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Uilleann pipes
The uilleann pipes are Ireland's national bagpipe, an elbow-bellows-blown bagpipe with three drones and regulators that allow it to produce chords. It has a two-octave chromatic range and an inward, melancholic timbre, conceived for the small room.
The uilleann pipes —whose name comes from the Irish uille (“elbow”)— are Ireland’s national instrument and the most complex bagpipe of its Atlantic family. Unlike the Asturian gaita, they aren’t blown by mouth: the player uses an elbow bellows, pressed with the arm, to inflate the bag, which frees the hands to sing while playing.
They have three standard drones and regulators: additional keyed pipes that allow the player to sound chords with the palm or wrist of the right hand, a possibility the Asturian gaita doesn’t have in its original design. Their range reaches two full chromatic octaves.
Their timbre is more contained and slightly nasal than the Asturian gaita’s: conceived for the small-room session, not the outdoors. That’s why their sound so often appears in film scores looking for that inward, melancholic colour.