A free Mac app that plays your bagpipe tune files out loud — no pipes, no practice chanter, no other app required.
If you've got tunes saved from Bagpipe Music Writer, Bagpipe Musicworks Gold, Bagpipe Reader, Ensemble, or any notation program that can export MusicXML, PipePlayer opens them and plays them back with real grace notes, doublings, throws, and the rest of Highland piping's ornamentation — not a flattened, robotic version of the tune.
Tune collections pile up as files — .bww, .bmw, .abc, .musicxml — and
most of them are silent until you sit down with pipes or a chanter and work
them out. PipePlayer just plays them, so you can hear a tune before you
learn it, check a transcription for mistakes, or send someone a recording
without picking up an instrument.
- Opens ABC, BWW/BMW, and MusicXML tune files (
.abc,.bww,.bmw,.musicxml,.xml,.mxl) — the common formats Highland piping software actually saves in - Plays the ornamentation properly. Doublings, throws, grips, taorluath, birl, strikes, crunluath — the grace notes that make a tune sound like piping and not a music box — are expanded from a real reference table, not guessed at
- Multiple tunes open at once, each in its own tab, each independent — switch between them freely, and starting one stops whichever other tab was playing, so you're never listening to two at once by accident
- A real transport: play, pause, seek, adjustable tempo and volume, looping, and an optional continuous drone underneath the melody
- Harmony arrangements (a MusicXML file with a melody and one or more harmony parts) play together, with a mute checkbox per part so you can solo or drop any of them
- Export to an audio file (WAV, AAC, or MP4) using whatever instrument and settings you've got dialed in — share a tune as a real audio file, no screen recording required
- Choose the sound: Apple's built-in instrument bank, any SoundFont file you supply, or any other virtual instrument installed on your Mac
- Send MIDI to another app — PipePlayer can act as a MIDI source for a DAW, notation program, or hardware synth, playing along in exact sync
Download the latest build from the
Releases page and
drag PipePlayer.app into your Applications folder.
Since this isn't distributed through the Mac App Store, the first time you open it macOS will warn you it's from an unidentified developer. Right-click (or Control-click) the app and choose Open — you'll only need to do this once.
Open a tune file (File → Open…, or just drag it onto the window) and press play. From there:
- The bar across the top shows each part of the tune and highlights where you are — click any part to jump straight to it
- Drag the tempo, volume, and other controls to taste; none of it affects the file itself, just how it plays back
- Open another tune in a new tab (File → New Window) to compare two arrangements, or queue up a set
- When it sounds the way you want, use the export button (⬆) to save it as an audio file
PipePlayer doesn't collect or send anything anywhere. It reads the file you open and plays it through your Mac's speakers — that's it. No account, no analytics, no network access. The only thing it remembers between launches is your recent-files list, kept entirely on your own machine.
Building from source, the parser/playback internals, and notes on how specific file-format quirks are handled all live in DEVELOPMENT.md.
MIT — see LICENSE.