I’ve got these huge long pipes that they bury in the roadsides to carry away our debris and I’ve been half thinking of doing something musical with them for a while so last night as I’m winding down from the good vibe energy transmitted to me during performance I was looking on the ‘net for the math involved in where to put holes in pipes to make them play notes.
Everything I found, calculators and stuff, was for itty bitty flutes and stuff but I reckoned I could use them to factor things up by ten or twenty or whatever, it’s always only about scale after all. But then I found something that listed the speed of sound and frequencies starting from C(0) and the lengths of the wavelengths. You’ll find the table here
Basically it’s just about the speed of sound divided by the frequency then halved to give the mid point of the wavelength and thats where you note will lie. Then the hole size, as far as I can understand, is dependant on the interior diameter of the tube and making is bigger raises the pitch as well as having a hole a specific size and lifting it, alike some saxophone holes which are raised above the body while some are into the body.
So the idea is to place a speaker on the end of this tube and play white noise into it and then tune it up using the fact that white noise contains all the frequencies and the holes will boost specific frequencies over the others similar to a tuned drum which is usually white noise.
I found another website page about the maths of this and as usual instead of just explaining how to do it the boffins were just interested in how many maths calculations they knew. The underlying principals are really straight forward so why does one have to cut through all the chest puffing to find the simplicity underlying all verbosity.
Guess who really knows what the speed of sound is at sea level and at the medium temperature for a specific season?
So what I’ve kinda figured out is a pipe about 2meters long tuned to A minor and C major diatonic and having the holes out of PVC or aluminium pipe coming out on the radius line and tuning them up then having caps on them that are actuated by foot pedals. I’d most probably play voice into them, through a speaker, then have a mic at the outer end and amp that to play a speaker as a plate reveb below or above it all so this may be my biggest instrument so far. Voice because there were two guys last night doing vocal stuff and it’s about time I worked that way given it’s the most accessible instrument we all have and the most capable of a myriad of different sounds, even mine with about 1/2 an octave.
This stuff was my first option but then I realised I’ve had this lying about for ages.
The aluminium will be much easier to attach things to, and more precise, and I’ve been meaning to try out some aluminium brazing rods I bought at the KUmeu Hot Rod show a few years ago.
Ha ha, don’t get so distracted you forget to keep clearing out the carport…
But yeah what a cool instrument. I guess it’d be near the register of a bass guitar?
The low E1 on the bass is 42Hz and a B1 below that on a five string is one note above C(0) so I guess it’s the lowest on a piano. Carports cleaned out and the progress payment invoice is in so until I’m paid i’m on a stop work but I may get into it tomorrow anyways. Me and my good friend Shaun are coming down to Raglan this saturday. Anything you need picked up in town?
Do you have a recording of it?
Hey Sam, I haven’t made it yet. It’s preliminary stages where I’m getting together the odds and ends to build it. I have the idea first then do a little study to see whether it’d possibly work then I figure out how to make it and start bringing together the ingredients… so no I haven’t been able to record it as of yet.