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

You first absolutely must turn off "Multitasking Gestures" in your iPad Settings to use this app. When they are turned on, when you put four fingers on the screen, Apple takes over the system, stops all the sounds, and assumes you want to start switching between apps.

Completely new version 3.x adds four new stereo reverb options for a huge, full sound: (iOS 5.0 or later required for reverb features)

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 (pronounced "ill-in") 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. In recent years they have been made popular by shows such as Riverdance, as well as many motion picture soundtracks such as "Waking Ned Devine", "Titanic", and "Braveheart".

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

The chanter fingerings are essentially identical to the actual instrument.

How to Play:

Start/stop the drones playing by touching the drone puck.

To play the chanter, touch the bar at the top left with your left thumb. This bar is the "Back D" hole 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 grey block next to the chanter with your left little finger to play the notes one octave higher.

Touch the grey block under the drone with your right thumb to stop the chanter sound. This may be used to play repeated or separated notes.

Touch the "i" to bring up the volume and reverb controls. All values are saved for next time the app is run.

Touch the Tradlessons logo at the bottom of the chanter to visit my website.

Touch the "?" for on-screen help.

Optional finger vibrato may be done by touching holes below the main closed holes used for a note. Set the depth of the vibrato with the "Vibrato Depth" slider.

Optional upward note bending is done by sliding the finger right or left very slightly from the root tone hole. The sensitivity to pitch be set using the "Note Bend Null Zone" slider.

Play along with tunes in your iPad's music library by starting a track using the iPad iTunes app, then launching Uilleann.

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.

Q: I have an iPad with iOS5 and the sound stops when I put four fingers on the screen.

A: Go into the iPad Settings app, and disable the "Multitasking Gestures" feature. This feature creates issues for all apps like mine that use more than 3 fingers on the screen at a time.

Q: I'm not hearing any sound, help!

A: Make sure that the mute switch on your device is turned off.

Still on iOS4? Uilleann will run exactly the same as the 2.x version, only the new reverb settings won't be available to you.

Prefer to play with the iPad in your lap instead of vertical, check out my Uilleann Classic app!