The Electronic, Keyed, Reverse-Mbira Bagpipe

[R.G.]

I always did like bagpipes and mbiras. No talent for playing either one, but I like the way they sound.

I got out the old garden-rake mbira and was messing with it when I thought that it might be easier for me to play if I didn't have to use my thumbs, which are, after all, all thumbs. So I got to thinking about ways to pluck and whack the tines and it occurred to me that I might like to bow the tines so they started slow and didn't have that "boink!"-iness so badly.

Hmmmm... bow... OK, let's use an e-bow like string driver and drive the tines. That will lead to a run-up in volume of the inverse of the loop gain when the loop is enabled. No problem with cross-pickup like on a guitar string, even if you use an electronic pickup. So with a neodynium spot magnet and some careful winding, you get a tine-driver, and an LM386 per tine does the driving. Alnico-rod pickups . Then each tine can be driven mellotron-like by a keyswitch that enables the loop.

Obviously, the keyswitches can be set up to mirror the tine layout for an mbira, or in an AGO keyboard layout, or anything.

Yes, here comes the bagpipes.

You can also just connect up three drone tines and tune the remaining octave or so to the bagpipe scale (which is not the same as the modern even-tempered scale, the just scale, etc.)

Sigh. Another project. Now I gotta go order the magnets, gut another lawn rake and build one.

[PerroGrande]

Can't say that I've ever hear an Mbira, but I absolutely love the Bagpipes!   This sounds like another interesting project -- I can't wait to hear some sound clips!

[petemoore]

http://www.coverpop.com/whitney/index.php?var=v18
  I typed in 'Drone Tine' and got this at the top of google page...lol.
 

[sean k]

I don't know the E-bow, well I know of it but I don't understand what goes on, but are you basically saying that if you drive a winding like its a speaker that magnetic feild will be strong enough to vibrate the tines of a thumb piano? I suppose given that they are placed halfway between two nodes which would be a quarter of the way up from the "bridge", oops thats the 1st harmonic so maybe an 1/8 or three eights up? I'm thinking out loud, so to speak, here. Umm, what if you drove the other end with a subsonic LFO rate to just set the thing moving and hopefully it find resonance.
Not the same subject but it may be of note. I found a little buzzer, 4 bucks at the local electronics DIY shop, and it works by having a sine ( I would surmise) wave in a coil that has a magnet on a piece of spring steel on the top and this acts on a membrane like in a, what are they?, those things you blow in, you know like Tiny Tim I think... Kazoo! These things are already made and wound and would just need a transistor driver and an oscillator to be suitable... one hopes!

[frank_p]

The Mbiras are already some powerfull instruments.  I dont remember the names of somes of the bands that I've sawn with mbiras (Soul-Jazz African Moody band from Boston.)  Was very impressed by the short-steel-sounding-but-availible-notes that this instrument projects.  If you can drive that with an E-Bow, you would get some Mid-Rangey nasty feedback.

For the pipes I am  .  You wanna drive a ventilator with an opamp afther that it's been triggered by yor fingers ?
And send a feedback to the bag-flutes. 

Wicked.
Be prepared to wear a kilt.

[frank_p]

Oh ! Forgot to say: but best way to record those sounds in pipe-bags, accordeons, harmoniums, is to get the pressure.  So a small audio speaker  , (not a microphone inside that bag), into a two fets preamp is a good way to get those sound through. 

From someone who works with amplified accordeons.

Again Excuses for my bad English.

[petemoore]

  Ok, but that's getting away from the original instrument !
  Funny, a techno-magnetic solution to a little thumb problem [common only to Mbira players] creates a different scenario the old instrument gets put in, and effectively becomes the concept of a new instrument.
  I thought that for some vibrating steel powered instrument I've actually heard of before, ..try it on the piano next ?

[arawn]

You could have individual momentary switches to hold for each tine. so as to have easier control like

[R.G.]

are you basically saying that if you drive a winding like its a speaker that magnetic feild will be strong enough to vibrate the tines of a thumb piano?

Yes, just like an ebow drives the strings of a guitar. In fact, I think the big size of Mbira tines makes a driver easier than for guitar strings. Both strings and tines are highly resonant, so it takes only a very little energy coupled in to make them vibrate if it's the right frequency.

For the pipes I am ??

The pipes was only a reference to the use of three drones and the idiosyncratic scale of the pipes; you could tune any tine to any note (within some limits) so you could make a pipes-scale Electro-Reverse Mbira to play pipes music as easily as a normal scale one.

best way to record those sounds in pipe-bags, accordeons, harmoniums, is to get the pressure.  So a small audio speaker  , (not a microphone inside that bag), into a two fets preamp is a good way to get those sound through. From someone who works with amplified accordeons.

Cool! Thanks for the tip. I was going to put a single magnetic pickup per tine for an all electric (no sound cavity) type; but a small speaker in the box of a cavity type would be good too.

creates a different scenario the old instrument gets put in, and effectively becomes the concept of a new instrument.
  I thought that for some vibrating steel powered instrument I've actually heard of before, ..try it on the piano next ?

Yeah. At least I can say that I'm the world's best player of the ElokR-Mba when I get one made... 

You could have individual momentary switches to hold for each tine. so as to have easier control like

Yep. That's what that business about keying and AGO keyboards was about. Any momentary works.