Tune, Wat Ye What I Got Late Yestre'en, played on a late 20th century Lowland bagpipe by Iain MacInnes (audio clip)

A modern Lowland bagpipe, bellows blown, featuring a conically-bored chanter pitched in A, and three drones mounted in a common stock The drones comprise a bass (sounding two octaves below the keynote), and two tenors (sounding an octave below the keynote). The instrument plays in a pitch similar to the Highland bagpipe, but is considerably quieter. These pipes were particularly associated with the municipally-employed 'town pipers' of the 17th and 18th Centuries, and are currently enjoying a revival precipitated by the efforts of the Lowland and Border Pipers' Society, founded in 1981.

The tune Wat Ye What I Got Late Yestre'en, is from the music manuscript compiled by George Skene of Skene in Aberdeenshire in 1717. It represents a style of pipe music, similar to classical 'ground and division' music, in which the melody is developed through a series of variations. This type of music is particularly associated with the Scottish/English border, and the Eastern seaboard of Scotland.

The Lowland pipes, or Border bagpipe, was a distinctive instrument by the 18th century. It has a chanter and three drones - two tenors and a bass - and sounded and tuned as the Great Highland bagpipe but would generally not have produced such a strident and carrying sound. A distinguishing characteristic was the mounting of the three drones in a common stock, and the use of bellows strapped under the arm to provide a supply of air. Such a bagpipe would sometimes be described as a 'cauld wind pipe', in contrast to the mouth-blown bagpipe in which the player's breath was hot and lurid. The lowland pipes were the instrument favoured by the Town or Burgh Piper of Lowland Scotland.

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