Wags o' th' tail :)

It's basically like a standard drone flute, but with three accompanying barrels instead of just one. It has four separate holes arranged in a square pattern in the mouthpiece end to allow for playing just one barrel, or a combination of two, three, or all four barrels. I can play two barrels on the same side, or even two on opposite corners by covering the other two holes with my lips. Similarly, I can play three barrels by covering the fourth hole with a lip. It seems that there are some fingering/note combinations that don't work quite as well as some, so I'll try to avoid those if I can remember to do so.

As you're playing the flute, the upper-left barrel is a five-hole Gm melody flute, the upper-right barrel has three holes for playing as a harmony drone, the lower-right barrel plays a drone in the minor third or fundamental (there's a hard-to-reach thumb hole on the underside), and the lower-left barrel plays only the fundamental drone. As such, if I play all four barrels with all holes uncovered, I get a chord of G, A#/Bb, D, and the G octave. One of the things that bothered me about the first of these flutes I was sent by the maker was that the harmony barrel was poorly tuned, which made every chord I'd play sound very dissonant and harsh.

I sent the first flute back to the maker/seller for a replacement or refund (he had the nerve to say that it was "a little out of tune, but not to the point of being unpleasant"...yeah, right). Since he apparently doesn't do refunds, I got a replacement flute with better tuning. There were still a lot of rough edges in the finger, mouth, and sound holes, and on the splitting edges, and the barrels still aren't completely in tune with each other, but it's turned out much better than the first one.