Everything's Louder with Bagpipes

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    A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the bagpipes but doesn't.

    Why do bagpipers always walk when they play? To get away from the noise.
    —Traditional Jokes

    Bagpipes are fantastic instruments, if you know how to play them. Hearing somebody unskilled learning to play bagpipes, though, is just as painful as media makes it out to be. Also, a lot less painful outdoors than inside, as they are also quite loud. How loud? Well, if the wind is in the right direction and you listen a bit, you can hear the buskers on Edinburgh's Royal Mile from a couple of miles away. Since the original bagpipes, as well as the modern Great Highland Bagpipe originally were signaling instruments, meant to be heard over the sounds of a couple thousand dudes banging at each other with bits of metal, one can argue that this is the point. Other types of bagpipes have different, less screechy sounds.

    Though there are many kinds of bagpipes used in traditional music throughout Europe, North Africa and the Caucasus, in fiction you almost never see anything but the Great Highland Bagpipe; just take a look at The Other Wiki on the subject. They have a nifty list of songs with bagpipes as well.

    Most often used for a Regional Riff of Scotland. Also see Loud of War.

    Examples of Everything's Louder with Bagpipes include:

    Anime and Manga

    • The extended version of the Vision of Escaflowne opening theme has bagpipes. And they are awesome.
    • The Crowning Music of Awesome from Heat Guy J is Epic Rocking on the pipes. Kind of appropriate given J's signature cooling pipes.
      • Word of God has it that the bagpipes were chosen because Kazuki Akane thought it was a Rated "M" for Manly instrument, and J is always bringing up what it means to be a man. ("A man should ______.")
    • Little Wing, the JAM Project-produced opening to Scrapped Princess, opens with bagpipes and has a short interlude with them in the full version of the song. The result is predictable.
    • The second season opening of the Ah! My Goddess TV series. Yes, the goddesses are nominally Norse, not Celtic. Nobody cares, it sounds awesome.
      • What does Celtic has to do with it? Read The Other Wiki's article again — There are types of bagpipes from Scandinavia as well (though none from Norway, but that's splitting hairs on the definition of "Norse").
    • "Colosseum", from Noir.
    • Claymore has a bagpipe motif for Clare. Because Clare is so Badass that only bagpipes are good enough for her motif. Like here.
    • The first ending theme of Pokémon Best Wishes uses bagpipes, though you might not notice because of the adorable sight of Pokabu blowing into them.
    • Aramaki's Theme in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex features bagpipes in its second half.
    • Bagpipes are used quite a bit in the soundtrack to Spice and Wolf.
    • England/The UK's versions of Marukaite Chikyuu and Hattafutte Parade contain surprisingly good bagpipes. Technically, they're Scottish, but Iggy apparently represents the whole UK at World Meetings, and Scotland has only ever been alluded to.
    • A strange place to find them, but when the chorus and the musical bridge of the ED of Ragnarok: The Animation, Alive plays, you can hear bagpipes as an accompaniment. It's also obvious during the ending as they're one of the last instruments to fade out.
    • Fairy Tail's soundtrack aims for mix of celtic/folk mixed with heavy metal, and as such bagpipes are featured in several tracks, including the main theme.

    Comic Books

    Film

    • In Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the historical army summoned by the witch to fight off Those Wacky Nazis include a bagpipe player.
    • In The Dark Knight Saga, bagpipes are played at the memorial service for Commissioner Loeb.
    • Army of Darkness featured the undead army of death marching complete with drum, flute and bagpipes.
    • In The Departed, bagpipes are played when the main characters graduate from the police academy and again at the funeral.
    • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Scotty plays "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes at Spock's funeral.
    • L.A. Story. A freeway sign electronically plays "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes.
    • The French comedy movie The Tall Blond Man with a Black Shoe has a scene where a character accidentally sits on a bagpipe, with predictable results. The bagpipe then proceeds to haunt the poor guy.
    • At the end of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (which The Departed is based on), there are bagpipe players at a funeral.
    • Braveheart of course, set in Scotland. They use Irish pipes, though. Word of God on the DVD commentary says they tried Scottish pipes at first but decided the Irish pipes sounded better.
    • The 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers has a scene involving "Amazing Grace" on bagpipes.
    • The score for How to Train Your Dragon heavily features bagpipes, especially in "Test Drive"
    • In The World Is Not Enough Q Labs is shown testing some bagpipes with a machine gun concealed in one of the drones.
    • Casino Royale 1967 also has Ursula Andress' character using a bagpipe/machine gun on a corps of pipers attacking Peter Sellers, and then on him.. Early in the movie, agents playing M's widow and daughters try to corrupt Bond (David Niven) at a funeral fling with piping, drinking, and dancing, but he ends up the last person standing.
    • In So I Married an Axe Murderer, Mike Myers' character's wedding party has his dad (also Myers) singing "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" accompanied by bagpipes. When the old player drops, dad announces "We have a piper down!"
    • The Gordon Highlanders are very prominent in Waterloo, performing a bagpipe-accompanied dance at the Duchess of Richmond's ball and later fighting in the battle. A regimental piper gets it from a French cavalryman.
    • Dead Poets Society: Half of Keating's Triumph is bagpipes!
    • The Rundown has Beck's bush pilot sidekick, Declan (who appears to be from Northern Ireland, though he is played by a Scottish actor) play Highland Pipes on the outskirts of Hatcher's town, then deliver a bizarre sermon warning Hatcher of the coming judgment. He then resumes playing, until a herd of cattle stampede through the town.
    • Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me: Fat Bastard, an infiltrator in the Scots Guards, plays a bagpipe that emits knockout gas, and contains tools used to extract the frozen Austin's mojo.
    • Help! - The Beatles once again run afoul of the pursuing Eastern thug cult at the London riverfront, disguised as a Highland band, with a bagpipe that spews sacrificial red paint.

    Literature

    • In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, there's Count Vorvolynkin (derived from Russian volynka = bagpipe). This count is famous for his looong trial for his territories. Note that the word volynka has another meaning in Russian: something long and boring.
    • Three Men in a Boat has a long digression on the previous efforts of one of the three to master the instrument.
    • The Nac Mac Feegle on Discworld play the mousepipes, which are pitched too high for humans to hear, but are apparently beautiful (and slightly painful, with a sense your earwax is about to melt). There's also occasional mentions of Lancre bagpipes, although they've never actually been played in a novel.
    • The rock band mentioned in Harry Potter, "The Weird Sisters" has a bagpiper in the band. The music video for the song "Do the Hippogriff" from the film version of Goblet of Fire even has a bagpipe solo.
    • In Lost Dorsai, by Gordon R. Dickson, there is a "gaita gallega", a Bagpipe from Galicia, in the Northwest corner of Spain. The instrument is described and demonstrated, and then later used in a battle (of sorts). To hear one try a record by Susana Seivane, Christna Pato, or almost any of the Galician folk groups. There are similar instruments in Asturias, also worth hearing.
    • In Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston, set in a parallel universe with a culture similar to 1920s America, bagpipes are considered a standard instrument for blues music.
    • Police Chief Andrew Brody, like many characters in The Cat Who Series, is of Scottish descent and is known to give stirring bagpipe performances at public events, weddings, and funerals.
    • The Gaunts Ghosts series includes, as part of a general "space Scots" feel for the Tanith, Space Bagpipes. They're noted to both encourage the Ghosts and scare everyone else, Imperial or Chaos (and scaring a chaos cultist takes some effort...). Trooper Milo's first job, before enlisting as a proper soldier, is to play the pipes as they march into combat.
    • Invoked and played for slight laughs in The Witcher Saga short story A Question of Price, where a large bagpipe is used to stop a possessed girl's rampage—by the sheer loudness of the noise it produces.
    • George Macdonald Fraser's McAuslan short stories recount his days in the Highland regiments, particularly Johnny Cope in the Morning, which deals with the shenanigans of the regimental pipe band. They developed the habit of assembling outside the newbie officers' quarters every Friday at six AM and blasting them all awake with Johnny Cope; the subalterns eventually get revenge by inviting the colonel to stay overnight one fine Thursday and conveniently forgetting to tell the pipe band.

    Live-Action TV

    • Battlestar Galactica Reimagined:
      • The Adama(s) theme using bagpipes, noticeable in almost any scene involving both Adamas, particularly when they're having some kind of heartwarming moment. Also noticeable in the fourth season when Adama, Sr gets in the Raptor to wait for the Baseship/Roslin.
      • Bear McCreary likes uilleann pipes. They also show up in some of the action sequence music, such as "Storming New Caprica" which is pretty much an orgy in taiko drums and uilleann pipes. The song also uses Highland pipes, although they aren't as audible on the soundtrack album as the show itself.
    • Ross intends to play the bagpipes at Monica and Chandler's wedding in Friends, and they can hear his rehearsal from across the road.

    "WHY is your family Scottish?"
    "Why is YOUR family ROSS?"

    • In the Doctor Who serial Terror of the Zygons, Angus the landlord plays "Flowers of the Forest" on the bagpipes. It turns out to be an omen (of sorts). Well, he does have second sight.
    • In NCIS Ducky's cellphone ring-tone is Scotland the Brave (mentioned below).
    • On a Christmas Episode of The West Wing, in an attempt to get into the holiday spirit more than he had in past years, Tobey brings various musicians to play carols in the lobby of the White House. At one point he brings in bag-pipers, who can be heard throughout the building. This aggravates Josh in the short term and in the long term, is revealed to be the trigger that causes his PTSD to flare up.

    Music

    • Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell features bagpipes at the end of "Everything Louder Than Everything Else", because Everything's Louder with Bagpipes!
    • The Wicked Tinkers' third CD was simply called "Loud".
    • "Scotland the Brave," one of Scotland's unofficial national anthems.
    • Xera, an Asturian folk-techno band, has a gaita[1] player. They are indeed epic.
    • Korn uses bagpipes on most of their albums.
    • "In The Big Country", by Big Country. Anything by Big Country really; their sound was based on making guitars sound like bagpipes
    • Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (side 2) has guitars imitating bagpipes. The equivalent passage in Tubular Bells II uses the real thing.
      • His track "Tattoo" is a bagpipe track that simply cannot be played loud enough.
    • Rock music with Irish/Scottish instruments is a pretty popular music genre in certain circles, so there are plenty of bands that have a designated bagpipes player. Enter the Haggis, for example, emphasize the use of bagpipes in their music.
    • "You're The Voice" by John Farnham.
    • "Under the Milky Way," by Church features an e-bow imitating bagpipes.
    • Punk band Dropkick Murphys has a bagpipe player in the lineup.
      • Nicknamed Spicy McHaggis!
      • Their Scottish-Canadian fellow folk-punkers The Real McKenzies also make use of bagpipers on many tracks.
    • "March of the Cambreadth" by Heath Alexander. The bagpipes are really only icing on the cake for it, but still...
    • The song "Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle has simulated bagpipes. And it is Awesome.
    • The soundtrack for Riverdance features a cousin of the bagpipes, the Uilleann pipes (a sort of tenor bagpipe).
    • The Most Unwanted Music makes liberal use of bagpipes in an attempt to produce the most unlistenable piece of pop music ever composed. The result is so bad it's AWESOME.
    • The Red Hot Chilli Pipers play a mixture of traditional pipe tunes, pop and rock tunes like "We Will Rock You", and original stuff like "Celtic Bolero". They call it "Bagrock"... and it is awesome.
    • "It's a Long Way to the Top" by AC/DC. Played by Bon Scott, no less!
      • It's so awesome that Brian Johnson, who succeeded Scott as the band's lead singer, refuses to sing the song, since it was considered Scott's signature song.
      • When AC/DC first got the idea, Bon Scott was under the impression that Angus Young could play the bagpipes. Young replied, "No, I said I was in a highland bagpipe band. I played the drums!"
      • When Corporation Lane in Melbourne (near Swanston Street, where the song's video was filmed) was renamed ACDC Lane in 2004 (according to Melbourne law street names can't include slashes), the official ceremony ended with this song being played by bagpipers.
    • Swiss Celtic Metal band Eluveitie have a piper among their number, using a traditional Galacian design.
    • Grave Digger's album Tunes of War, which is based on wars between Scotland and England have bagpipes played by the band Subway To Sally. The album even opens with metal rendition of Scotland the Brave.
    • Running Wild's epic "Battle of Waterloo" opens with bagpipes.
    • Blind Guardian has used bagpipes now and then, most obviously on the title track from Somewhere Far Beyond and its intro track, aptly titled The Piper's Calling.
    • "Mull of Kintyre" by Wings. A paean to Paul McCartney's longtime residence (a home and recording studio in Argyll and Bute, Scotland), the 1977 recording features bagpipes from Kintyre's local Campbeltown Pipe Band.
    • Lenahan's "Nothin'" is blues bagpipes.
    • The German Medieval Rock band In Extremo make use of the Marktsackpfeife, a german bagpipe about as loud as the traditional scottish one.
    • The group MacUmba plays music that's a fusion of bagpipes and Brazilian Samba drums. Listen here
    • The song "Gimme the Prize" by Queen has a brief instrumental section that's clearly meant to be evocative of bagpipes; not surprising, since the song originates in the first Highlander film.
    • Composer/humorist Peter Schikele utilizes bagpipes to comic effect in some of his P.D.Q. Bach works; most notably in the Pervertimento for Bicycle, Bagpipes, and Balloons (which subverts the "louder" aspect in one movement by using the wheezy practice chanter), but also in a Sinfonia Concertante in which the bagpipes player executes florid, highly embellished mock-Baroque passages, while completely drowning out the other much softer solo instruments, such as a lute. (As Schickele is fond of saying when he introduces the piece, "It's a lovely lute.....think of it while you're listening to the bagpipes.")
    • The "Scallion Song" of Hatsune Miku was originally a Scottish marching tune during the reign of James I.
    • The liner notes for Great Big Sea's album Fortune's Favour contains this gem: "There are no bagpipes in the studio, but there are some on Heart of Stone. We suspect Bob is responsible."
    • Wizzard's 'Are you ready to rock?' mixes rock & roll and bagpipes. Yes, really. And it's AWESOME.
    • Neutral Milk Hotel's "Ghost" and "Untitled" both make superb use of bagpipes, plus trumpet, trombone, theremin, zanzithophone...
    • "Come Talk To Me," the opening track off Peter Gabriel's album Us, features bagpipes—as well as an Armenian doudouk, a Russian women's choir, and Sinead O'Connor on backing vocals, and manages to make it all work together.
    • Another guitar-imitating-bagpipe example: Slade's "Run Runaway". Furthermore, the video was loaded with Scottish imagery.
    • "Bagpipes (That's My Bag)" by Ray Stevens. He uses his voice to imitate one.
    • Almost any recording by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.
    • Bonaparte's Retreat - the version by Glen Campbell.
    • And of course, there's Rufus Harley, quite possibly the only prominent jazz musician to choose the Great Highland Bagpipes as his primary instrument. How good was he? Well, he was able to record jazz-funk songs without sounding like a novelty act.

    Newspaper Comics

    • One strip of Drabble shows the dad reacting in horror to someone just off-panel, as if the unseen man had a weapon. ("I don't think he sees us. Just back away very slowly...") The final panel reveals the source of the threat to be a bagpipes player; dad breaks into a run as the man begins playing.
    • Shoe has mocked bagpipes at least twice. One strip had a very drunken Scot mistake Cosmo carrying a struggling, squawking chicken for somebody playing the pipes "well." Another stated that the sound of the pipes is called a "skirl" because an Onomatopoeia for it (spelled "Aayeegareegaronk") was so hard to say.

    Professional Wrestling

    Tabletop Games

    • In Warhammer Fantasy Battle Fantasy Battle, a night goblin hero can use a set of enchanted 'squigpipes'. Their music is so horrible it panics enemy horses.
    • In Diana: Warrior Princess, bagpipes are weapons only usable by druids.
    • An item in Munchkin Cthulhu. It gives a hefty +4 bonus (on the level of some pretty fatal weaponry, like a combine harvester or a flamethrower), but with an unfortunate caveat that monsters may mistake its audio and appearance and think it's something they can mate with.

    Theater

    • Brigadoon has two bagpipers on stage for Harry's funeral procession, playing a traditional Scottish melody. Only one bagpipe is actually played, though: two would be too loud.
    • Cats has a bagpipe sequence in the midst of "The Pekes and the Pollicles." Hilarious, too.

    Video Games

    • Advance Wars Days of Ruin's CO Gage/Trak's theme song Proud Soldier has bagpipe sounding sections and is awesome.
    • "Relm's Theme" from Final Fantasy VI.
      • Relm's Theme might actually be considered a subversion of this, because the song itself is a very mellow and quiet tune, with the bagpipes only accenting one part of it.
      • "Different Word Ivalice" from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
    • Servants of the Mountain from Final Fantasy X. The bagpipes come in at the end of the loop.
    • The town theme for San d'Oria in Final Fantasy XI features loud bagpipes that usually frighten and scare off people entering the town for the first time.
      • The theme for the Wings Of The Goddess 20 years ago version of San d'Oria also features bagpipes, but they are more reserved.
    • In Wizardry 7 one of musical instruments is bagpipes that produce Terror spell. Wizardry 8 adds three more—with Shrill Sound (damage), Hex (bad luck), and Pandemonium (fear and possible insanity).
    • The Total War series has bagpipes in almost every incarnation (aside from Samurai). The Barbarian Victory theme music in Medieval and its expansion was a particular Crowning Music of Awesome, but it is also very noticeable in Medieval II when playing as the Scots, of course, and in Empire. Slightly weird when your Russian troops are steamrolling over the Balkans, but awesome nonetheless.
      • However, frustratingly enough, bagpipes were never featured in-game, which is quite historically inaccurate (especially for Scottish, Polish, Georgian, Celtic French, etc. factions and regiments).
    • Cold Sniper, Gage's theme from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, has them in the background, as well as some great violin.
    • "bag" from Dance Dance Revolution. It's also a possible That One Level due to the fact that the song scrolls at a ridiculously-slow 65 beats per minute, meaning if you don't play with speed modifiers, the notes will be really scrunched up, making the song near-impossible to read without some memorization.
    • Worms World Party had the intro theme played partly on bagpipes.
    • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has "Sad Monster" for the final boss' first form.
    • The Demoman's theme, Drunken Pipe Bomb, uses the bagpipes. Also, the end of the Meet The Demoman has the Team Fortress 2 ending riff played on bagpipes.
      • Bagpipes also play in DeGroot Keep every time Points A and B are captured and open the gate leading into the castle.
    • The credits theme for Touhou Hisoutensoku features bagpipes.
    • Mount & Blade: Warband mod Mount & Musket: Batallion features the Piper as an actual class for the United Kingdom. They don't get a weapon, just their pipes. And they still win battles.
    • The "Warpipes" theme from The Lord of the Rings Online, used for skirmish battles in The Shire. It's a quite suitably awesome battle theme.
    • Occasionally heard in Age of Empires 2, thanks to the inclusion of a Celtic Civilization.

    Web Comics

    • In Girl Genius, Sleipner has turned a set of bagpipes into a flamethrower-ish weapon she calls the "Hot Pipes" in this strip.

    Western Animation

    • In an episode of League of Super Evil, Red Menace's bagpipe playing causes Voltar and Frogg to run away.
    • Bagpipes pop up every now and then in Rocko's Modern Life.
    • On South Park, when little baby Ike's Faking the Dead, a piper shows up at his funeral to play Hava Nagila - apparently, the only Jewish music he knows. Everyone plugs their ears right before he starts.
    • Dave the Barbarian had the Gargle Pipes, which Dave played non-stop to get back at Princess Candy, who was being a total slave-driver towards her brother. She comments that they're loud enough to wake the dead, but Dave disagrees. It turns out she's kind of right about that, because Quasmir awakens due to the Gargle Pipes.
    • In the Looney Tunes cartoon "My Bunny Lies Over The Sea," Bugs pops up in Scotland looking for the La Brea tar pits. He then sees a guy in a kilt playing bagpipes and thinks it's a monster attacking an old lady, so he rips up the bagpipes, making the Scotsman angry at him. At the end of the cartoon, Bugs "beats" him at the pipes by using them as a one-bunny-band (he sticks other musical instruments like trumpets in the openings of the pipes).
      • In "Ducking the Devil", Daffy discovers the Tasmanian Devil can be made calm and docile with music - but bagpipes just enrage him more.
    • DuckTales (1987): Scrooge McDuck plays the bagpipes. Poorly, judging by how other characters react. Also, used by Burger Beagle in one episode to "torture" some hostages.
    • In the Futurama episode "The Sting", Scruffy plays "Walking on Sunshine" on bagpipes for Fry's funeral, as a parody of Spock's funeral from the aforementioned Wrath of Khan.
    • In the old seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine And Friends, Donald and Douglas' leitmotif was played on bagpipes supplemented by drums and flute, because of their Scottish origin.
    • In Earthworm Jim, when Bob the Killer Goldfish fails to awaken the Antifish by pounding on his eyelid with a Hyperspace Mallet, a marching band bass drum/trumpet comb, and detonating dynamite sticks jammed in the monster's mouth, he declares that they need a noise so horrible it can wake the dead. His next line? "#4! Fetch... the bagpipes!" And then it has absolutely no effect on the Antifish, either.
    • Samurai Jack: The only recurrent character besides the titular samurai and Aku is the behemoth Scotsman who has a penchant for the pipes. They're heard long before he and Jack actually meet face to face. Actually becomes a plot critical ability during a later episode, where the pipes manage to drown out the mind controlling song of some Enthralling Sirens.
    • The Leitmotif of Duff Killigan on Kim Possible.

    Real Life

    • In many Commonwealth nations (and a few that aren't!), pipe & drum bands are the musical outlet of police and military organizations.
    • "Fighting" Jack Churchill was the one of the most Badass officers in WWII, leading his men with a sword in his belt and more than once, pipes under his arm. His last commando raid ended badly with him being wounded by mortar shrapnel: he insisted on being propped up against a wall and proceeded to play his bagpipes to encourage the defenders until the position was overrun and he was captured.
    • A few years ago,[when?] a burglary in Scotland was foiled because the householder had stowed his bagpipes under the window the luckless criminal chose as his point of entry.
    • The College of Wooster, whose mascot is the Fighting Scot, boasts a Wooster Pipe Band consisting solely of several bagpipes and one drummer (an impressive feat for a rather small school). The Pipe Band appears at football games as well as more formal and official school functions. If you go to this school, not only will you have the tune of the school song, "Scotland the Brave," memorized within three or four months thanks to these guys, you will also consider it to be one of the most epic songs ever. The band even appeared in a Coca-Cola ad.
    1. ↑ a Spanish variety of bagpipes
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