This is wonderful. But I have a question have you ever heard about Linsey Pollak? He has also made one of these unstruments alobgvwith some wooden saxophones and blader pipes. I would recommend you to take a gander on one of his many wonderful videos. (I just thougth that you'd maybe be interested since he's somewhat similar to the chanel you just talked about.)

Hello Dundere, thanks for this note; sorry to be slow to reply. Yes, I know Linsey, and have visited with him at his southern hemisphere home. I'm a great fan of his work, which is whimsical, yet at the same time sophisticated and technically adept. Highly recommended (linseypollak.com/). @@Dundere_de_Duke

Yes, thanks for mentioning these names. I did point to Nicholas Bras' work in the text and comments accompanying the video. For anyone who's interested, here again is the link to his excellent membrane clarinet video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gNFnfZeQx9TJiqM.html. And Linsey Pollak -- a wonderful maker of innovative wind instruments of all sorts! I mentioned him as well recently ... was that here or somewhere else? Anyway, here's the link for his website, highly recommended: linseypollak.com/.

My favorite part about them is that they're so completely unique that the Hornbostel-Sachs system (which is like a Dewey Decimal system for organizing instruments instead of books) has no idea how to classify them at all.

Hello Ladomifi, thanks for this question. I wondered myself about the question of register holes, and I spent just a few minutes exploring. One thing to mention from the start: we're mostly talking about cylindrical tubes here (not conical), and you'd expect that, like a normal clarinet (which is likewise cylindrical), it would overblow the 12th, not the octave. That complicates things, because to fill in scalewise all the notes for that 12th prior to jumping to the upper register, you'd need a quite lot of toneholes. Not impossible, but more challenging. For an instrument that would overblow the octave, you'd need to go to a conical tube, creating a more sax-like instrument. But there's also another challenge. The tonehole placements in membrane reeds are not what you'd expect in a typical reed instrument or flute, probably due to the fact that the membrane, where the standing waves in the tube reflect, is comparatively soft. This is discussed more fully in the article I posted to accompany this video. The issue of irregular tonehole placement applies to a register hole as well, tending to push the expected location of the register hole much closer to the mouthpiece. When I fiddled around with register holes, I found that the cylindrical tubes did indeed overblow something close to a 12th. But everything seemed kind of iffy and undependable. I guess it would take more time than I spent working through the issues to try to make it work dependably. Perhaps someone will do that and let us know how it goes!

@@bhpkn thank you for the thorough answer.

for sure! but regulating the tension on all those pipes sounds like a hassle

Yes, it this could be a good candidate for an organ-like instrument. For intonation you'd need a good system for keeping the air pressure constant -- that's an important part of pipe organs of all sorts, and it would be especially important in this case given the pressure-sensitivity and pitch-bendability of membrane reeds. On the other hand, you could decide not to worry about pressure regulation and instead to make something more wacky and fun, not worrying about pitch accuracy.

Hello Virgonomics, thanks for this message. The answer to a question like this could be book-length, but let's see if I can be brief. Yes, there are systems for establishing tone hole locations and sizes for tuning tubular winds. They depend much on the excitation method, e.g. flute or reed, but beyond the mouthpiece, especially for cylindrical tubes, they can be fairly dependable and predictable. The approach can be mathematical -- like plugging in numbers -- but there also are templates or charts which can be used for standardized tube dimensions. These things can be found online. BUT (getting to the main point now) for membrane reeds all bets are off. The excitation method in this case majorly influences the outcome, and the effects of the membrane are just too irregular variable inconsistent etc., even from moment to moment on the same instrument. So it turns out that with membrane reeds, in most cases, you'll be better off proceeding by trial and error + informed guesswork than trying to be accurately predictive. Then you can cultivate the skill of keeping steady pitch and doing your best for true intonation while playing. A couple of general notes on the most basic level: the closer the hole to the mouthpiece, the higher the pitch. The larger the hole and the more nearby holes below the higher the pitch. Prototyping is always helpful, so if you use an inexpensive material for modelling you can make subsequent iterations with improved results, learning as you go. Also, you asked about material and texture. Looking at tubular wind instruments in general (disregarding for the moment the typical pitch irregularity of membrane reeds), we find that if the material is reasonably hard, rigid and reflective, then yes, you're right, it's more about hole sizing and spacing. With flimsier materials or material with heavy damping, the picture changes a bit.

Hello Dave, thanks for this comment. Sure, 'Moe Mem is an actual instrument! I don't do fakes! (But I admit that to get a good recording of that instrument, I typically have to do multiple takes and careful editing.) You're quite correct, the flexible strip you press down on resembles a ribbon controller, although it's acoustic, not electronic; also, it's a little less easy to use. I've done a series of wind instruments using this pitch-control method, which you can see in this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mNmZftuS3c_Vk6s.html and also on this page: barthopkin.com/instrumentarium/moe/ , and on other pages linked from there. And if you're really interested, you can get more detail in this article: barthopkin.com/more-moe/.

Thanks for this comment, nigeladams. The question of instrument categorization is one that has held a lot of interest for academics, and lots of less-academic types as well. I wrote about it here: barthopkin.com/musical-instrument-categorization-systems/. In the widely-used Hornbostel-Sachs categorization system, air-gate instruments (which would include the membrane-reeds as well as more conventional reeds like clarinets and oboes) are categorized as aerophones, because the enclosed air is seen as the initial vibrating body. As I note in the essay linked above, the situation's kind of ambiguous though -- couldn't you make a case that the reed (or membrane) is the primary vibrator? ... which is in keeping with your suggestion that, although we'd naturally think of them as wind instruments (aerophones), a contrarian could argue that they should be seen as membranophones.

@@bhpknI had a project once where I went through all the hornbostel-sachs sub-categories, and there's a few that are close but not exact. It could be considered a membranophone or an aerophone