At some point, it was found that if a tongue was cut a little towards or away from one of the knots or natural nodes of a straw, and the player inserted the straw to the full length into his mouth and blew, a sound of superior quality could be produced. 3), which is of special use in bagpipe drone(s), was a slightly more complicated invention since a knife blade was necessary. The earliest specimens of such reed-sounded pipes have been found in excavated tombs in Babylonia and Egypt. These two blades vibrate under the pressure of the breath and produce sound. This first experiment became the principle of the double reed since the straw naturally produces two flattened surfaces or "blades" (fig. Someone discovered that it was possible to produce a musical sound by pinching the flat end of a straw or plant-stalk and blowing into it with compressed lips.
It is likely that the basic means of producing the sound in the pipes and reed is a discovery belonging to prehistory. Illustration to Cantiga 260 from the Cantigas de Santa Maria by Alfonso X"El Sabio" (1221–1284). Two bagpipe players from the early Middle Ages. The "chanter" is a cylindrical or conical bored pipe with a single or double reed and finger holes for playing the melody while a drone is a cylindrical tube with a single reed producing a constant bourdon tone. It may also be blown by mouth through a blowpipe, intended for outdoor use as the sound is louder, well-known from the famous Scottish Great Highland bagpipe. Its commonest form consists of a "chanter," one or more drones all supplied with air from the bag, either by means of a bellow compressed under the player's arm to provide a constant pressure as it is practiced with the musette de cour, or the Irish Uilleann pipe, producing a more delicate sound). As a wind instrument, the bagpipe belongs to the class of aerophones (whose sound is produced primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes), where it is specified as a composite reed pipe.