Peter Duggan wrote:
But that green one's got 3, 2 and 1 left-hand holes for fingers 1, 2 and 3... not user-friendly?
Yeah, that was just an experiment to see how a 6 hole design in the folded pipe might or might not work out... the first pipe had to get quite a bit longer in order to get the "top" 3 holes all into the 2nd pipe, which I don't like much... then those holes are in reverse order, so you'd need to be pretty "specially wired" to move back and forth between this fingering and a traditional whistle - but, tabor players are supposed to be drummers too, so.....
I finally got a couple of pipes that I'm happy with the response of, not sure if it's a coincidence that they're both Cs, an Alto and a Soprano, the Alto stays in 1st octave "recorder sound" pretty easily, and the Soprano will hold overblown 2nd octave notes easily, though it is a little tricky to keep in 1st octave on the bottom (C) note. For both, I found the biggest factor in making an easy to play pipe was making finger holes that sealed easily - leaky/rough holes really do make the pipe hard to play.