Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

hey everyone.. im looking for a new instrument.. currently i play piano, guitar, and bagpipes.. problem is none of them really fit.. piano i play most, however theyre not exactly portable.. and considering mines a digital grand and much smaller than an actual piano, its still pretty big

that said, im looking to expand what im able to play.. and im looking for something a bit different than what most people i know usually play.. so ive been looking into woodwinds and free reed aerophhones

so what i THINK i may have narrowed it down to is saxophones and the chromatic button style accordian.. as for the accordian, ive heard this played with just the melody side with other instruments and it actually sounded really good.. its one of those instruments that tries to add its own harmony to it, intended to basically just be the sole-instrument, but they can be easily played with others and they sound pretty interesting.. also reed-tweeks allow them to sound pretty different

and even though the chromatic buttons are different from keys, the learning curve going from piano to that is still really short and theyre more compact than piano-accordions

and with the sax, theyre not commonly used in any of the music i listen to, but theyre versatile enough to able to be played in just about anything and a lot of available support and resources for learning them

basically, im looking for something i can carry wherever i go, something that can be played seating or standing.. i would prefer something a bit simpler in design but i guess thats well out the window with the complexity of keyed woodwinds and aerophones

im open to just about any suggestion for my next instrument.. but it definitely needs to have atleast two full octaves on the chromatic scale.. i like the ability to play anything i like off sheet music

i wouldnt mind being able to have more of that bagpipe sound.. but the only bagpipes capable of playing 2+ chromatic octaves are the uilleann pipes and those cost way too much to get into and are only played seated.. oboes are very similar to bagpipes but the keys give them way too clean of a sound

so im open to any suggestions at this point

It really depends on the type of music you are playing - look at Mumford and Sons adapting a bluegrass style to current indie/alt tunes and using the traditional bluegrass banjo.

Have you looked at a MIDI wind controller? Bring a laptop or iPad loaded with some virtual instruments, and an output cable to plug into an amp and you;ve got a world of sounds possible.

ive actually thought about a midi wind controller.. i read they have adjustable finger patterns too so they can be used as a trainer for multiple woodwind instruments

i used to build stringed instruments until i damaged my neck (i can only look about 45 degrees in any direction until my neck hurts).. so i dont do that anymore, but i still have the skills and tools.. i enjoy building things myself, working on instruments, etc

so.. i actually thought about getting an old used sax.. stripping it down to the bare body, giving it a thorough cleaning and maybe even electro-plate it or treat it to give in a new look, and then take my time putting the keys back on, cleaning, polishing, making sure they dont stick or leak.. and rebuild one and then learn on it

but ive been doing some more research into reed instruments, im not new to reed instruments, my bagpipes are double-reed and i know with reed instruments if you blow too hard they just stop making a sound.. overblowing doesnt work and therefor they need a key to be added to change octaves.. i believe these keys though are a valve to open up air past the reed, to essentially over-blow the instrument AFTER the reed

this is all opposed to flutes which do not use reeds and can simply be overblown to change octaves making the pennywhistle probably the simplest musical instrument capable of two or more full octaves

but.. i like the sound of reed instruments and in my study of reed instruments and how they work.. i think i could make a single-octave reed instrument of my choosing for REALLY cheap.. and use it as a trainer.. a practice instrument to learn the finger pattern and blowing/mouth techniques associated with that instrument before buying a more expensive instrument

thing is.. i like the sound of bagpipes, and the closest related instrument in modern music thats not bagpipes, is the oboe, however the oboe with its keys, and exposed reed mouth piece sounds nothing like a bagpipe.. so what im wondering is if i could make an instrument similar to an oboe capable of the 2+ octaves but retain the sound bagpipes make.. like a bagpipe practice chanter with the range of the oboe.. it would require atleast some keys to be added in the final instrument for octave changing.. but its something i may be willing to experiment with.. so if i cant find one i REALLY like, perhaps i can make one

anyway. so much relies on HOW you blow into it or things you do with the reed to just use a midi controller as a device to learn such an instrument.. but there are ways i can make a cheaper practice instrument for reed instruments as stated above

for the free-reed aerophones.. i mean. since i already play piano i could probably pick up a piano accordian and play it now.. but those are the really big ones.. i bet i could get a chromatic button midi controller though where i can learn chords and music for the chromatic button accordians for fairly cheap using my computer to make the actual sounds and perhaps at some point make a midi-based instrument with its own built in midi processor.. so yeah, i guess there are cheap ways to learn these instruments if someone wants to be creative

i used to play w a tenor/alto sax guy who still occaionally sits in w PLANET JAZZ from time to time. he's a good player and he also has an EWI (electronic wind instrument) midi controller. he'd do some cool things w it but it would also get away from him from time to time. whether that was the instrument or operator error...i can't say.

of course michael brecker was pretty killer when he picked his up. then again he likely killed just as well on an ocarina or kazoo.


perhaps as another instrument you might consider one of these:

Planetguy wrote:i used to play w a tenor/alto sax guy who still occaionally sits in w PLANET JAZZ from time to time. he's a good player and he also has an EWI (electronic wind instrument) midi controller. he'd do some cool things w it but it would also get away from him from time to time. whether that was the instrument or operator error...i can't say.

of course michael brecker was pretty killer when he picked his up. then again he likely killed just as well on an ocarina or kazoo.


perhaps as another instrument you might consider one of these:

I hear that one is hard to play unless you have the ears for it!

The Sheng would certainly be a fine choice!

http://youtu.be/nn45L7Sebjw

i've got a sheng that i've never been able to do anything but honk on. and so it resides as a knick knack on the mantle above our fireplace.

the first time my sister-in-law saw it there she asked..."do you think it's a good idea to leave a bong out on display like that?". yes....she was serious.

VinnyViolin wrote:

Planetguy wrote:i used to play w a tenor/alto sax guy who still occaionally sits in w PLANET JAZZ from time to time. he's a good player and he also has an EWI (electronic wind instrument) midi controller. he'd do some cool things w it but it would also get away from him from time to time. whether that was the instrument or operator error...i can't say.

of course michael brecker was pretty killer when he picked his up. then again he likely killed just as well on an ocarina or kazoo.


perhaps as another instrument you might consider one of these:

I hear that one is hard to play unless you have the ears for it!

LOL.

yeah, ya need what jazzers refer to as "big ears" . i also understand you need to hold it kinda loose, never in a death grip.

Planetguy wrote:i've got a sheng that i've never been able to do anything but honk on. and so it resides as a knick knack on the mantle above our fireplace.

the first time my sister-in-law saw it there she asked..."do you think it's a good idea to leave a bong out on display like that?". yes....she was serious.

I have a Turkish Tulum that often gets mistaken for a big hash-pipe.

Panpipe. A suprisingly useful instrument that works with a variety of music styles. I did a few recordings with one many years ago and they were well received.

http://www.amazon.com/Pan-Flute-Ramos-M ... 25&sr=1-12

Thejohnny7band wrote:Panpipe. A suprisingly useful instrument that works with a variety of music styles. I did a few recordings with one many years ago and they were well received.

http://www.amazon.com/Pan-Flute-Ramos-M ... 25&sr=1-12

But where are the electric panpipes? I want to put a fuzzbox and a flanger on it!
There are always Ecuadorian vendors at the local county fairs selling panpipes and other 3rd World-made trinkets. they pay along with prerecorded tracks, but the bes tones have panpipes in differnet sizes to make different octaves.

GuitarMikeB wrote:

Thejohnny7band wrote:Panpipe. A suprisingly useful instrument that works with a variety of music styles. I did a few recordings with one many years ago and they were well received.

http://www.amazon.com/Pan-Flute-Ramos-M ... 25&sr=1-12

But where are the electric panpipes? I want to put a fuzzbox and a flanger on it!
There are always Ecuadorian vendors at the local county fairs selling panpipes and other 3rd World-made trinkets. they pay along with prerecorded tracks, but the bes tones have panpipes in differnet sizes to make different octaves.

i dont think making electric panpipes would be all that difficult.. different length tubes cut to make different sounds, just blow into the pipe to make the sound you want.. if i were to make electric panpipes id put a piezo in the bottom with a relief hole drilled in the side to let air pressure out.. then when you blow into it the air pressure will register with the piezo, be converted into an electrical signal and then fed through an effects processor, amp, etc

another way would be to make a midi controller out of one.. when you blow itll blow a valve open and break an electrical contact inside that shorts the signal, so when air is flowing through, its opened and the signal goes to a midi processor.. obviously each pipe would set off a different midi key.. simple really

ive even made optical guitar pickups before that used lasers to detect the string vibration and convert it into an electrical signal as well.. you can do many interesting things when you know the engineering behind these instruments and just enough about electronics to understand how to make MIDI controllers or electrify other instruments.. id say a 12 pipe panpipe with the piezos in there could also be over-blown for higher octaves giving you an instrument capable of playing chromatic scales directly off of sheet music

heck.. i could easily make a MIDI controller on a piece of PVC pipe with metal screws acting as capacitive touch-sensors that i could program to the finger-patterns of ANY woodwind instrument i wanted.. or even better, use a piezo or a lazer/photo-diode to detect the noises coming off the reed for an analog electrical signal (like what an electric guitar pickup generates) thats true to the sound of the instrument and use the finger positions to simply change the pitch of that analog sound for a more naturally sounding electrical woodwind instrument

then you could use things like growls and other effects youd use on a reed instrument.. heck, all id need to do is modify a sax or clarinet mouth piece to detect the reed vibration and slap that onto a piece of PVC thatll hold the touch sensors.. then you could use it to learn fingering positions, entire songs, and how to work the reed so youd be able to pick up a saxophone and literally within maybe an hour long learning curve be able to take everything youve learned and apply it to an actual instrument

so.. basically i can learn any woodwind or keyed instrument i want for dirt cheap with just a little ingenuity and creativity before paying out for the real instrument, having to keep it cleaned, in tuned, and all the maintenance that goes with modern woodwinds and better yet it would be perfectly silent.. but the question is.. which instrument do i want to learn next?.. sax?. maybe, clarinet? possibly.. chromatic-button accordian.. its my leading choice, or just put some work into designing my own that sounds like bagpipes but can be played like a clarinet or oboe.

im fairly certain that "pop" you get when you sound a bagpipe note is due to using your fingers directly on the sound holes.. no keys to clean it up or neuter the character of the instrument.. question is, can you achieve 12 notes without keys.. of course using one key to change airflow for a post-reed overblow effect.. i wonder if you used the fingering of an 8-hole irish flute or pennywhistle with octave key would work?

justin567070 wrote:

GuitarMikeB wrote:

Thejohnny7band wrote:Panpipe. A suprisingly useful instrument that works with a variety of music styles. I did a few recordings with one many years ago and they were well received.

http://www.amazon.com/Pan-Flute-Ramos-M ... 25&sr=1-12

But where are the electric panpipes? I want to put a fuzzbox and a flanger on it!
There are always Ecuadorian vendors at the local county fairs selling panpipes and other 3rd World-made trinkets. they pay along with prerecorded tracks, but the bes tones have panpipes in differnet sizes to make different octaves.

i dont think making electric panpipes would be all that difficult.. different length tubes cut to make different sounds, just blow into the pipe to make the sound you want.. if i were to make electric panpipes id put a piezo in the bottom with a relief hole drilled in the side to let air pressure out.. then when you blow into it the air pressure will register with the piezo, be converted into an electrical signal and then fed through an effects processor, amp, etc

The vibration of the air column in a flute/panpipe etc. does not transfer very much vibration to the walls of the tube, not nearly enough to get a good signal from a piezo element. So I doubt piezos would work very well on panpipes, or flutes in general. If you could source a piezo with that much sensitivity, then the vibrations made by handling the instrument would overwhelm any vibration that the air column could transfer to the walls of the tube. It would be more of an amplified percussion instrument.

I don't think an optical pickup would work for panpipes or flute either ... unless maybe you were a very heavy smoker.

If a sensor is available that can register the frequency of motion (or variations of density) of the air molecules, that might have brighter prospects. Barcus - Berry makes a flute microphone that has a small condenser mic element that mounts behind a small Mylar diaphragm on the inside of the flute bore.

An optical pickup could work very well with a reed instrument like harmonica or sax etc. where a vibrating reed could modulate the of light seen by the optical sensor. http://youtu.be/scKbSUMlPIQ

VinnyViolin wrote:

justin567070 wrote:

GuitarMikeB wrote:

Thejohnny7band wrote:Panpipe. A suprisingly useful instrument that works with a variety of music styles. I did a few recordings with one many years ago and they were well received.

http://www.amazon.com/Pan-Flute-Ramos-M ... 25&sr=1-12

But where are the electric panpipes? I want to put a fuzzbox and a flanger on it!
There are always Ecuadorian vendors at the local county fairs selling panpipes and other 3rd World-made trinkets. they pay along with prerecorded tracks, but the bes tones have panpipes in differnet sizes to make different octaves.

i dont think making electric panpipes would be all that difficult.. different length tubes cut to make different sounds, just blow into the pipe to make the sound you want.. if i were to make electric panpipes id put a piezo in the bottom with a relief hole drilled in the side to let air pressure out.. then when you blow into it the air pressure will register with the piezo, be converted into an electrical signal and then fed through an effects processor, amp, etc

The vibration of the air column in a flute/panpipe etc. does not transfer very much vibration to the walls of the tube, not nearly enough to get a good signal from a piezo element. So I doubt piezos would work very well on panpipes, or flutes in general. If you could source a piezo with that much sensitivity, then the vibrations made by handling the instrument would overwhelm any vibration that the air column could transfer to the walls of the tube. It would be more of an amplified percussion instrument.

I don't think an optical pickup would work for panpipes or flute either ... unless maybe you were a very heavy smoker.

If a sensor is available that can register the frequency of motion (or variations of density) of the air molecules, that might have brighter prospects. Barcus - Berry makes a flute microphone that has a small condenser mic element that mounts behind a small Mylar diaphragm on the inside of the flute bore.

An optical pickup could work very well with a reed instrument like harmonica or sax etc. where a vibrating reed could modulate the of light seen by the optical sensor. http://youtu.be/scKbSUMlPIQ

what i said may have been confusing, so ill address those questions.. for an optical pickup there actually has to be something physical moving., so it would only work with a reed instrument where the reed actually vibrates, the flute just splits air and air is invisible to the optical pickup wouldnt work with that

now for the piezo in the panflute, this wouldnt be for electrifying a functioning acoustic panflute, this would just be to create a MIDI controller, and the way the piezo would work is this would be simply to detect your wind pressure.. the harder you blow, the higher the signal on the piezo for overblowing, so it would only detect the PRESSURE inside the pipes, not the actual vibration.. but panflutes are simple, there are no holes to close up, you just blow into the pipe for the sound you want, so a midi controller would probably be better than electrifying a pre-existing panpipe because theres nothing you can really do to them besides just blow into them at different pressures

so what id do for an electric panpipe is id get twelve tubes, inside each tube would be an end cap in the bottom, inside this endcap would be the piezo on the bottom that the air would press against, and each pipe would have an exit hole drilled on the side of the pipe to let the excess air out because when you blow through a woodwind, your air passes through, it doesnt get trapped, so the exit hole is necessary and it needs to be on the side so the air wont escape before contacting the piezo..

then wire it all up, plug it in via USB and set up the twelve pipes to sound in the 12 notes of a single octave.. and higher levels of pressure will sound in a higher register of those 12 notes..then youll have a panpipe capable of 12 notes and multiple octaves

now to capture the acoustic sounds of the acoustic, real panpipe, you may need to use a microphone, there may not be enough vibration in the body and im not sure the piezo would be sensitive enough.. piezos do pick up a lot of static which is why acoustic guitar pickups and electric violins need a pre-amp

anyway, i think im going to buy a clarinet and fabricate a new mouthpiece that will hold a bagpipes double-reed with a cap over top.. make a clarinet sound like a bagpipe and student clarinets for me to experiment with are like $100 and tons of resources out there for learning them vs oboe

Yes I must have misunderstood your meaning.
I didn't get that you were already describing a midi controller here.

justin567070 wrote:i dont think making electric panpipes would be all that difficult.. different length tubes cut to make different sounds, just blow into the pipe to make the sound you want.. if i were to make electric panpipes id put a piezo in the bottom with a relief hole drilled in the side to let air pressure out.. then when you blow into it the air pressure will register with the piezo, be converted into an electrical signal and then fed through an effects processor, amp, etc

justin567070 wrote:anyway, i think im going to buy a clarinet and fabricate a new mouthpiece that will hold a bagpipes double-reed with a cap over top.. make a clarinet sound like a bagpipe and student clarinets for me to experiment with are like $100 and tons of resources out there for learning them vs oboe

A double reed in a clarinet will not sound very much like a typical bagpipe. A clarinet (as well as some east European and middle Eastern bagpipes) has a cylindrical bore, whereas Scottish and most west European bagpipes, (as well as oboes, bassoons, saxophones,) have a conical bore.

Here is an example of a double reed instrument with a cylindrical bore.
http://youtu.be/35jcEA3yups

The cylindrical bore overblows to the 12th, the conical bore overblows to the octave.