Published in The Scotsman, Mon 26 Jun 2006

Not a bad piper … for a robot

IT IS enough to make traditional Scottish bagpipe aficionados choke on their chanters and mutter darkly that "it could only happen in America".

When students of computer science graduated last year from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they walked on stage to receive their degrees to the skirl of the pipes playing good old-fashioned Scottish tunes.

But this was bagpipe music with a difference. There was no piper to "screw the pipes and gart them skirl" as Robert Burns envisioned Auld Nick in his epic poem Tam O'Shanter, no human to "up and gie them a blaw, a blaw", in the words of songwriter Lady Carolina Nairne.

McBlare in all its glory, dressed in the Carnegie Mellon University tartan.

Instead, the university's Class of 2005 came face-to-face with the latest and slightly mind-boggling innovation in bagpipe technology – a robot bagpiper programmed to produce, at the touch of a button, the same sound generated by hundreds of thousands of skilled pipers worldwide.

McBlare, as it is fondly known, is the pride and joy of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. And if anyone doubts its prowess they need only listen to McBlare playing "Highland Laddie" and "Scotland the Brave". It may not match the standard of the lone piper atop the battlements at Edinburgh Castle but it is very convincing – certainly enough to assume that it is human.

The basic concept is simple. McBlare is essentially a traditional set of Highland bagpipes – drones, chanter and bag – fixed to a wooden board and powered by a custom-built air compressor with electro-magnetic "fingers" that open and close the tone holes on the chanter. It is controlled by a computer stored with around 50 MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files of traditional bagpipe tunes.

"We are close to getting it right but not close enough," says Roger Dannenberg, the university professor who has led the McBlare project. "If the pressure is too low the chanter will stop playing and if it's too high then we get what pipers call gurgling.

"The reaction has been great. People are just astounded to see something so modern which plays such an ancient traditional sound. There's a real human connection to bagpipes and when people realise the sound is coming from an electro-mechanical instrument it throws them a little.

"I am in awe of bagpipe players, especially since I've been involved in this project," he says. "They are constantly blowing a lot of air at very, very high pressure and I find it amazing that people can put so much effort into their music."

Roger Dannenberg with McBlare.

Dannenberg explains they chose to build a robotic piper both to mark the 25th anniversary of the Robotics Institute and the strong Scottish connection the university has with its part-founder Andrew Carnegie.

"We have our own pipe band and pipe major," the professor notes. "The seal of the university is a thistle and it seemed that it would be a fun thing to have a robotic bagpiper as something that would be uniquely Carnegie Mellon."

The robotic piper has had a notable career too, Dannenberg says.

"I once performed with it at a local jazz club. Someone who is a local classical musician said to me it was one of the five weirdest things he had ever seen in his life."

And the future of McBlare appears bright.

"We want to make it more portable and road worthy," Dannenberg says. "Right now we have to dismantle it all the time.

"I have talked to a friend who built a lot of robotic instruments and I would love to go to Scotland with it, there might well be a possibility of that happening."

So if McBlare ever makes the journey from Pittsburgh to, say, the Edinburgh Festival it will be unmistakable – the only piper on the Royal Mile not to require a large dram after a hard day's piping.