Anima,
As promised, I invested some time this weekend to make a plastic reed. Though this is my first attempt, I didn’t go into this without some background. I’ve read a few online ‘Yougurt’ reed recipies as well as I hosted Bob May’s first plastic reed website: http://www.angar.net/bob_may/
The main difference is, Bob uses polystyrene and heat forms his reed in a vacuumforming machine. The stretching action of the heat often changes the thickness of the reeds… so the process has it’s drawbacks.
Unlike the yougurt containers, I took a 3" diameter white polyethylene milk container with cylindrical sides. I cut some 1/2" wide strips and lightly sanded the ‘slips’ much the way you would fabricate a traditional reed. Using a staple from an old cane reed I wound the plastic slips with hemp to copy the original reed both in shape and length. I then sanded the faces to create a ‘scrape’ until I was able to acheive a crow. I totally rushed this project. I used tape to seal it and a rubber band for the bridal.
At a risk of boring everyone to tears… forget the previous text.
I recorded the file using the mic from my computer. It played well as a .wav file and totally got distorted when I converted it to an mp3… sorry.
The reed needs MUCH more scraping as this is the Arnold Schwarzenegger version. I used every bit of strength to squeeze out notes while using the bellows pressure to assist. The reed is very ‘hissy’ sounding prior to actually making notes, but it’s suprisingly in-tune for something ‘eyeballed’ for tollerance. I’ll eventually re-do the sound file as it’s far less quality than I expected.
A fair amount of work has been put into designing a ‘plastic’ chanter reed. A grant-aided feasibility study (late 80s early 90s) showed that a reed for the Uilleann chanter was not attainable though they managed to come up with one for the highland chanter which is now enjoying a profitable production run.
Plastic works realtively fine in the regs (and I have played a Taylor set with scraped metal reg reeds that were playing very well). Alternative materials do a job in drones, nothing so far has come out as an alternative for the chanter, playing two octaves and having a nice tone that is.
On 2002-01-27 05:50, Peter Laban wrote:
A fair amount of work has been put into designing a ‘plastic’ chanter reed. A grant-aided feasibility study (late 80s early 90s) showed that a reed for the Uilleann chanter was not attainable… nothing so far has come out as an alternative for the chanter, playing two octaves and having a nice tone that is.
Agreed nothing to date can replace cane. Companies like La Voz and Rico produce hundreds of thousands of reeds each year for band instruments have only a few plasticized cane products, nothing completely synthetic.
I’ve attained 2 octaves on my first try, having a nice tone I’ll work on next.
Peter, do you know if any of the feasability study results are available online?
Play it loud… did you hear all those wierd harmonics? I have no idea what caused that.
At first, I thought it was my groaning using ALL MY STRENGTH just to squeeze out those notes.
I later sanded the reed some and completely lost it’s ability to play. I’m swamped in business for the next 2-3 weeks so I doubt I’ll get back to this project until the end of Feburary… but I’m still pleased that it actually worked.
I walked by my abandoned reed project on Sunday and shook my head… between my home renovation and some lingering professional projects, it’s been put back a bit.
