About Lindstruments
I’m Donald WG Lindsay: a piper, singer and instrument maker. Lindstruments grew out of my own playing, and a wish to explore what Scottish smallpipes could do.
That work has led to instruments I make for players, recordings, and designs that other makers can use. The music and the making continue together.
The musical question
In 2006, with support from the Arts Trust of Scotland, the late Nigel Richard made a prototype keyless chromatic smallpipe chanter around my proposal to borrow the flea hole from Hungarian bagpipes to add semitones. I played that instrument for six years while developing the ideas that led to the Lindsay System.
There were tunes I knew and wanted to play on smallpipes, including The Merry Blacksmith and Bovaglie’s Plaid, and I wanted more scope for accompanying singing. I began to wonder whether the range could extend further, both upwards and downwards, without adding keys.
Its tone, the feel under the fingers, and its place in the music all mattered. 3D printing gave me a way to explore those questions through successive prototypes. The first Lindsay System prototype was printed at MakLab in Glasgow in 2013.
In 2019, the Museum of Piping acquired two of my earliest prototype sets, including the Rainbow Set of Pollok.
Read my fuller account, “A Pipe Dream Made Real” ↗A tune came out of the testing
The phrases I used to test a prototype became a tune.
Here it is with Konrad Wiszniewski, Rachel Hair and Roo Geddes, recorded at the College of Piping in Glasgow in 2017. A passage developed to test the instrument had become music I wanted to keep playing.
This is an earlier Lindsay System instrument. The current smallpipes have their own specification and ordering information.
Explore the current complete set →Lindstruments Sessions #2 · 2017
Donald WG Lindsay, Konrad Wiszniewski, Rachel Hair & Roo Geddes
Load the YouTube player, then press Play.
Watch Chanter 2 on YouTube ↗ (new tab)
Film: Martin Forry · Sound: Neil McDermott
What Lindstruments is for
“support and enhance the music, and the existing infrastructure of craft skills, community, and technique that nurture and support it.”
From my description of Lindstruments, 2018
That was how I described the purpose of using emerging technology in this work. My decision to publish Lindsay System designs openly grew from my involvement in the Lowland & Border Pipers’ Society and the Scottish bellows-pipes revival.
I saw how players, instrument makers, reed makers and others supported one another in reviving and developing these instruments. I wanted the Lindsay System to have those opportunities too, and chose to share my work to encourage that community.
Other makers and musicians
In 2018, at my invitation, Malin Lewis made the first wooden Lindsay System chanter, applying their craft skills to realising my design in wood.
Read the contemporary account in Piping Today, pp. 40–44 ↗Malin has also developed a professional performing practice on the system, written a distinctive original repertoire for it, and centred their award-winning debut album on it.
Dreaming Pipes backer Bill Owens used the Qwistle design to make a tabor pipe. A design shared for one instrument became material for someone else’s instrument-making.
The Qwistle development page shows his adaptation alongside the account of the whistle’s design and finishing.
See Bill Owens’ adaptationNew music for the chanter
Composers were invited to write for the Lindsay System chanter. These three pieces were awarded first, second and third places:
Playing in company
With Roo Geddes, the smallpipes sit alongside fiddle, piano and song. Honeymoon Bridge is one place to hear that work; you can also watch Jigs and A Port here.
On History of Sleep, Richard Youngs and I explore smallpipes and electric guitar through improvisation. Released in 2020, it features an earlier Lindsay System instrument.
Sharing the making
Zexuan Qiao and I worked on a home-printable Lindsay System chanter, including refinements to the internal bore and a square-bore variant for home printing.
LSC_PRINT&PLAY is a free, openly shared home-printable version of the Lindsay System chanter. The release carries a Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike notice. It has its own files, instructions and specification, distinct from the finished instruments I make today.
Explore the Print & Play chanter ↗If you are working with these files and have a specific making question or an adaptation to share, contact me with the project and version .
The workshop now
Today’s smallpipes use industrially printed bodies alongside specialist reeds, bag and bellows. My work includes design, finishing, assembly, testing and setup.
When you buy a finished instrument, you pay for that work and help sustain the continuing development of Lindstruments.