Why I Invented the InTune Mic (And How It Became a Bestseller)
by Jori Chisholm, Founder of BagpipeLessons.com
Last Updated: February 11, 2026
Bagpipes are loud, and when your drones aren’t locked and your chanter is screaming, everyone can hear it. The difference between glorious and painful can be tiny pitch adjustments, but consistently getting a great sound is one of piping’s biggest challenges.
In this video, I explain why tuning is so frustrating for so many pipers, and how to fix it with a simple setup that works with the smartphone you already have.
How the InTune Mic Helps:
- Tune each drone individually with stable readings.
- Tune your chanter notes accurately using any tuner app you like.
- Tune yourself at band practice, competitions, workshops, and Highland Games.
- Retune fast on the fly without making a big fuss.
- Build real tuning independence and develop your ear over time.
- Save band rehearsal time so you can spend more time actually playing.
Watch the video below.
Read the full video transcript below.
Video Transcript: Hey everybody, Jori Chisholm here. You already know the difference between when your bagpipe is in tune and when it’s out of tune. And so does everybody else who hears you. Bagpipes are loud, usually over 90 dB. Can be as loud as a motorcycle. So there’s nowhere to hide when your drones aren’t locked and your chanter is screaming. The difference between glorious and painful can be tiny pitch adjustments that everyone can hear. And yet, consistently achieving a great sound remains one of piping’s biggest challenges. Today, I’m going to tell you why that is and how you can solve it.
I’ve been playing bagpipes and teaching for over 30 years, thousands of students around the world of all different levels, and I hear some of the same frustrations again and again. Let’s talk about them and see if you recognize yourself in some of these examples.
The four sounds problem. Unlike a guitar that you can tune string by string or a trumpet that produces one note at a time, bagpipes produce four sounds at the same time. You have the bass drone, two tenor drones, and the chanter.
Standard tuners and tuner apps can’t handle this. They get confused by all the different sounds and either give a terrible reading or jump erratically between the different pitches or they show average readings. That means nothing.
Let’s talk about the one inch problem. To get an accurate reading on a single drone, the microphone needs to be within about one inch of the sound source. That’s right at the top of the drones. Your drone tops are way above your shoulder height behind your head.
Now, try this. Hold your phone so its microphone is just one inch from the top of your tenor drone while playing your pipes, trying to maintain steady blowing pressure, reading the screen so you can see what it’s doing, and then adjusting the drone with your other hand. It’s impossible. You don’t have eyes on the back of your head, and you don’t have three arms.
The background noise problem. What about when there’s all these other sounds going on like at the Highland games or at band practice? Your phone’s mic will pick up all the sounds from the room, different sounds from other pipers, other drones, your drones. So, you got to get that microphone right up next to the sound that you’re trying to tune.
And here’s a problem almost nobody talks about, the rush problem. When you’re tuning your bagpipes, you usually need to be in tune right now before the competition starts, before the band steps off, before you run out of time at practice. You need to be able to get your pipes in tune correctly and fast when the clock is ticking and the pressure is on.
Let’s talk about the band practice problem. Traditional band tuning means one person with good ears, usually the pipe major, goes down the line tuning player by player while everyone waits or plays in the circle. Or sometimes the pipe major will do one-on-ones and then you risk humiliation when your pipes sound worse than everyone else around you. Or the pipe major says someone’s D is flat and you wonder if it’s you. And here’s the thing, if you’re always getting tuned up by somebody else, you never develop the skill to tune yourself. You stay dependent.
Let’s talk about the smartphone paradox. This is the part that drives me crazy. In your pocket, you’ve got one of the most powerful tuning devices ever created. It’s your smartphone with these amazing precision tuner apps. Professional musicians would have killed for these apps 20 years ago. Apps like the Braw Tuner are designed specifically for bagpipes, which allow you to get your drones and every note of your chanter perfectly in tune. These apps are incredible.
The problem is the phone’s microphone. When you hold your phone up, unless it’s really close to your drones, it’s going to be picking up all four sounds at once. The readings jump around. Background noise makes it worse. Unless you can use the tuner with your phone’s microphone right next to the top of your drone or right next to your chanter, the mic is going to pick up all the sounds from your pipes and all the sounds from everybody else, including background noise. The tuner and the phone have the technology. It just doesn’t work for our instrument.
So, a lot of pipers will just give up on using their apps. They develop their ear as best as they can. They guess, they settle for good enough, or they give up. But deep down, you know your pipes can sound better. You’ve heard recordings of pipers with perfectly tuned pipes. You know the difference.
After all these years of teaching and playing, I have heard what pipers are thinking, but rarely say out loud. Stuff like, “I’ve been playing for years and I still am not confident tuning my pipes properly. Maybe I just don’t have the ear for it.” Or, “I’m always the one holding up the band.” Or, “When I strike in, part of me is listening and worrying and wondering if my pipe is actually going to be in tune.” I’ve heard students say, “Tuning is like a mental block. I can never fully relax into the music because I’m always worried and listening to how my pipes sound.”
So when tuning is frustrating and confusing, it’s not fun to play. Everybody knows that we play better and we enjoy playing and our audience enjoys it so much more when our pipes sound great, feel great, are easy to tune and stay in tune. When our pipes don’t sound great, we get nervous, we get anxious, we get stressed, and the joy of playing the bagpipes is lost.
So I have felt this frustration for years myself.
I’ve seen my students and other pipers everywhere trying to figure out how can I get my pipes in tune fast at when I need to using either my ear or technology to help. We know that the technology exists on our phone. The apps are great and the phone is powerful. The challenge is how can we get the sound from each individual drone and the chanter into the phone without everything else confusing the tuner and ruining the whole process. That’s when I decided to build a solution that is now available to everybody. And this is the InTune Mic. It’s the world’s first wireless clip-on instrument microphone designed specifically for smartphones and bagpipes.
Here’s how it works. This tiny little microphone with a clip you can attach directly to your drone so you can tune your drones individually.
There it is. And the mic connects wirelessly to your phone so you can use any single app. There’s a little receiver that plugs into your phone. It comes in Lightning if you have the iPhone or USB-C for the newer iPhones and for Androids and for computers and iPads and everything else. The mic transmits the sound from just that drone to the receiver into your phone app. So the app is listening to just that sound and you can just move it from one to the other. It also works for the chanter.
You can use it with your phone, you can use it with your iPad, your tablet or even your computer. You can have your phone on the desk. You can have it on a chair. You can have it on a table. Have it on your music stand. You can use my Piper’s Advantage Bagpipe Phone Mount and attach it right to your blowpipe. So, what you’re going to see is the tuner is going to give you a rock-solid reading of that drone or that chanter note. The mic isolates the specific sound it’s attached to and ignores everything else. Just imagine that your ear was half an inch from that drone. That’s all that you’re going to hear. Your tuner app finally gets that clean isolated sound signal that it needs. Perfect isolation.
I have another video on my YouTube channel where I get all three drones in tune with the InTune Mic in under 60 seconds. It works with any tuner app you already have on your phone. The apps are exactly the same, but with the InTune Mic, they just work how you want them to work.
So, this is what you’re going to get. You’re going to get the InTune Mic wireless microphone. You pick the receiver that you want, either USB-C or Lightning. I also have a dual option. If you have multiple devices, you can get both. Comes with a USB-C charging cable. Has a cute little carrying case that you can keep everything in here. Also comes with my secrets of drone tuning online course and my PDF guide, Unleash the Power of Apps. Apps that every bagpiper should have. It’s ultra light. It weighs less than an ounce. It uses a 2.4 gigahertz wireless signal with no latency. And it’s got over six hours of battery life on a single charge. It’s plug-and-play. There’s no Bluetooth. There’s no setup. There’s nothing you need to do. Plug the receiver into your phone, turn on the mic, they pair, and you are in business.
The InTune Mic is an amazing tool which will let you get your bagpipes in tune quickly, correctly, with confidence in any situation, but it’s also going to help you learn how to tune your pipes better. You’re going to develop that ear for knowing when your pipes are really in tune and knowing if those notes are sharp or flat. It’s really going to help you develop that ear to allow you to be able to tune your pipes yourself when you need to.
So, this is what you’re going to experience when you get the InTune Mic. Independence. You don’t need to wait for your pipe major or your instructor or be running around at the Highland games to find somebody who can tune you. You’ve got your phone. You’ve got your InTune Mic.
You can tune yourself quickly, accurately on your own.
Speed. What used to take minutes of frustration, now you can get down to 3 minutes, 2 minutes, maybe even one minute. All three drones locked in.
Precision. You’re not guessing anymore. You can see exactly where each drone is. You can see exactly where every note on your chanter is. And the visual confirmation replaces uncertainty.
Confidence. No worrying about are my pipes in tune? Am I at the right pitch for band practice? Am I going to be able to get my pipes in tune in time for my performance or competition? Finally, you can relax and focus on your performance.
And what about the band? When every player can tune themselves up, rehearsal time spent on tuning can be used for actual playing, working on tunes, music, and ensemble and performance. Your pipe major can spend less time setting up the band and can focus on musicality, teaching, and unison. You won’t be the one holding things up. You arrive, you get your pipes in tune. You can retune if you need to and make little adjustments on the fly with your InTune Mic and your phone without making a big fuss.
So, I’ll tell you, everywhere I go now to the Highland games, to competitions, workshops, I see pipers using the InTune Mic clipped to their drones and their chanter. It’s become one of my bestselling products faster than I ever expected. And the reason is simple. The problem is real. The frustration of bagpipe tuning is universal. And finally, there’s a solution that works for this amazing, powerful piece of technology, your smartphone. It was always capable of precision bagpipe tuning. The InTune Mic is the missing piece that finally unlocks that full potential.
So, if you’re still fighting to get your pipes in tune and you have a smartphone and you want to unleash that power for precision tuning, this is a tool you need. It’s going to change everything.
InTuneMic.com, or you can visit the BagpipeLessons.com shop for the InTune Mic and all my other great products like Tone Protectors, Bagpipe Gauges, and more at BagpipeLessons.com/shop.
If you’ve got an InTune Mic and you love it, post it in the comments below. If you’re interested in getting an InTune Mic, go to InTuneMic.com.
Thanks for watching. See you next time and happy piping.
