Baking bamboo produces a very pleasant aroma, somewhat similar to the sweet smell of baking cookies. I know one Pan Flute maker who deep fries his bamboo in oil, like making French fries, but in my opinion the bamboo is somewhat brittle if you use this process. All in all, baking bamboo in an oven is the way to go, and is directly analogous to the kiln drying of wood. Be forewarned that the bore diameters of the pipes usually shrink by just a little bit by about a quarter of a millimeter or so, as the residual moisture leaves the bamboo. Occasionally, a piece of bamboo will crack during baking, but this is actually quite rare; sometimes, small cracks or fissures may appear in a bamboo pipe after baking, but in my experience, these small cracks or fissures do not widen or go anywhere after baking, the bamboo is pretty much stabilized., Step Four: Pipe Selection To conciliate this last passion with music I made a pan flute, an ancient instrument belonging to various cultures. Engineering:Kids have the opportunity to build and design their own instrument. First, the single slat of the bottom pipe receives a layer of glue as it is placed onto the end of the Pan Flute Mold, with the right tilt to it. Then, the second pipe up from the bottom is firmly placed next to it, and, after placement, its uppermost slat receives a layer of glue, with the third pipe up placed firmly on the mold adjoining it. This process repeats on up the scale, until you get to the top pipe, which receives no glue of its own, but is merely adjoined to the glued upper slat of the pipe below it. The coat of glue that the uppermost slat of each pipe receives is to be moderate not too thick, and not too thin, for the best results. My preferred method of applying the glue is the old fashioned way with the fingers although you are free to try other methods of glue application. It is also pretty much essential that all the pipes be glued together in one sitting, because there is bound to be at least a little warping of pipes as the glue dries, and gluing all the pipes together in one sitting, within the space of a half an hour or so, assures that a consistent, uniform warping will occur throughout the instruments entire span. The possibility of excess or undue warping can be reduced or eliminated by a thorough and precise fitting of the slats of all adjoining pipes before assembly, so that all slat surfaces are thoroughly flush and flat to one another. Let the glue dry for at least 12 hours before proceeding further. amzn_assoc_search_bar = "true"; Keep practicing and learn to play a song with . 4 years ago. File also the section to make it planar, especially if you use an handsaw. How we can do that? Bamboo is quite hard as far as woods go. However, it has one primary weakness, which is a tendency to split or crack easily along the length of its grain. And so, bamboo dealers will not and cannot guarantee that the bamboo poles they sell you will never crack. That is mainly because the poles you get at a bamboo dealer are not perfectly cured or dried and its the drying process, particularly if it happens unevenly throughout the pole, that creates the torque and tensions that lead to cracking. Moister, more humid climates are generally the most friendly to bamboo, because they allow the natural drying process to proceed at a more gradual, even pace, whereas dry climates are notoriously hard on bamboo, provoking cracking. Wind is another pesky environmental factor that can provoke cracking in bamboo. To prevent cracking in bamboo, I have found that thoroughly drying the bamboo by baking it slowly in an oven at carefully controlled temperatures is the best way to go. This process is similar to the kiln drying of fine hardwoods. After the bamboo is well baked, it virtually never cracks. Be sure to print out the free music recording sheet so they can record their very own songs! Any ideas? I'm kinda strange guy. )/ 4* frequency (in Hz? This method only works when you can also open the ends, because the note produced is noticeably different if the end is open or closed. We cannot start making something if we don't have anything to start with. However, reaching the central tubes with your finger can be difficult, so again finding a way to keep closed all holes and open them simultaneously is a great idea. 6 years ago, So if you look at the general theory, L = v/4f from standard physical principles. 8. Stylistically and aesthetically, there are several possible variations in the designing of Pan Flute frames. Although Basswood is the traditional material for making Pan Flute frames, a flexible tree branch, of Willow or some other soft, pliable wood, can also be used for the front and back strips for those who want a very natural feel and look. Or, the front and back strips can be eliminated altogether, just reinforcing the instrument with successive laminations of thin Basswood, hardwood veneer or thin plywood on the instruments bottom surface. If the right pieces of bamboo or sculpted wood should be unavailable for the end pieces, then molding them out of epoxy putty and rasping or sanding them off smooth later is also a possibility. The styling variations are virtually endless, and the aesthetic possibilities of using exotic woods and other materials can also provide great artistic and creative possibilities. Just remember that structural considerations of strength and reinforcement should be satisfied before you start to consider aesthetics. 1. My local store sells only 1 or 2 m long tubes, and with 3 short (1 m) tubes you can do every pipe. Apply glue to the back of the lolly stick and carefully place on top the straws, making sure it touches every straw. Choosing a Beginner Pan Flute The pan flute is not particularly difficult to learn. Try using your Super Easy Pan Flute by blowing across the top of the straws while moving the pan flute back and forth. That way, they can find out which material makes a better sound. When the glue is dry remove the external carboard with a knife, a scalpel or a pair of scissors. In slatting, slats are created by flattening out the lateral sides of the pipes in order to give them a flat surface along which they can be glued to their neighbors. The bottom pipe is slatted only on one side where it interfaces with the pipe above it and the top pipe is also slatted on only one side where it interfaces with the pipe below. All the intervening pipes are slatted on both sides laterally. Because the pipes of the Pan Flute are assembled in a curved or arched fashion, the slats you cut on the sides of the pipes cannot be perfectly parallel they must be inclined ever so slightly inwards towards the players side. Getting the right degree of inclination from parallel is part of the fitting process. The initial cutting of the slats is usually done by whittling away the lateral sides of a pipe with a wood carving knife, although I have on occasion used a small chisel although I dont recommend it, and now use whittling exclusively. After the initial cutting of the slats, the slats are then deepened and fitted more precisely with those of the neighboring pipes; this is usually done either by using scraping blades, or by scraping with the edge of a triangular or half-round rasp. This is the perfect activity to accompany a lesson on the science of sound, our five senses, or music. As I mentioned before, the speed of sound depends on a lot of factors, like altitude, temperature, composition of air, and so on. You may not take images or content from this site without written permission. My panpipe is wooden and no doubts it is not elastic one :) To play a semitone I change only the angle from which I blow (and maybe also cover the hole a little bit by a bottom lip). It seems to me that there's no error at all. By bending the pipes, you are exploiting the slightly elastic nature of the material (be careful not to stretch too much and cause the resultant tension to shatter a brittle pipe! This time, since the whistle was less than 40 cm long and the sum of lengths now is more than 295 cm, I've decided not to sand it. Start with the longest tube at 17.5 cm and the shortest at 8.5 cm. I know you've already provided the end result, but I need to know how to get there because this is for a school project. How to make a pan flute - YouTube 0:00 / 16:01 How to make a pan flute Radu Nechifor 1.84K subscribers Subscribe 2.8K 202K views 1 year ago About 12 hours of work in 15 min. As a math student I love Mathematica, so I will use it. davido@fourwindsflutes.com. My son (just turned 6) has been very keen on making homemade books recently. 2. Next place the middle length straw right in the center. In order to have the right acoustical proportions and response, the narrowest part of a pipes bore needs to be its upper rim, with every part of the bore below it being at least that width, if not slightly wider but never narrower. If the middle or lower parts of a pipes bore should be narrower than the bore diameter at its top end, the pipes tone will sound false or glassy, and there will be instability of pitch and/or tone quality. And the octave-and-a-fifth produced by overblowing a pipe will fall flat of the true fifth. Although most species of bamboo produce pipes whose bores are narrowest at their top end or perfectly cylindrical, some species of bamboo, most notoriously Black Bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) will often be narrower at their bottom ends in their natural state. If this should be the case, the bore needs to be widened at the pipes bottom end with a rat tailed file, and the bore delicately engineered to produce a perfectly cylindrical camber or one that is slightly wider at the bottom end. Doing this straightly and precisely is easier said than done, and takes a lot of painstaking precision. It is a good idea to precision measure the pipe bores at their top and bottom ends with calipers., Step Seven: Slatting and Fitting the Pipes Measure Your Pipes Use the same dimensions for the straw pan tubes. The n is the number of semitones between the note we want and the A4. Be sure to head over and check out all the other creative ways to encourage a love of science, technology, engineering, art and math in kids! I've noticed that if you have a round bulb with a hole it is possible to play an octave range by just blowing from different angles and making the hole smaller by covering it with your bottom lip. I'm Chelsey, a former teacher and parent living on the central coast of California. It needs to have one end open, and the other end closed by a joint. Practice making sounds with your flute byresting the tops of the straws on your lower lip and blowing across them. They were perfect for younger children to make and use, and the kids got lots of fine motor practice decorating their pan flutes with yarn. Is there any tips you can give us?Thanks,Julian, 4 years ago If doing the 8 straw method, youll obviously need longer strips of cardboard and tape described in the steps below. Step Twelve: Oiling and Finishing the Pipes The Pan Flute would be crafted whit 6 bamboo: three on the top, two on the medium and one on the last box of the crafting table. Please its very important that I have your name, or at least your sources so i can get their name. This is how we made our straw pan flutes, although you don't have to make them exactly as we did. Allow to dry. We can see this fact from two formulas in the first image. It is commonly known in folk music but originates from South America, where ancient Amazonic tribes made the instrument from bamboo to provide melodies to their traditional tribal songs. Make a pan flute with both ends of the straws open and one pan flute where the straws all have one sealed end. If you want to add two or more holes for each tube, than the things became complex. A "virtual" pan flute made using those length and laying all tubes on a table is shown in the first pic. Blow air into the pan flute. Only a really good ear can sense a difference of a few cents. A key feature of the authentic Romanian style Pan Flute is that the pipes are slatted or flattened on their lateral sides and fastened together by gluing; this provides the player with a smooth, contiguous surface along which his or her lips can effortlessly glide from pipe to pipe. However, this step, this process of slatting and fitting the pipes to prepare them for gluing or assembly is also the most laborious and time consuming of the twelve steps involved in making a Pan Flute. For this reason, someone who wants to make a quick and dirty version of a Pan Flute will usually find an easier, quicker alternative to slatting, fitting and gluing, which is usually rafting the pipes together by tying them to splints. Although such instruments are perfectly playable, they are not the authentic Pan Flute, and do not have the potential for efficient playing or virtuosity that the true Pan Flute has. Slatting refers to the initial process of cutting the lateral slats in the pipes, whereas fitting refers to the process of getting the slats you have cut down to their requisite depths, and of precision fitting them to their neighboring pipes. To get an estimate of the sizes I'd need, I cut a piece of pipe about 12" long, put my finger tightly over one end and blew across the edge of the open end. Making these super easy pen pan flutes is perfect for any lesson about music or instruments. As with slatting the pipes before assembly, the key to a successful beveling of the pipes lies in consistency and uniformity. There shouldnt be any significant differences in beveling angle and depth from one pipe to the next, or between adjacent pipes all should be smooth, regular and even. If the pipe beveling should be irregular or uneven, the player will have to adjust his or her embouchure and blowing angle or technique from one pipe to the next, which doesnt make for very efficient and smooth playing. With smooth, uniform beveling of the pipes, all the pipes of an instrument will speak in sync with one voice. If we were to draw an analogy between the Pan Flute and the guitar, the beveling of the pipe rims is analogous to the fine adjustment of the height of the strings above the frets in a guitar both are crucial to determining a smooth, uniform playing action and response, whether it be with your fingers over the strings of a guitar, or with your lips and breath over the bamboo rims of the pipes of a Pan Flute. In beveling the pipe rims, I recommend that you proceed gradually, in stages, beveling and tweaking the pipes until you hit that sweet spot of perfect tone and playing response. Musical craft ideas can be a great learning activity for kids. With a Dremel tool you can speed up the process, unless you prefer doing it by hand, but be aware that you will change the sandpaper bit many, many times. The disposition of tubes, in my opinion, is not so good, because of my lack of memory. No. Hi again, i've re read some of the comments below and apparently the speed of sound needs to be in centimetres per second! The general rule is: if the discarded part starts with a digit less than 5 then you left all unchanged; if it starts with a digit greater or equal than 5, then add 1 to the last digit of the remaining part). Also on a side-note, I found an online free tuner for flutes and similar woodwinds, also works great for fine-tuning panpipes ;) Link is: http://www.flutetunes.com/tuner/, Seems I ran into a snag of some sort when calculating the pipe lengths, I'll work the formula step-by-step for the pipe above the A @ 440, hopefully you can spot my screw-up. Press down firmly. Copyright 2023 Buggy and Buddy. For example, a closed tube that produce an A4 (440 Hz) is 18.84 cm long. Thats fine too and much easier for younger children.). This activity can be done with just a few basic materials: Straws (paper or plastic) Tape Scissors Decorations (optional) Both paper and plastic straws will work for this activity. Also make sure to add a millimeter of between section, because the handsaw is less precise that a tube-cutter. OK, then. 13 drinking straws (You might not really need all 13 straws. But we can take advantage of physics! Variables: L - length of pipe - wavelength d - diameter of pipe Calculation: L = /2 - (0.4) (d) #3 Measure and cut your straws the length of the eight wind columns ( L) you calculated. Take the thing you want to use to close the end and close the end. The numbers should, Before I forget it, here's the link to the awsome. What can you make with pan flute in Little Alchemy 2? This time we know the frequency (if you don't then go to the second step). Do = 8.5 cm. We need to arrange them in a practical way, so we start by taking all "white" tubes, e.g. This is such a simple science activity, yet it teaches kids so much! Ti = 9 cm All the ends of the straws should line up about 3/4 inch over one edge of the cardstock. This whole matter of pipe beveling is not only a highly individual one; it is also quite delicate, sensitive and complex. And so, I will devote a whole article to discussing the different styles of pipe beveling, and the pros and cons of each. With this in mind, I will now proceed, quite simply and directly, to tell you how I bevel my own pipes, in a step-by-step manner: The first step in anyones pipe beveling process is to file or sand the tops of the pipes absolutely flat. This provides a straight and steady baseline from which all subsequent beveling of the pipe rims can proceed. My preferred tool for doing this is a large flat rasp or bastard file; it is possible to mechanize the process with a belt sander, but care must be taken that the pipe tops are sanded very lightly, the minimum amount necessary to flatten the tops into a level surface. After this is completed, and a satisfactory level surface is thus created, the next step is to round off the outer rims of the pipes, both on their front and back sides make them nice and round. This will create the first smooth and comfortable surface against which your lips can glide easily. The other reason for rounding off the outer edges of the pipe rims is that bamboo splinters very easily, and if this is not done as a preventive measure, splintering is very likely to occur with further filing and beveling.. Place the longest straw on the tape first, near the left edge. Step-By-Step Process Step 1: Cutting The first step is to measure, mark and cut as accurately as possible. Pretty simple, uh? Study 1 to 8 CA Academy of Music 2.03K subscribers Subscribe 1.1K 121K views 4 years ago Teach yourself Pan Flute Videos for Pan Flute beginners.. How to make a pan flute How to make smoking pipes from wood Pan Pipes 60K views Instrumentos Alternativos How To Make A Homemade PVC Flute It's cable reimagined No DVR space limits. Many thanks for the reply and further explanation :) Now I can get to calculating and building Once complete, I plan to upload a pic of finished panpipes ;), It did indeed :) Does the correction formula shown somewhere in comments section come into play, or is it a case of minor variations ? A pan flute frames own instrument 13 straws with the longest tube 17.5. To build and design their own instrument try using your Super Easy pen pan flutes is perfect any... Can find out which material makes a better sound have the opportunity to and. The sweet smell of baking cookies n't have anything to start with with pan flute by blowing the... 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