2nd instrument building thread

[Daniel C. No.2587345]

What has everyone been making? After the last thread died I was busy with school. Now I’ve got time and decided to make a kemenche. It’s a Persian instrument which is the ancestor of the violin. The round body gives it a very resonant sound; kinda like I’m in a church.

[Daniel C. No.2587349]

Photo of a real kemenche for comparison

[Anonymous No.2587416]

>>2587345
>round body
reminds me of gourd based instruments, like those still comon in india

[Daniel C. No.2587517]

>>2587416
Your right, from memory I know that ravanhatha, tumbi’s, and all the “-veena” instrument use gourds. My kemenche also uses a gourd because I have no way of bending wood, it’s also the reason why I I put those stripe (as an acronistic call back to the ribs of wood a real one uses”

[Anonymous No.2587522]

>>2587517
I came across this a while back, seemed like a fascinating process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4nltNJyePQ

Bottle gourds are thought to be the oldest cultivated plant.

[Anonymous No.2587761]

>>2587345
picrel is uncle ted's zither

[Anonymous No.2587782]

>>2587345

[Anonymous No.2587784]

[Daniel C. No.2587895]

>>2587782
>>2587784
Lol, I remember making those as a kid. Good times. Strange that it took until I was in my teens to get into music. Before that I was a radio fag

[Daniel C. No.2587898]

I also made a tamborim. If you’ve ever heard samba or Brazilian carnival music; you’ve heard this being played. Surprisingly lous and I think I’ll make a second one to use as the body of a portable shamisen.

[Daniel C. No.2588604]

I bought this broken tenor banjo neck from the flea market. It was fine for the most part, just needed some glue to the fret board and new pegs. I then bought this teak fruit bowl at a Salvation Army thrift store. Combining the two was easy enough and I had ample goat skin lying around. So I more so assembled/reclaimed the instrument rather than build since I did minimal cuts and reaming.

[Anonymous No.2588939]

Saw a couple Lindsay Pollak videos on youtube, kind of got me wanting to make a pentatonic bagpipe.

[Daniel C. No.2588943]

>>2588939
That’s cool, I saw those as well but just can’t wrap my head around it.

[Daniel C. No.2588947]

I made an erhu using a wooden vase from the thrift store. I felt the shape merited an erhu. Tip for any one making an erhu: when you setup the bridge make sure to interweave the thread through the string rather than having them just be together. This avoids a rattle/buzz sound. Once I fixed that it’s a very expressive instrument

[Daniel C. No.2588948]

Real one for comparison

[Anonymous No.2588952]

Have you ever made pvc tube instruments? I saw one professional instrument maker a few years back who was experimenting with making massive wind instruments from them.

[Daniel C. No.2588961]

>>2588952
No I haven’t, I’d like to make a membrane flute using off one day. I watch this guy on YouTube called Nicholas bras, he makes crazy instruments using pvc and othe reclaimed material. Very cool dude

[Daniel C. No.2591299]

I’ve found this small wooden pot at a thrift store and am gonna use it to make a rebab, or maybe a tumbi.

[Daniel C. No.2591301]

>>2591299
Irl rebab for reference

[Anonymous No.2591331]

>>2591299
Neat, are you going to sand off the legs?

[Daniel C. No.2591604]

>>2591331
Yep, that’s the plan. The rest should be easy since I have experience with that kemenche

[Daniel C. No.2592465]

Made a tumbi from a coconut. If you type in “stereotypical Indian music” into YouTube it should be the first thing you here. Basically a stringed rhythm instrument that has a twangy banjo-esque sound

[Daniel C. No.2592883]

Made an akonting, its the grandfather of the modern banjo. When slave were brought over and carried the idea with them. Afterwards we added frets and two more strings to make it more guitar like. It’s from the sene-gambia region

[Anonymous No.2592884]

All well and good seeing them but how do they sound?
https://vocaroo.com/

[Anonymous No.2592993]

made a shamisen

[Daniel C. No.2594108]

>>2592993
Cool, what’d you use for the strings. Actual silk?

[Daniel C. No.2594494]

Made a berimbau. A Brazilian instrument used in capoeira. It came over from Africa where it was called kulumbu. Look it up on you tube cas this awesome wah-wah sound effect.. still need to smooth it out so I can paint it but needed to make sure it sounded right

[Daniel C. No.2596150]

Almost done with my krar/shareero and African harp like instrument that’s played by strumming. It has 6 strings tuned to a pentatonic scale.

[Daniel C. No.2596152]

For reference

[Anonymous No.2596164]

What's the simplest possible stringed instrument? I was thinking maybe A bucket, broom handle, and a taught wire?

[Daniel C. No.2596295]

>>2596164
Depends on if by simplest you mean simple to make or simple to play?

What your referring to is a washtub bass. While simplest in construction they are actually somewhat difficult to play since there’s no frets or fingerboard. All the notes come from how taught you hold the string which is kinda hard to do consistently.

Other instruments that are more complex but are actually super easy are stuff like, monochords, berimbau, langspeil, epinettes,tumbi, certain zithers, kankles, dulcimer, nyatiti, and various harps. Many of there are either background drone instruments meant for rhythm or were instruments specifically made for people who couldn’t play a “real” instrument.

[Anonymous No.2596383]

>>2596295
>berimbau
I think you could make that with a broom stick, a wire and a bucket

[Anonymous No.2596420]

>>2594494
>awesome wah-wah sound effect

its always amusing to me when self appointed gatekeeper/purist types shit on music that uses sounds that aren't sweet and soothing and/or are electronically made (gasp) but unbeknownst to them have been made acoustically forever and appreciated as musical.

The wah-wah sound is a perfect example, berimbaus and talking drums do it, guicas do a faster higher pitched version, horn players do it with mutes and other objects...

the other one is distortion- many acoustic purists lose their mind over the idea that it might be musical but there's all kinds of traditions that attach loose bits of hard materials to all kinds of instruments to add a rattle-y/buzz-y effect.

>>2592883 reminds me of one of my favorite ethnic instruments, the sintir/ gimbri that's used extensively in Gnawa music...very similar in layout but a larger resonant body and a sound that is often eerily similar to that of modern bass guitars, not just tonally but in the role it plays in the group and the types of yraditional riffs and techniques used...add a backbeat and it's straight up funk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hVjE9eWXTTY

[Anonymous No.2596596]

you guys shouldnt use such basic rawhide, it doesnt look as nice as parchment since they dont properly clean the hairs off and leave an uneven pattern
what you guys want is a surface smooth enough that you could write on it well and is evenly white or cream colored, but thick enough that it wont break easily

[Anonymous No.2596614]

>not a single finger box itt
step up

[Anonymous No.2596649]

>>2596614
lel that gives me an idea, i need to practice leather tooling and boiling so i should make a finger box
real question though, what do i put inside of it?

[Daniel C. No.2597335]

>>2596596
Yeah I know but since I make the instruments for myself I just go with the cheapest drum hide I can get.from the feedback I’ve gotten Normies seem to like the uneven pattern better because it has SOVL.

[Anonymous No.2597338]

>>2597335
yea normal people are retarded when it comes to that, rawhide and wood arent "crude materials" and were often skillfully made, the hides would be bleached, the wood would be inlayed and finished, using rich hard woods
because of their assumptions, the result is that people will think these instruments are all poorly made and cheap

[Daniel C. No.2597339]

>>2596420
YES FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT. the worst is when they don’t like certain sounds but when they’re used in normie music they suddenly love it. A recent example for me is bossa nova, whenever I try and show that genre people are like “this sucks it’s too slow” or whatever but when Billie eilish makes a Bossa nova they loose their shit over it.
Another one is drone music like bagpipes or many other instruments. When done in those setting they hate it but put a drone sound in the background of a modern song and suddenly it’s “atmospheric”. Sometimes I even wonder if people actually enjoy the music they listen to or just do it to pass the time.

>gnawa
I actually made a loutar a while back (although I used a gourd instead of wood). I play along to gnawa songs. Sometimes I use two kitchen tongs to imitate the krakebs they use to keep the rhythm. Almost puts me in a trance.

[Anonymous No.2597343]

>>2587345
yooo im tryna make a violin too, all i have rn is a stick from the beach. how should i start in terms of measurements and what parts I need? im gonna ask at the music shop tomorrow i just dont wanna pay $300 for a violin when all i need it for is to use the old timey fiddle audiobook on my mums iPod

[Anonymous No.2597351]

>>2597343
you wont make anything very high quality without a lot of woodworking skills or knowledge of how things work

[Daniel C. No.2597369]

>>2597343
Don’t use sticks from the beach the wood is wet which is very bad for instruments, even if you dry it for a bit there is still moisture in the wood. You can buy violin necks/pegs on eBay and for the rest you can find a wooden box at ur local thrift store. Here’s a video that does basically that and he gets amazing results.

https://youtu.be/eCRKTK-AlZ4

[Daniel c No.2597655]

Made a shamisen. Have to wait for the skin to dry, then I can put on strings.

[Anonymous No.2598757]

I don't see anyone using tone woods in here.
1/10, hope you plebs enjoy lofi trash

[Anonymous No.2598783]

>>2598757
>t.tonewood salesman

[Anonymous No.2599009]

Surprising amount of shamisens and Asian instruments in this thread, I'll add mine. Big one is technically a gottan since it has a cedar wood top. Haven't got around to getting any skins for instrument making, maybe in the future. Little instrument is a kokyu, which is the Japanese fiddle developed from the rebab >>2591301
Both of em have misc. guitar strings right now, might try and make some silk ones eventually since I had polyester cord on them at first and it sounded interesting.

>>2588952
PVC flutes are legit, all kinds of traditional flutes are real easy to make with minimal tools and sound pretty good.

[Daniel C. No.2599069]

Just Wikipedia’d tone wood, seems like a bit of a cope IMO. The kemenche uses maple on the neck and the krar uses a teak bowl so ur entire statement is wrong.

[Anonymous No.2599351]

>>2599069
I'm not an instrument maker so my opinion shouldn't be taken very seriously but as I understand it tone wood is more about lack of defects and knots than specific species being better for their accoustic properties

[Daniel C. No.2599377]

>>2599351
Neither am I, that’s why I had to Wikipedia it. It’s a bit of both the knots thing and acoustic qualities. But that level of of care is for pro instruments. If my instrument sounds 90% as good as an official one I’m fine with it.

[Daniel C. No.2599378]

I’m making a kinnari veena, an Indian folk instrument. Gourd resonators and hollow tube body with 2 strings one being a drone

[Daniel C. No.2599380]

Progress pic

[Anonymous No.2599397]

>>2587345
>kemençe
'ate me pontus niggers. That thing sounds awful you know?

[Anonymous No.2599412]

>>2599069
It certainly can be cope and/or a way to pimp exotic woods as necessary, and/or to pimp non-exotic wood as superior and worth more money.

Where some wood is preferred and gains a reputation as "best" for some instrument application it's often more about stability than tone.

Finally, most "tone wood" purists are using it in the context of guitar, and based on subjective ideals that aren't scientific and are often the result of the pimping referred to earlier, and the general dick swinging that goes on among guitarists.

Some of the most prized guitars use some pretty pedestrian to downright shitty woods, and many exotic "tone" woods make for crappy sounding guitars if you don't know how to use them.

Those woods are often also nothing g like what might be considered an ideal wood for something like marimba or balafon keys and resonators or slit drums or claves or a clarinet or bassoon or a viola bridge or a snare shell, all of which also have qualities besides tone to consider.

[Daniel c No.2599583]

>>2599009
Dude, those are amazing. I like the combo of eastern and western with the f holes in the shamisen. It actually reminds me of a morin khurr

[Daniel c No.2601292]

Making a ukulele from a gourd (I already have one but I wanna make one so I can use the ukulele body as a cuatro)

[Daniel c No.2601537]

Progress. Needs sanding and a fret board + tuning heads