Propping weekend produced instruments (Updated)

The propping weekend in Vihti, Finland, gave the Dragonbane audio and culture team a great chance to try out some instrument ideas. The team had a successful weekend experimenting with a couple of instrument designs. A whole days effort was put on finding the correct shape for the bullroarer instrument and it finally found a consistent form, which can be easily replicated. The roarer was made from freshly cut birch wood and finished with mahogany stain and beeswax.

One finished overtone flute was produced. The main objective was to test the materials chosen. Copper produced a nice and shrilling tone. The wooden mouthpiece was a success and was carved into a nice shape too. The flute was coated with different colored leather stripes (inversed, the shining side of the leather being against the copper pipe) and the mouthpiece was finished with mahogany stain. The team experimented with copper pipe of different diameter. Comparison showed that the one with the smaller inner diameter (16 mm) produced much cleaner and powerful sound than the larger one (22 mm).

Both of these designs are now ready to be prepared in masses, and found to be the right kind for the game. An effort was made to prepare an ocarina out of clay, but that experiment wasn't fruitful. The ocarina issue will be tackled again in the coming drum/instrument workshop in August.

And here ere are some pictures of the instruments that were created

• overtone flute tools and materials:
  

• soundhole:
  

• mouthpiece:
  

• flute with mouthpiece:
  

• coating the flute:
  

• finished flute with mouthpiece:
  

• finished flute:
  

• sarana playing the flute:
  

• roarer tools and materials:
  

• making roarers:
  

• heiko finetuning a roarer:
  

• saaga with a finished roarer:
  

• portrait of roarers:
  

• portrait of one roarer:
  

• close-up :
  

• close-up:
  

• close-up:
  

• finished roarers: