The main focus on this article is the development of chromatic keywork on shawms as well as development of a choir like family of each of the instruments. These innovations tend to come in tandem with one another and have been developments over the last 100 years. A lot of the instruments discussed here have analogs with the Bassoon and Oboe. The begs an interesting question of what exactly is the score of a shawm.

There is a bit of a slippery slope when defining what a shawm is. The most restrictive definition is any double reed, conical instrument where the players lips touch the reed, that evolved over time and cultures from the instrument called the shawm. Because of the nature of cultural influence, we dont really know if any one conical double reed instrument directly evolved from the shawm of if there might have been some kind of common ancester instrument. What we do know is that many of these instruments resemble one another in aesthetics, mechanical function and timbre. Each of the examples here also vary from one another in character in both subtle and dramatic ways. I take a looser approach to the definition of the shawm to include any linear double reed instrument where the players lips touch the reed. This includes any instruments that are cones or also cylindrical. I will refer to true shawms (the ones that meet the more restrictive definition as true shawms or conical shawms) and instruments that fit the looser definition as cylindrical shawms.

Both of these are related instruments from Catalonia

Tudual Hervieux has single highhandedly invented the Chromatic Bombard in 2020

Also called the Piccolo Oboe or Oboe Musette, these shawms are typically high pitch, in the key of Eb, F or even G above the oboe. The Musette was popular in the 1800s-mid 1990s France and United Kingdom.

In the 1800s to mid 1990s the Tárogató was a conical double reed instrument.

Experiments in chromatic suonas seem to have started in the 1960 with musicians associated with the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra pushing to make innovative new versions of traditional Chinese instruments. The chromatic suona comes in a number of pitch ranges with Sopranino-Bass being the typical range found today