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| 01/21/2008: "Reeds and crackpot schemes"
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I'm constantly planning to reinstate reed instruments as a significant percentage of my productive efforts, but that's always a struggle; flutes are inevitably the first priority and reeds suffer accordingly.
That's a shame, since single-reed instruments are extremely simple to mess around with-- I consider them easier to make than flutes, in fact. However, this perceived ease is premised on their being non-overblowing, as were almost all early-historical clarinet-family instruments. That is, there's no assumption that a clariboo* should have a functional second register whose notes align harmoniously and logically with the fundamental register.
Of course, many clariboos do overblow into the second register, and some even produce a perfectly-tuned series of notes that align perfectly with the fundamental register's scale. However, this is VERY hit-or-miss, since the infinite variety of bore profiles naturally present in bamboo make it quite difficult to calculate and adjust the pitches of overblown notes.
On the other hand, my flutes are routinely expected to play perfectly in tune through their second octave, and often well into the third octave; I consider an excellent bamboo-flute range to be about two octaves plus a fifth or sixth. (Modern orchestral flutes have a standard range of about three octaves plus a step, so a good bamboo flute covers about half an octave less than a fully mechanized modern flute. Not bad!)
Assuming good bamboo selection, it's relatively straightforward -- although by no means "easy" -- to make fine adjustments to a flute's bore profile in order to correct the tuning of second and third-octave notes. However, with reed instruments this is an entirely different and more acoustically complicated subject-- more on this later.
Even if one expects no overblown notes on a reed instrument, the fact that they can easily be made with a much wider range entirely within the fundamental register largely compensates for the lack of a second register. In fact, it's a simple matter to make reed instruments with a fundamental range of between 1.5 to 2 octaves.
Of course, as instruments get bigger it becomes more physically awkward to place the fingerholes in managable places-- although I've made very large and extremely low-pitched bass clarinets, these produced only a relatively few notes throughout a limited range. (By "very large and low-pitched," I mean in the three or four-foot length range.)
However, given the fact that a clariboo yields notes which are an octave lower than an equivalent-sized flute, this is strikingly deep indeed: it'd take a six-foot long flute to hit notes as low as those produced by a three-foot clariboo! My largest practical bass flutes run about four feet in acoustical length, so reed instruments certainly have more potential reach far into the bass register.
One could even make ultra-low contabass reed instruments. I've experimented with plastic tubing and made prototypes that blast their fundamental note easily and strongly at an acoustical length of ten feet or so! Needless to say, fingerhole placement becomes, er, somewhat problematic on something that long...
Which brings us to today's brainstorm: for someone more electro-mechanically more ambitious than I, it'd be a relatively simple matter to construct a hybrid single-reed bass instrument operated by a standard piano-type keyboard. All you'd have to do is provide an individual vent hole for each desired note along the tube's length, with each hole covered by an electro-mechanically-operated key. In fact, this could be done purely mechanically, but an electro-version would be more modern and elegant.
Whatever the controlling linkage, each vent hole would be assigned to the appropriate key on a regular keyboard. For a bass instrument, a range of about an octave and a half would be a practical starting point, so you'd need about eighteen keyed holes on the tube for a fully chromatic version. The player would sit with the mouthpiece fixed in an adjustable position above the keyboard, and could simply lean forward and blow on the mouthpiece while operating the notes on the keyboard. Any bends in the tubing needed to bring the mouthpiece into convenient reach would be acoustically insignificant if this was done right, and the tubing could indeed double back several times if necessary.
Naturally, only one note at a time could be played; this would be a monophonic instrument. But it's in the bass range, so who cares? Anyway, would somebody out there get to work on this idea right away?
(Wonder if someone's already done so... NAAAAH, this is probably too crackpot for anybody sane to tackle.) --r.
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*Oops-- forgot to follow up on the asterisk in the original posting. "Clariboo" is my own term for a single-reed, more-or-less cylindrically-bored instrument made of bamboo.
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