Northumbrian smallpipe
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The Northumbrian smallpipe is a bellows-blown bagpipe used primarily in Northumberland, a county in northeastern England bordering with Scotland. It shares the unusual characteristic, along with the Uilleann pipes, of being able to stop the sound of the chanter. This is done by giving the chanter a completely closed end. This combined with the unusually tight fingering (each note is played by lifting only one finger) means that much Northumbrian piping tends to be very staccato in style. The chanter has a number of keys, most commonly seven, but chanters with a two octave range can be made which require seventeen keys, all played with either the right hand thumb and left hand pinkie. There is no overblowing to get this two octave range, due to the cylindrical bore, the keys are integral, along with the length of the chanter, to obtain the two octaves. The original (18th century) short keyless chanters only had the range of one octave. In practice, few players find they require anything more complex than the seven key chanter.
Traditionally, the chanter is pitched in what Northumbrian pipers refer to as F+, a pitch approximately twenty cents sharp of F natural. The music, however, is always written in G. Nowadays, chanters are available anywhere from D to G, G and true F natural being the most popular for playing ensemble. There are usually four drones on the Northumbrian pipes, which can be tuned to several different combinations of pitch for playing in different keys.