The gemara (Eirukhin 10b-11a) describes the magreifah, one of the musical instruments in the Beis haMiqdash, which in Biblical Hebrew is either the minnim or the ugav. Shemuel describes it as a box about 1 ammah square with a board extending from one side (for keys? to work bellows?), and 10 tubes coming out the top. Each pipe had 10 holes allowing for 100 sounds. A beraisa (meaning: before Shmuel, a first generation amora) says 1,000 sounds. In the Yerushalmi’s version (Sukkah 25a), Rav argues with Shemuel and one of them says (judging from the Bavli, I would conclude Rav) there were 100 pipes and that both say it could make 1,000 sounds, although the Yerushalmi calls them “minei zemer — distinct chords”. While this is often taken as hyperbole, I would note that 10 pipes, each of which having only one hole that can be covered to turn it off, would allow for 1,024 combinations. So 1,000 distinct chords coming from Rav’s 100 pipes  would be a gross understatement for 10 pipes with 10 holes each, not an exaggeration. Maybe around 1,000 are “zemer” rather than considered just noise.

There is another utensil used in the Beis haMiqdash called a magrefah; it is a shovel (Rashi ad loc) used to tend the coals. So I picture the pipes together, like a pipe organ’s, thus giving the instrument its name. Similarly, those who translate the coal-tending magrefah is a rake would probably assume the pipes fanned out, bagpipe-like.

Guesswork by the Church trying to reproduce the music of the Temple and therefore to copy the magrefah led to the pipe-organ. But it sounds more like some kind of combination of accordion (a box) and a bagpipe (multiple pipes). Although (unlike the pipe-organ) both have reeds, and there is no reason to believe the instrument had reeds rather than the purer tones (in the sense of fewer harmonics — think flute rather than oboe) of blowing air across the pipe itself.

In much of the music written for pipe-organ, long stretches contain a “pedal point”. Wikipedia’s explanation of a pedal point is that it

is sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign, i.e., dissonant harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes functions as a “non-chord tone”…

Here’s their example of a pedal point in organ music

On the other hand, if we look at the size of the magrefah, the Oxford History of Music says there is a sculpture of bagpipes on a Hittite slab, dating to around 1,000 BCE. Nero ^y”sh played one, according to Suetonius. So that too is plausible, although it’s shape suggests more bellows than a bag. And like the pedal-point, the bagpipe has drones. To again rely on wiki for a definition of drone, it is

a pipe which is generally not fingered but rather produces a constant harmonizing note throughout play.

The prolonged deep note, because it doesn’t change, ends up fading out of conscious attention, unless you’re reading a post like this one and made to think about it. But it adds weight to what you’re hearing. The base vibrates in your bones and reinforces the feeling of full immersion in the music.

Like these successor instruments, the magrefa was likely played with a pedal point or drones, as otherwise the player had to work 10 different pipes and the air pumping system simultaneously. Aside from the archeological evidence that drones were part of bagpipe-like instruments of the era as well.

All of which is a prelude to the following metaphor…

First to quote Rav Avraham Elya Kaplan^zt”l, in the title essay of Be’iqvos haYir’ah (translation from an article by R’ Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer; discussed at more length and compared to the Ramchal’s position here):

To what may yir’ah be likened? To the tremor of fear which a father feels when his beloved young son rides his shoulders as he dances with him and rejoices before him, taking care that he not fall off. Here there is joy that is incomparable, pleasure that is incomparable. And the fear tied up with them is pleasant too. It does not impede the freedom of dance… It passes through them like a spinal column that straightens and strengthens. And it envelops them like a modest frame that lends grace and pleasantness… It is clear to the father that his son is riding securely upon him and will not fall back, for he constantly remembers him, not for a moment does he forget him. His son’s every movement, even the smallest, he feels, and he ensures that his son will not sway from his place, nor incline sideways – his heart is, therefore, sure, and he dances and rejoices. If a person is sure that the “bundle” of his life’s meaning is safely held high by the shoulders of his awareness, he knows that this bundle will not fall backwards, he will not forget it for a moment, he will remember it constantly, with yir’ah he will safe keep it. If every moment he checks it – then his heart is confident, and he dances and rejoices…

When the Torah was given to Israel solemnity and joy came down bundled together. They are fused together and cannot be separated. That is the secret of “gil be’re’ada” (joy in trembling) mentioned in Tehillim. Dance and judgment, song and law became partners with each other… Indeed, this is the balance… A rod of noble yir’ah passes through the rings of joy… {It is clear from the original Hebrew that this is a reference to the rods that held the boards together to make the walls of the Tabernacle. -mi} [It is] the inner rod embedded deep in an individual’s soul that connects end to end, it links complete joy in this world (eating, drinking and gift giving) to that which is beyond this world (remembering the [inevitable] day of death) to graft one upon the other so to produce eternal fruit.

Yir’ah is the pedal-point of the shirah of life. As we say every  morning, “הַלְלוּהוּ בְּתֹף וּמָחוֹל;    הַלְלוּהוּ, בְּמִנִּים וְעֻגָב — Praise Him with drum and machol, praise Him with minim and ugav!” (Tehillim 150:4; said in Pesuqei deZimra) The pedal-point of yir’ah does not get in the way of the joy of the music, but to add the necessary gravitas to the song that pushes us to feel its importance.