Tune, The Carrick Hornpipe, played on a late 20th century Northumbrian smallpipe by Pauline Cato (audio clip)

Northumbrian smallpipe, bellows blown, pitched in F, featuring a chanter fitted with seven metal keys. Keyed chanters allow players to perform a wide variety of music, with chanters of up to 17 keys allowing a full chromatic scale over two octaves. Complex tuning arrangements are also made possible by the use of up to five drones, with a switch mechanism on the drone stock enabling rapid key changes.

The tune The Carrick Hornpipe, was composed by the Northumbrian piper Billy Pigg, born in Dilston Park in 1902. It is characteristic of modern tunes composed for the Northumbrian smallpipe, making full use of the keys and the staccato fingering style.

Small pipes are a small version of the bagpipe which has been made and played in Scotland but which has been most familiar in Britain in the form of the Northumbrian Pipes, a small, bellows-blown instrument with a keyed chanter and variable drone accompaniment. Both Northumbrian Pipes and the Scottish small pipes probably derive from a Continental bellows-blown bagpipe developed by wind-instrument makers in European cities in the 17th century for chamber music and operatic performance by professional musicians. Known as the musette in France, it became a fashionable instrument in the late 17th and 18th centuries for court and drawing room recital.

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