Editing Border pipes (section)

=== Stylistic features ===
These tunes display several features distinguishing them from music for fiddle, Northumbrian pipes and Highland pipes. The nine-note modal scale, usually mixolydian, with a compass from the subtonic up to the high tonic, separates them clearly from most fiddle and smallpipe tunes. In particular, the interval of an augmented fourth, difficult on the fiddle, is much more common in these tunes. The compass of fiddle tunes is generally wider, while the older smallpipe tunes have an eight-note range from the tonic up to an octave higher. One complication is the long tradition in Scotland of writing tunes to be played on the fiddle, but 'in bagpipe style', often with the strings retuned to imitate drones; 18th century examples of these can fit well on Border pipes, and may well have been intended as imitations of this instrument.

Further, an important difference between the music of the Border pipes and of the [[Great Highland bagpipe]] is that many melodic figures in older Border pipe music typically move stepwise or in thirds rather than by wide intervals, and lack the multiple repeated notes found in many Highland pipe tunes. This suggests that in contrast to the Highland pipes, Border pipe music neither needed, nor greatly used, the complex graces which are so characteristic of Highland pipe music. The four specifically named pipe tunes from Skene's manuscript contain complex written-out gracings, and many more repeated notes than the Dixon tunes, so it is reasonable to conclude that playing styles in the 18th century varied from place to place. Modern attempts to reconstruct a musically valid playing style for Border music such as the Dixon tunes have been very successful, and several respected pipers play in such styles.<ref>[Matt Seattle Article on Border Piping] {{Cite web |url=http://pipersgathering.org/PB2002.shtml |title=The Pipers' Gathering - North America's most comprehensive alternative bagpipe event |access-date=January 27, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090503165944/http://pipersgathering.org/PB2002.shtml |archive-date=May 3, 2009 |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref>
These are characterised by simple gracings, used sparingly, mostly either for rhythmic emphasis or to separate repeated notes.