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The tootophone could be the People's Instrument of the 21st Century. You don't need to learn sheet music or memorize fingering positions to play just about any melody with it. It can easily fit into a pocket, and it only costs about 25 cents to make. The basic 1 cc insulin syringe costs about 15 cents.
You can add pipe extensions to the body of the tootophone to give it a deeper, richer voice. A variety of tootophones could make some very interesting music, I'm sure.
To hear this tiny tooter in action, listen to the music samples in later steps.
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Signing UpStep 1The Reed Material
From Wikipedia: "A reed is a thin strip of material which vibrates to produce a sound on a musical instrument. The reeds of most Woodwind instruments are made from Arundo donax ("Giant cane") or synthetic material; tuned reeds (as in harmonicas and accordions) are made of metal or synthetics."
Years ago, I borrowed a saxophone and couldn't get anything out of it except unmelodious squawks. As an experiment, I sanded down some PVC plastic and made a replacement reed for it. Still no great music, but at least it was easier to play. The sax got returned and I continued experimenting, mostly with PVC pipe body instruments.
Sanding PVC reeds was a lot of work, so I experimented with clear plastic packaging material I found in the trash. It came in different thicknesses and with different degrees of rigidity. Thinner material makes reeds that are easier to play. Plastic reeds can be cut out of scavenged packing material with scissors.
For your first tootophone, I suggest you go the easy route and just cut a reed out of scavenged plastic packaging material. You can make mellower sounding reeds out of rubber, but it is more complicated, since you have to make the material. (I haven't found off-the-shelf sheet rubber material for reeds yet.)
I found that the traditional cane reeds were at the stiff end of the spectrum, followed by different kinds of plastic and rubber at the other extreme. My first rubber reeds were made out of Sugru, a clay-like material that hardens like rubber. That eventually led to my present favorite, a combination of fiberglass mat material and silicone rubber.
I found that pure silicone rubber reeds were too floppy, so I increased their rigidity by adding cloth-like materials. In this step I explain how I make fiberglass and silicone rubber reed material. If you don't have the fiberglass, experiment with other synthetic cloth materials.
1. Start with a non-stick work surface, such as Teflon cloth, which I think is sold for kitchen use. What I use is a polyethylene plastic cutting board.
2. Cut a section of fine fiberglass mat material big enough to cut out the number of reeds you want to make. I usually make foot square sheets.
3. With a palette knife, or similar tool, spread out an area of silicone rubber on the work surface big enough for the fiberglass material and set the material onto the wet silicone. This eliminates any penetration problem from pressing the silicone through from above.
4. Start at the center with the palette knife and press down and toward the edges, forcing silicone from below up through the pores of the material. Make sure there is a reasonable layer of silicone on top.
5. If you want 2-ply material, or thicker, repeat steps 3 and 4. I use mostly 2 ply material.
6. Let it dry several hours, or overnight before peeling it up.
7. Cut it into strips and sections long enough to serve as the reeds. I use a paper cutter to cut the strips, which are about 1/4" wide.
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Here's a Youtube video of me doing a tutorial for the basic tootophone made from an insulin syringe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_f7W-J9Sr8
Disgusting? There is no accounting for personal tastes, I suppose.
Weird? I suppose it is only weird because you don't see them used this way all the time. Buy a few syringes, make tootophones, and help change all that!
The mouthpiece is very similar to a traditional reed/straw whistle, I've made a few of them.
Used syringes can be "defanged" to remove the needles and the risk of getting poked. That's the first thing I do with them, anyway.
After that, one has to trust they are clean after washing.
Besides slide whistles and tootophones, not much use for them occurs to me. If I had equipment to melt down and reform the polyethylene plastic, then it could become any number of things, but that would be on a more industrial recycling scale.
I can't think of any projects to use them up at the rate you are probably generating them.
Well, it's a good source of material for you to be considering. It would be neat if there was a home workshop way to melt down and extrude, or injection mold some of our waste plastics.
I wouldn't mind playing with something like a hot glue gun that could melt syringes down and extrude them. Maybe a hot glue gun would work? I'll have to try that out sometime when I feel like risking the glue gun.
As for recycling sryinges, it would involve cleaning and sterilizing .. In years past, where all were glass (including the plunger ..ground glass surface) they could be sterilized in an autoclave. Now, they are all gas-sterilized, which is definitely NOT a 'DIY' project! Im not sure what happens to the rubber-tip of a plunger in an autoclave: i'll try it .. but its not relevent to your project of course, cuz you don't use the plunger at all.
Which brings up an interesting point: what if you do use a plunger? varying the tone by changing tube length could be fun to try.. however without the 'lip control' you describe it'd be unlikely to be able to get more than one good note: ie, the 'resonant frequency of the cavity' ..
Ideas??
Also, for those concerned with 'legalities' : the device is NOT a sryinge at all .. It is a TUBE
not even a plunger, certainly no connector to attach any needle.. so there is NO 'possession' issue at all. If it were, you could be arrested for having a drainpipe on the side of your building: which is also a tube..
(Being a doc does make this easy for me to say ;)) )
A reed external to the tootophone would not take advantage of the tube, or conical ending that is part of the tootophone body, so it would be more limited.
I tried to make a grass blade type instrument, with adjustable tension for the blade. I used a rubber membrane instead of grass. Anyway, I wasn't impressed. The lip control of the tootophone reed is a lot more sensitive and quick than a finger trigger is.
The grass blade thing isnt all that difficult .. as you know, one cups one's hands in the exact same manner you do when not using the grass at all .. and blow across the joined distal knuckle of your thumbs .. The grass blade's one end is held between the fleshy-part of your hands below the thumb, and the other end of the blade is squeezed between the distal thumb joints, ..
flexing the tip of thumbs or extending them will stretch or shorten the blade .. its really quite accurate, if annoying to others!
(i gave the details here only for others who might not have had such a fun childhood ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W5wEAbp9o8
You can get very small bluetooth headsets so fitting the pcb internally with existing microphone and using a reed switch as the enable/power switch to make a compact cordless mic could work.
-A
These are ideal for such applications as the existing "end" can be removed and replaced with a sanded down (aka defanged) needle or just a blunt ended one from a printer repair kit.
i was toying with the idea of building a complete multimeter into one of these things with an audible readout as well as display taken from a cheap MP3 player.
that would be amusing :-)
regards.
If this were April Fools Day I wouldn't be so suprised. Sure, I'll take your word that it sounds good. But my God! If a cop saw one of these on you (or near you) you are going to be in a new level of hell.
I'm not criticizing anyone, the inventiveness is cool. But I was mystified how no one thinks that these look like a set of heroine works. And a cop ain't going to by the reed business. They've heard everything in the book, and then some. (And yes, I had an uncle who was a deputy.)
Well, good luck and keep these at home.
C
If the police were educated about this use for syringes, there would be less reason to fear them.
Likewise, if they would just call off this disgraceful and harmful War on Drugs, there would be less reason to fear them. Maybe people will someday see tootophones as a step in the direction of peace, turning cannons into plowshares.
ciao
If you want to hear something special, then play Hypo Toot over this classical guitar piece on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=sw661i-0ohs
It's ridiculous but it made me smile like a lunatic. :¬)
I'm seeing plastic confetti.