MIDI bagpipes

This second pipelines project is currently becoming built in my workshop. The tool is MIDI managed and plays a genuine Great Highland Bagpipe set .

The successful creation of my first bagpipe task ( AngusTurragh in 2005 - see below ) led to planning the development of a device that could play a couple of pipelines.

Inexpensive bagpipes can be found on ebay starting at around £65 often mass-produced in Pakistan. However the audio quality can be poor ; a decent group of bagpipes may cost more than £2000 .

Cheaper pipes simply dont perform properly and need countless strive to get the noise correct. Drones could have cane reeds supplied with them which are brief –lived and so are very unstable. Synthetic drone reeds with synthetic tongues prove a whole lot more trustworthy .

Additionally the wooden chanter that may create records nowhere near correct. Professional bagpipe people advise to buy a “plastic” chanters which are very precisely machined from Delrin and create clear, real notes. These are typically popular by professional pipers and Pipe rings, although real die-hards therefore the assiduously punctillous nonetheless use chanters created from African Blackwood ; a wood so hard and thick that it sinks in water !

McLOUD, the robot bagpiper is thecombination of a few mechanical elements :

Firstly, the wind supply is much higher in stress than that used for technical organs. Bagpipes play at a pressure of about 35 ins Water Gauge, or just around 1.25 weight per Square Inch. A standard organ blower will likely not attain this stress thus I built a blower consisting of the engine and turbine device from an Electrolux hoover, housed in a sizable aluminium tube and a wooden box. This will be capable of producing a massive stress and air-flow if utilised without any control system.

In order to lessen the sound associated with the blower there clearly was a wood labyrinth built round the environment feedback and package has actually several layers of sound-deadening material. The mains-electric motor features a variable electric thyristor speed operator so your device can create exact pressures. The rate control has actually several phases being switched by MIDI signals from songs so that you can give the numerous different pressures needed for the drones alone, drones and chanter an such like.

A MIDI managed force launch valve is included within the wind pipe to instantly launch the pressure after play, hence preventing the wailing noise associated with drones while the force dies gradually. The wind through the blower is held in plastic (plumbing) pipeline toward case via an inconspicuous opening in the side of the piper’s blow-stick.

Secondly, the drones start to play once the force hits its very first phase. Bagpipers utilizing standard drone reeds regularly...