Chanter
The Pastoral chanter is used to play the melody and is similar to later flat set union pipe chanters in tone. It has eight finger holes giving middle C, D, E♭, E, F♯, G, A, B, C♯, D' using open fingering in the first register. Most of the accidentals can be obtained by cross-fingering and a second register is available by increasing the bag pressure. With a suitable reed, a few third-octave notes can also be played. Later sets included fully chromatic chanters using as many as seven keys. The chanter uses a complex double-bladed reed, similar to that of the oboe or bassoon. This must be crafted so that it can play two full octaves accurately, without the fine tuning allowed by the use of a player's lips; only bag pressure and fingering can be used to maintain the correct pitch of each note.
Read more about this topic: Pastoral Pipes