I waffled between one and two stars for a while but since an instrument is pretty useless if you can’t play music on it, ended up with just the one.

Context: I bought this mizmar hoping to play it with a middle-eastern percussion & dance ensemble. I will be the only melody instrument, so don’t have to worry about matching pitches with any other instruments. The music is middle-eastern (I am _not_ trying to play a Western diatonic Aolian scale here) and I wanted something more authentically Turkish than the recorders and crumhorn which I have now. “Real” shawms cost thousands of dollars if you can find them at all.

The positive: it was delivered extremely quickly. I appreciate that! One star for the quick delivery!

I soaked the reed and inserted it and was able to get a nice loud squawky shawm sound – the tone is great and it was easy and fun for me to play.

The rest of it is not great.

The holes are all the same size and equidistant apart, which is suspect. It looks like they were drilled to look pretty rather than to create any sort of scale. It does look pretty. And it does not play any sort of scale.

The bottom five notes (with constant breath pressure) span a total of a major third; roughly e to g-sharp above middle c. There aren’t really any half steps or whole steps. Above that, removing fingers from holes does not produce any different pitches. There is not one tune that I know of, Western or Eastern, that can be played within a major third.

The problem with the upper holes might have something to do with the internal construction. The top section comes off to reveal an attached pipe-like extrusion of wood which goes down into the main section, with two areas cut out for the thumb and finger holes. (I should note mine was wrapped with masking tape- I assume this was to get it to fit snugly.) I had to rotate this to get the thing to play at all – at first the wood was blocking off the top holes. However, even with the top in the right place, placing fingers on/removing them from the upper holes doesn’t change the instrument’s pitch. It’s possible cutting off the internal-tube-thing would help, but I don’t want to do that because I’m planning on returning it.

There are three sets of “tuning holes” at the bottom. Leaving these open or taping them off had no effect.

I would not recommend this instrument for anyone who needs to play a recognizable melody. It was kind of fun to just noodle around on for a few minutes, but it was so limited in pitch that it’s useless to me.

I like Mid-East, and I will buy from them again – I don’t have a problem with the company at all. This instrument was just not much use for playing music.

Edit: Added another star for easy return.