English Border Bagpipes in G
My main instrument – G bagpipes by Sean Jones in sycamore. I acquired them in 2008 and have never looked back! I enjoy pushing the boundaries of what is usually played on the border pipes, which was helped along when Chris was researching 18th century tunes from the British Library. He’d come back with tunes that he liked and wanted played on the pipes – as a result I got a lot better on the pipes in a very short time!
The English border bagpipes were popular from the Middle Ages up to the mid-18th century, when they began to be superseded by the violin as the folk dance instrument of choice. Over the last forty years or so, they’ve undergone a bit of a revival, largely thanks to bands such as Blowzabella, and are now re-estabilshing themselves as a part of the contemporary English folk scene. They play an range of one octave and a fourth and are mostly chromatic.