The Lindsay System Chanter

The MacAskill Set : Early Lindsay System Scottish smallpipes, built for the late Iain MacAskill.

Overview

The Lindsay System Chanter is a keyless, extended-range Scottish smallpipes chanter in nominal A, designed by Donald WG Lindsay. Using a return-bore design, it extends the range down to low D and bridges the register gap found in cylindrical-reed instruments, giving a practical range of just over two octaves while preserving standard Scottish fingering and idiom within the core traditional range.

The first working Lindsay System chanter, printed in day-glo PLA at MakLab in The Lighthouse, Glasgow, spring 2013. The colourful mound of experimental prototypes and parts below it, give a small glimpse of the immense effort that went into selecting and refining this design concept.

Design origins and early development

Research for a keyless extended range Scottish smallpipe chanter began in 2005, with the return-bore idea edging ahead of other options by around 2011, and becoming the baseline concept by early 2013. A Kickstarter project ran in March–April 2014 to fund 3D printers and filament, allowing more intensive work on the chanter and on a supporting drone set. Progress escalated rapidly from this point.

By December 2014, the version 1.0 beta chanter had been distributed to backer-testers, and version 2.0 was resolved by November 2015.

A professional video, Chanter 2, was released on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram in December 2017 to coincide with a feature on the project in the January 2018 edition of Piping Today (magazine of The National Piping Centre). The video demonstrates some of the chanter’s range and potential.

The Rainbow Set of Pollok and other prototypes on display at the National Centre for Craft & Design, Sleaford, 2018.

Collaboration, prototypes and public recognition

In 2018, the project gathered pace. A collaboration with Skye piper Malin Lewis led to the first wooden iteration of the chanter, turned in laburnum at their home workshop in Skeabost Bridge, Isle of Skye.

The Rainbow Set of Pollok in its home in the Museum of Piping, National Piping Centre, Glasgow, 2019.

In late 2018, two early prototype sets of Lindsay System Scottish smallpipes – including the multi-coloured “Rainbow Set of Pollok”, used to record Chanter 2 – were incorporated into the collection of the Museum of Piping at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow.

Blueprint by Zexuan Qiao, based on models and measurements by Donald WG Lindsay, as typeset and colour-graded for Piping Today issue 97.

In summer 2019, open-source plans for the Lindsay System Chanter were published in full in Piping Today magazine, while Malin Lewis and uilleann piper Jarlath Henderson presented their show Two Octaves to a sold-out National Piping Centre during Piping Live 2019.

A second sold-out Two Octaves followed during Celtic Connections 2020.

Rendered 3D model of LSC_PRINT&PLAY, the free downloadable chanter file set created by Lindstruments and ZQIAO in March 2020.

LSC_PRINT&PLAY and open access

In early 2020, following the second Two Octaves performance, Zexuan Qiao and Donald WG Lindsay collaborated remotely between London and Ascension Island, South Atlantic (where Donald was resident from August 2019 to May 2022) to create a home-3D-printable, downloadable version of the chanter: LSC_PRINT&PLAY.

This file set is available free of charge on Thingiverse (as LSC_PRINT&PLAY) and, while not full-featured, provides the core range from low D to high B.

As of 5 October 2024, the file set had been downloaded 2,475 times. If even ten percent of these downloads has resulted in a playable instrument, then there is already a substantial community of players. Adding the chanters known to have been manufactured by the three currently known professional makers, it is plausible that there are already hundreds (perhaps 500–1,000) active Lindsay System players worldwide.

Performances, recordings and films

Two Boats Under the Moon, Donald WG Lindsay’s critically acclaimed double CD album, released May 2025.

The Lindsay System Chanter’s role in professional performance and recording has continued to grow. In 2024, there were UK tours by Malin Lewis (following the release of Halocline) and by Donald WG Lindsay in collaboration with traditional singer and songwriter Alasdair Roberts.

2025 brought the release of Donald WG Lindsay’s critically acclaimed debut as a Scots singer and songwriter, Two Boats Under the Moon. This double CD album is founded on 30 years of experience and includes two instrumental sets on the Lindsay System – a preview of the follow-up piping and pipe-and-song-focused album planned for 2026.

Main features of the Lindsay System Chanter

• Second register access – a secure upper register including high B, high C♯, high D and beyond.

• Extended lower range via return bore – additional notes below the standard scale: low F♯, low E and low D.

• Built-in semitones within the working range: B♭, C, E♭, F, G♯, high B♭.

• No keywork required – the chanter remains entirely keyless.

• Standard A-chanter technique – the basic “A chanter” scale is unchanged, so no new core fingering is needed to play your existing repertoire.

Although it is a nominal A chanter, the two-octave working range begins on low D (below low G). Within that range the chanter can comfortably play in D and G as well as the familiar Scottish pipe modes of A, along with many other scales and modes.

Taken together, this gives a musical range broadly compatible with that of the uilleann pipes, Northumbrian smallpipes, whistle, wooden flute, and the top three strings of fiddle, mandolin and banjo (up to and beyond third position on fiddle).

Beyond this working range, the chanter offers at least another “untamed” octave above for adventurous players to explore.

If you are a piper, and especially if you know something about smallpipes acoustics, this may sound unlikely from a keyless A chanter. The video below was made in 2015 to illustrate what the chanter, then still in Version 1.0 Beta, was already capable of.

The Facebook Reels embeds below, which will be refreshed from time to time, will then provide an insight into how far the project has come in the years since.

More videos can be accessed in the “About” section of this site.

Lindsay System Chanter – a few tunes:

The Lindsay System Chanter has been under active development for around twenty years, building on research that began in the mid-2000s. The process of finalising the design went into top gear in 2014 following the success of the Dreaming Pipes Kickstarter project, which funded intensive prototyping and culminated in the production of twenty Version 1.0 “beta” chanters, each sent to a project backer. On completion of the project, every backer also received a Version 2.0 chanter, and the design that emerged from this process has now been in practical use for around ten years.