page_title: Duda
section_title: Features
hierarchical_section_title: Duda / Features
caption_attribution_description: Duda, hungarian bagpipe
context_page_description: The Hungarian duda is the traditional bagpipe of Hungary. It is an example of a group of bagpipes called Medio-Carparthian bagpipes.
  Accounts are conflicting regarding the exact form of the Hungarian bagpipe. Cocks describes it as similar to the Bulgarian one which has a chanter and a bass drone but no tenor drone. Baines gives Hungary as one of the countries possessing the duda, which has this construction, also a Hungarian bagpipe with a diple chanter, one bore of which gives a variable drone, the bag pipe having a bass drone in addition. Robert Bright in Travels through Lower Hungary, quoted by Flood, describes the Hungarian bagpipe as having two drones and a chanter of square section. Fraser has a picture of a Hungarian bagpipe with one chanter and one drone of medium length, probably a bass drone. It seems possible that all these forms of the instrument may be in use.
context_section_description: The most characteristic feature of the magyar duda is the double-bored chanter. One chanter bore, the dallamsíp ("melody pipe"), plays the melody within an octave range. The second chanter, the kontrasíp or kontra ("contra pipe") has a single finger hole and sounds either the lowest note on the melody pipe or drops to the dominant (i.e., on a pipe in A it sounds either A or E).
  Hungarian piping is characterized by use of the kontra to provide rhythmic accompaniment and to vary the drone sound. The melody pipe has a "flea hole", a common feature in Eastern bagpipes: the top hole on the chanter is very small and uncovering it raises the pitch of any other note by approximately a semitone, making the Hungarian pipe largely chromatic over its range (it lacks a major seventh). In some historic examples, the magyar duda was tuned with a neutral (i.e., between the major and the minor in pitch) third and sixth and the flea hole was filled in with wax.
  There is considerable variation in physical appearance of the duda in Hungary, but the most common form has a chanter stock in the form of an animal’s head (usually that of a goat-like animal) and a cow horn bell on both the kontra and the drone. Historically the bag was often made from dog skin (leading to a popular song that stated that prospective bagpipers needed to “go to hell because that’s where the big dogs are from which good bagpipes can be made”), but today goat skin is a much more common material.
caption: The chanter of a magyar duda. Note the double chanter and the carved animal head stock. The single finger hole of the kontra pipe is hidden behind the cow-horn chanter bell
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