Membrane Clarinet

My take on the membrane clarinet. Only a sheet of thin plastic and a rubber band required as additional parts.

I was quite impressed by Nicolas Bras' video about a membrane clarinet, and I wanted to 3d-print one completely without buying pipes or drilling holes. I however used the dimensions from Linsay Pollak's video (he calls it a membrane reed foonki).

To be able to print it on my MINI, I had to separate the tube into 3 parts. I wanted them to be screwed together, and to minimize bulkiness I used a left-hand-/right-hand-thread combination to be able to arbitrarily twist and lock them - which turned out quite well. 

The membrane holder offers 2 degrees of freedom for tuning and adjusting: The pipe can be screwed in and out to protrude more or less from the main membrane holder/mouth piece, and the actual membrane holder ring can be screwed for more or less tension.

I didn't have much success with the nitril gloves I had, but it works great with thin plastic bag foil or space blanket. 

There are 2 versions, the wide one was the first one. It didn't seem to work well (I at first tried only those nitril gloves), so I made the thinner version, which also didn't like the nitril gloves. However both work well with stiffer plastic sheets, so I included both designs.

Printing

I used PLA, 0.4mm nozzle and a layer height of 0.2mm. For the tubes' stability I used paint-on supports - I just painted a ring around on the tube a few centimeters above the plate (see image). The mouth piece also needs some support. Use organic (tree) support.

The stl file shows the whole instrument in assembled form. Split it into objects, then separate them. Turn the mouth piece upside down and apply paint-on support.

Or just use the attached 3mf.

Assembly

Cut some thin plastic sheet (bag, space blanket etc), put it over the membrane ring, secure with rubber band.

Screw the parts together. The short threads on the pipe pieces are joined by the clamp nuts - these are the ones with some ‘missing’ threads inside. They have left-handed threads on one side; if the don't screw on, turn them around. The lock nut (just one right hand thread inside) locks the first pipe piece to the mouth/membrane piece.

Adjusting and playing

If the notes sound far off, the membrane is probably to loose. If you need to push air quite hard to get air through, it's too tight, or the tube sticks out to much. If air goes through without making sound, the inner tube is not protruding (enough). Tension also affects pitch. Play with the membrane adjustments to get a nice sound.

In the essence the note played depends on the first open hole on the chanter (pipe). It's around E major, depending on membrane tension. The lowest hole takes some practice to reach, it's a bit of a stretch for the pinky. Half notes can be played by opening a hole only slightly; I did that for the D in the video - I'm not a musician, so I messed up a bit. Also with some practice you can play much more expressive (when the membrane is well adjusted).