Tabor pipes in G, Bb, C, and D

thingiverse

This is a whistle with three finger holes that you can play with one hand, leaving the other hand free to bang a "tabor" drum. This is the classic medieval and renaissance one-man-band, essential for throwing a proper party throughout period. Shakespear's fool William Kemp once danced a jig for nine days and covered a hundred miles to the sound of pipe and tabor. By using the second, third and fourth registers of the pipe you can play a complete scale over about an octave and a half. The different registers are reached by blowing harder or softer. Madness! It becomes natural with a little practice. Now play the drum at the same time. Instructions I've included four version, in keys of G, Bb, C and D (in order of decreasing size). Lengths of these instruments are listed below. Renaissance illustrations seem to be about the G size, or even larger. The G version is about the length of an alto recorder, but plays an octave higher -- these are quite high pitched instruments for their length. G - 432mm Bb - 362mm C - 321mm D - 285mm Download and unzip your chosen zip file. The instrument is given as segments, which we will weld or glue together. Several possible segmentations are included in each zip file, choose a segmentation that you can print with your printer. When printing, the wall thickness and/or fill percentage should be quite high. A stiff wall is necessary for the instrument to sound loudly and without needing excessive air flow. If you can feel the wall vibrating as you play, that is energy being lost. After printing, ensure the tops of the pieces are flat. I like to tidy things up with a hobby knife. (Leave the prongs intact!) Having printed the pieces, they need to be connected together. ABS plastic: Dip the ends of pieces you wish to join in acetone for 15 seconds, then hold them firmly together. The model includes guide prongs that will ensure the correct orientation of the pieces. Use appropriate safety equipment when using acetone (gloves, goggles, good ventilation, etc)! Though not essential, I like to put the completed instrument in an acetone vapour chamber to smooth the surface. This produces a nicer finish and may improve the loudness. My acetone vapour chamber is simply a large glass vase. In this I put a small cup of acetone blown on with a small fan. I put in the instrument and seal the top with gladwrap, then leave everything for an hour and a half. Again, be careful around acetone! PLA plastic: I am told that the segments can be joined using epoxy glue. Make sure there are absolutely no holes in the joins, or the instrument won't sound. See the file "three-hole-whistle-fingering.pdf" for the fingering system, which is quite simple. The trick is all in the breath control. See the file "music.pdf" for some renaissance dance tunes to get you started. These instruments were designed using Demakein, version 0.16. You could use Demakein to create pipes in different keys. Demakein can also be used to design a variety of other woodwind instruments. If you know a little Python, you can also design novel woodwind instruments to your own specifications.