So, You Want to Make a Gemshorn?

So to make the instrument it is best to start with horn that is fairly straight with a not overly curved overall shape. But you do want people to recognize you are playing an animal horn - after all a huge part of the entertainment value.

The wall of the horn you choose should be kind of thick, around a quarter of an inch thick around the open end. This is to give your windway a decent  internal volume, and therefore louder audible volume.

The window, that windowy looking thing on the front of your instrument, needs to be created rather carefully. It can be enlarged to suit you later as you move to tuning and find pitch of your instrument. The larger it gets the more volume it will produce. But caution at a certain point if too large the instrument  will loose its charm, and become too breathy ,while loosing its dynamic volume range, and we can’t have that.

Make a sketch with a pencil of the window on the gemshorn.

It is best to use a small drill bit to make a bunch of holes inside your sketch of the window. I say “inside” because you can file it larger to smarten it up later. And again use a small drill bit because a large one can be too brutal while delaminating the layers of horn inside and out. Ugh!

It is a good idea to make the window a modest size at this point because you might want to open it a bit vertically to obtain an ideal pitch (tone-wise) down the road.

After your window is cut and cleaned up with a file, you can look down the big open end of the instrument at your window. With some sandpaper wrapped on a dowel clean up any loose gnarly bits and switch to a fine paper to make things look really pro.

After that just keep looking down there and take a flat file about a half inch wide ,or smaller, depending on your gemshorn's size and start filing a flat surface on the upper inside.

Either side of the filing should line up with the width of your window. File only enough to create a very flat plane without cutting away too much horn. This can be tweaked using a small flat file later. 

Take that file and a very fine saw blade to start cutting the fipple on the lower outer surface of the wind way.

Fipple, and gemshorn are  words my computer does not recognize, this only enhances our pioneering spirit as we move ahead.

This operation should create a wedge shaped indentation, starting with the outside surface suddenly,  but subtly  travelling down to the inside surface. This plane should be very uniform and flat.

Now put on the Gemsmen album and relax, and hopefully get inspired to carry on to the more mysterious, alchemy part of the adventure.

When the plaster has cooled down after it’s isothermic  reaction, and it is room temperature to touch carefully pull the string straight up and out. It’s a great idea to wait a couple of hours to let it cure thoroughly.

For an alternative to plaster I have used polymer modelling clay very carefully heated to cure with a paint stripping gun used at a safe distance.

Anyhow either way you are now holding “the All Mighty Block”.

Pull the clay or plastic strip you put in the windway channel out and put the block back in the horn, with a pencil mark the either side of the windway onto the plaster. Pull out the plaster and dig out a chunk of clay from the top of the area where it meets the wind way and mark the plaster similarly.

Pop out the plaster and now carefully using the fine fine saw blade and flat file start creating a recess similar to the wind way cur in the horn. The game here is to make this very flat and precisely the same depth all the way from the window to where your mouth will end up later.

Sitting the block into the upper part of the horn( actually it won’t fit anywhere else of course) you might notice the block settles a little lower relative to where it did after pouring and curing for awhile. We will deal with that later.

After using a very fine saw blade, files and even a table top belt sander  remove plater and keep checking in on how it is settling.

The ideal time to work on the plaster removal  is definitely after twenty four hours of curing.

As you hack and sand away keep the inside block facing on a 5 degree angle so the plaster is a bit shorter at the back  of the block.

Stop hacking away about a tiny bit over a third of an inch below  the top edge of the windway. Getting the block in and out of the horn remains crucial till the very last gemshorn making so popping the block out has to be done without damaging the sharp fipple edge. I push a dull butter knife into the window and lift without using the edge of the fipple as a fulcrum. Sometimes getting a helpful passerby to simultaneously pull on the string. Often I have used my teeth. Don’t tell my dentist.

Then this next bit is pretty much a Baroque recorder trick, you can file ,very carefully , a forty five degree angle edge, a surface that should barely be a 16th of an inch. Start with even less and test.

Put the block back into the horn, stuff in some clay to create a good seal around the perimeter of the block. That can be more practically and cosmetically addressed later. 

Now blow, breathe life ,into your newborn horn. There will be a musical sound. and it will be pretty much the lowest note your horn will play. If it is slightly higher than your target that is good. If it is lower you can stuff clay into the instrument way down to the very bottom.

Other tricky stuff involves drilling a tuning hole at the back of the instrument  and even drilling down into the pointy end from inside to increase the void's size.

And your other trick is to carve away some of the plaster  inside lower end of the block carefully avoiding coming close to your beautifully crafted chamfered edge.

So once you are done getting something you want to start drilling. When I say what you want, it might mean allowing a fingering and scale you might find in the family of penny whistles or recorders.

Or you can enjoy playing in a relative scale which was pretty prevalent in the Renaissance. Pitches where all over the place as long as they worked similarly to your band mates.

Penny whistles can be low D, B  flat, C, D, G etc.

Our band's instruments are from bass up. G, D, F, and C the soprano.

The soprano in our case  is interesting because it is capable of getting down to C because it offered that to me while I made it so It is played like a C recorder, but our Soprano,Dean, can get it up to F ,not so much a tribute to my skill as to Dean might be an alien .

It is also the instrument is pretty narrow and long compared to most gemshorns, which makes it behave more like a soprano recorder.

Back to the holes. So after you have figured out the scale you want to play and fiddled with the ideal notes of your scale, it is “start drilling” time. But first a note on finger position.

You might notice that in our photos finger positions on the gemshorns can look pretty wild along with the size of the holes, kind of like a sister instrument, the ocarina. Finding a comfortable position for your fingers is very  crucial. You don’t want to start feeling around for sound holes while playing at Carnegie Hall or at a funeral.

So finding that spot is very crucial. And it is important that you do not get finger holes to close to the window. So keeping them close by widening the holes can avoid that.

Also start small and clean up inside and out as you go. Some crap around the holes can produce a querulous sound. Of course you might want that...  Maybe a sound track for a horror film or video game?

So go slow from the bottom up trying to keep from the upper end of the instrument. Pitch can be fiddled with by size of the  hole.

Very important that you always want to be keeping the notes a little higher in pitch as you go up the scale. This can be corrected at the end of your final tuning.

Two finger holes can be very close to being almost side by side on a gemshorn. The upper pitched hole can simply be larger to produce the desired note. The larger the hole the higher the pitch.

Go slow, and remember your incidentals will likely not be cross fingered like a recorder. So I hate to say you need to keep going and deal with that later.

Another trick for tuning is using sculpting wax found at foundries ( how about that!)I also find it at sculpture supply places. It is called microcrystalline wax and is made from boiled beetle shells in the process of making shellac. The beetles are called lac beetles,

shell -lac , no kidding!

It can be used to modify the tuning holes. It hardens but can be squished and reformed. It is a traditional technique for tuning Renaissance wind instruments.

Your instrument will change its sound and hole size as it goes the way of all that lives, and dies. So re-tuning is crucial and letting the instrument warm up before playing will reduce frustration.

As you drill and tune you will find the instrument is getting lower in overall pitch. And yet another thing, your gems horn IS a microtonal instrument, which means, after a while, playing with other people you will eventually  play harmonies that are not possible on most modern instruments.

You will find the glory of “just intonation”. Bach will smile.

And you will find that G# and Ab are not the same note.