THE STORY of D

Some of my favourite pipe tunes, particularly those written in the last fifty years, are in D,
rather than in A. Playing these tunes with drones in A, however, has always left me less than
satisfied. Recently, in response to a different question, I decided to figure out why. What
follows is described in terms of smallpipes; conical bore chanters with drones one and two
octaves below the chanter’s root have a difference of balance of harmonics, both with the
drones and in themselves.
We all know that for a piper, the great joy of the instrument is the wondrous effect of the
chanter being in accord with the harmonics of the drones. I was therefore both consoled and
surprised to finally convince myself that, travel as far up the stack of harmonics that a drone can
produce as you may, you will never find a ‘just’ fourth above the root; that is, an A drone just
doesn’t produce a good ‘D’ anywhere in its harmonic series.
Perhaps it’s worth stating exactly what is meant by a ‘just’ interval, although to do so means
dealing with numbers, which I know are not everyone’s cup of tea, so I’ll try to keep it as
straightforward as the topic allows.
The bagpipe drone that is said to sound an ‘A’, you are probably aware, in fact sounds a whole
series of notes, thanks to which we are able to get the instrument in tune with itself. For reasons
of simplicity I am going to assume that the frequency [the rate of vibrations per second] of the
lowest of these notes, the one we use to identify the pitch of the drone, is 220 cycles per second.
Now, the series of sounds produced by such a drone consists of a mathematical series known,
not surprisingly, as the ‘harmonic series’; it consists of frequencies related to each other in a
simple mathematical way. The second in the series (taking the ‘root’ A as the first) is 2 times
the frequency of the original [440cps, the pitch of the ‘tenor’ drone and the tonic of the
smallpipe chanter], the third is 3/2 times that of the esecond [440*3/2=660cpsand so on. You
may be aware that these notes, starting from the bottom A are, nominally, A, A’, E’, A’’, C’’#,
E’’, etc.

Note Harmonic Frequenc Relation to previous

y harmonic
A, 1 220cps 1
A 2 440 2/1
E 3 660 3/2
A’ 4 880 4/3
C#’ 5 1100 5/4
E’ 6 1320 6/5
[F##]’ 7 [1540] 7/6
A’’ 8 1760 8/7
B’’ 9 1980 9/8
C#’’ 10 2200 10/9

Table 1: the harmonic series for a drone in A 220cps

You can perhaps see these notes are getting closer together, the intervals between them getting
smaller.1 We have the octave, the fifth, the fourth, the ‘major’ third and the ‘minor’ third. After
this come a couple of unacknowledged intervals: 7/6 of the ‘monir’ third generates a note which
Table 1 calls F## and 8/7 generates an A above that note.(these two intervals don’t appear in
conventional European music). Following on, we have two ‘tones’, one ‘major’ and one
‘minor’, notes which are respectively 9/8 and 10/9 times the frequency of their preceding
neighbour.2
Now, we can establish the frequencies of the notes within a single octave by reducing each by a
suitable fraction so that they all lie between 440 and 880;

A 440
B 495
C# 550
E 660
A 880
Table 2: the harmonics reduced to
a single octave range

But what about our ‘D’, the tonic ‘home’ note of so many wonderful tunes? We know that it is
a fourth above our tonic A so its frequency should be 440*4/3 [the same proportion that relates
the E’ and the A’’ in our drone harmonics], that is 586.66cps.
Now there is probably some erudite proof somewhere, but I’ve convinced myself by doing
brute calculations for long enough to satisfy me that nowhere in the harmonic series of a drone
pitched at 220cps will you hear a note that is 586.66 multiplied by any power of 2.3 That is to
say, you cannot tune your ‘D’ to a consonant tone in an A drone, and your ‘pure D’ tonic is
therefore unsupported by it. The nearest harmonic is the 11th, which, by our nominal values,
would give a frequency of 605cps for the D, very sharp of pure. This is the principal
explanation for the ‘dry’ sound that a tune in D produces, compared to one in A.4

Is there a solution to this problem? Well, no, strictly speaking there isn’t. But there might be a
compromise to be reached which will enable us to continue to play all those wonderful D tunes
with satisfaction. Let us leave aside the matter of the drone for the moment and consider how to
tune the chanter so that we get the best possible intervals in the key of D.

Let’s consider the intervals of a ‘major’ scale of D. The crucial ones are D/F# and D/A [the
third and fifth], but also of interest is that of A/D [the fourth] which is crucial to our V/I
cadence, the fundamental cadence of most of the ‘D’ tunes we play. Looking at the table above,
it is clear that, in addition to D, we have not established from our drone harmonics, an
appropriate frequency for either F# or G. Now if we want a ’just’ value [that is, one that is
mathematically determined by the harmonic series] for the important intervals of fourth and
third, then our D, as we have seen, must be 586.66cps. Our third, F# must then be

1
You will probably also notice that the difference in the actual cycles per second remains constant; this is because
the increase in ‘pitch’ is logarithmically related to the increase in frequency. Isn’t mathematics wonderful?
2
The existence of these two slightly different intervals of a ‘tone’ is something of a musical secret, but it is the root
cause of all the problems we have in tuning the chanter to play just intervals in different ‘keys’.
3
The frequencies of the D’s rise by powers of 2 every octave, whereas those of the harmonics rise by 300cps each
step. The mathematical proof probably relies on the fact that these two series can never coincide, that is, that no
power of 2 is divisible by 3. It might be succinctly stated in the form ‘there is no whole number value of n such
that 3n =2^x where x is a whole number. It should also be noted that how the harmonics that are present in any
drone actually sound is a product of its material, its geometry and its manufacture.
4
It is true that when playing a D on the smallpipe chanter, it itself generates a harmonic series of which the third is
an A which will be in tune with the fourth harmonic of the tenor drone; this may not be easy to hear.
586.66*5/4=733.33. Note that the interval between this F# and the E below is now 10/9, what
we can call a ‘minor tone’, equivalent to that between the 9th and 10th harmonics. Also, the
interval between our D and E is a ‘major tone’, 9/8 [frequencies 586.66 and 660]. Together,
these two intervals, a major tone and a minor tone, make up a ‘perfect’ third. [9/8*10/9=5/4].
This is all well and good and to it we can add the one missing note, the G, which for playing in
D should ideally be a perfect fourth above the D, 586.66*4/3=782.213.5 This gives us a major
tone below the high A; a low G would thus be 782.21/2= 391.107.
But, and the but is inevitable in a time-bound world, what about the intervals between the other
notes in this D scale? Ideally for playing in D we would want just intervals for the triads of G
too; especially we would like a perfect major third G-B. What does the system outlined so far
give for this interval? G=391.107; B=495; now a perfect third above 391.107 is 488.88
[391.107*5/4]; our third is thus a little sharp. In fact, it is a major tone above the A; since our G
is a major tone below the A, what we need for G-B to be a perfect third is the minor tone. So
let’s put a little bit of tape over the six-finger hole. However, the result now gives us a B which
can be heard to conflict with the 3rd harmonic E of the bass drone, being no longer a perfect a 5 th
above it. So, perhaps we should leave the B in its whole tone tuning above the A and raise the
low G instead, to 396cps. This retains the true third between the low G and the B, but what has
now happened to the ‘perfect’ 5th that we had established between the low G and the D? It is
now short of a true 5th (396*3/2 =594).
Ok, so suppose we raise our D to this new pitch of 594 cps. Sounds unlikely? It was at this
stage in my musings on this topic that I was reminded of an article Barnaby Brown had written
in Piping Today some months ago, where he demonstrated that up until around 1950, the
recordings of some of the finest Highland pipers revealed just such a ‘sharp’ D, and that this
appeared to be the same with the late 17th century Iain Dall chanter that he and Julian Goodacre
had been working on reproducing.6 Using such a pitch it was possible for the two triads ACE
and GBD, which form the basis of so much early pipe music, to be pure intervals, sacrificing
the ‘pure’ fourth of A-D.

G 396
A 440
B 495
C# 550
D 594
E 660
F# 733.33
G 792
A 880

Table 3 The pitches of the ‘revised’ chanter scale

All we need to do now in order to play happily in D is to do something about the drones, which
are defiantly sounding E’s and C#’s against our chanter’s D. It so happens that nature has
devised a means whereby compromise is available. This comes in the form of what are called
‘difference tones’. By the magic of acoustics, when two sounds of different frequencies are
sounded together they generate an ethereal extra sound which has the frequency of the

5
With allowance made for recurring decimal 3’s or 6’s, the result of dividing even numbers by 3.
6
In the extended version of this article, to be included in The Highland Bagpipe, Music, History, Tradition,
Barnaby Brown describes this wide fourth as ‘colourful’ and points to examples of its use in fiddle traditions,
particularly in Norway..
difference between the two played frequencies.7 Now if we sound two tones a fourth apart, a D
at 586.66cps and an A at 440cps, they will produce low D at 146.66cps.

Now this A is, of course, the pitch of our ‘tenor’ drone on the small pipes, since this drone is
sounding the same pitch as the chanter’s A. Another D is sounded two octaves below that of the
chanter without us doing anything except getting the thing in tune. Unfortunately, the effect of
this low D is completely drowned out by the ‘bass’ drone sounding A 220cps. So let’s stop off
the bass drone. Now, if we play the cadence C#-D (frequencies 550-586.66) we will here a
‘drone’ cadence, made up of these ‘difference tones’, of A-D (110-146.66).

However, we have just re-tuned our D to be 594cps. The’ difference tone’ of this D against the
A is 148.5cps and thus the bottom D is now slightly less than two octaves below our chanter D.
You are, I hope, beginning to understand the problem.8

So smallpipe players can achieve a compromise set-up for playing in D by slightly raising the
pitch of the chanter’s G and D and shutting of the bass drone. Unfortunately, this device with
the drones will not work in the same way for conical bore chanters, since the drones are one and
two octaves below the chanter’s A, and do not give the same effect. The tenor drone is
sounding a nominal A at 220cps which, with the D at 586.66 produces a note of 366.66cps, an
F# between the two, and the bass A drone at 110cps produces with the D a note at 476.66cps
which is a sharp Bflat … yet another explanation for the slightly unsettling sound of a conical
bore A chanter playing in D. But those tunes are so damn good that conical-bore pipers are
gonna play em regardless …

7
There are also ‘sum tones’, which are what we might expect. I have not taken them into account here. For a
striking demonstration of the magic of difference tones, I recommend the slow air played on two whistles on the
first Chieftains’ LP. So distinct is this ‘third’ voice that it is possible to transcribe it and demonstrate that the
pitches are the mathematical consequence of the voicing of the two ‘real’ parts.
8
I should add, perhaps, that this tuning is ideal for the earlier Lowland repertoire which is sometimes described as
‘double-tonic’ in character. In this article I have been addressing the more modern problem of tunes in D major.