Instructions
You will need reeds or reeds that are fairly dry and intact. The length of the stem should be approximately 30 cm, and its diameter should be 1 cm. Prepare tools - a hacksaw, needle files, sandpaper, a burner, superglue and a sharp knife. Also, pick up a piece of durable material to make a flute.
Saw off the uneven edges from the found tube and sand them with emery cloth. Then use a knife or metal rod to remove the internal partitions of the stem.
Wrap a strip of sandpaper around a stick and, inserting the stick into the channel of the future flute, clean it. Before processing the pipe further, tightly wrap the edges of the reed or reed stem with strong threads to prevent the material from cracking.
Measure 2 cm from the edge of the flute and use a pencil to mark a rectangular outline of the hole for the whistle, 0.7 cm wide and 0.5 cm long. Carefully cut out the hole. After this, use a file to process the whistle of the pipe, giving its angle the correct slope. The whistle should be at a 45 degree angle.
From a separately prepared piece of wood, make an insert for the whistle, corresponding to the size of the diameter of the internal channel of the flute. The length of the insert should be such that the piece of wood starts at the outer hole of the flute and ends just in front of the rectangular hole of the whistle. Insert a piece of wood inside, coat it with super glue, cut off the excess, and then wait until it dries completely.
Turn on the tuner and blow the whistle to determine the tone. After determining the key, take your wood burning tool and burn a small hole where you plan to place the first hole of the flute.
Widen the hole by checking it with a tuner on the diatonic major scale. When the hole is wide enough to build on, move on to forming the next hole. If, when first tuning, the tonality of the pipe turned out to correspond to the note “D”, the first hole closest to the whistle will correspond to the note “E”, and the following holes will correspond to the notes “F-sharp”, “Sol”, “A”, “B”, "C sharp" and "D".
Make another small hole on the back of the flute. After making a complete adjustment of all the holes, clean the inner channel again with sandpaper wrapped around a stick.
Sources:
- Making a Native American Love Flute
Many people dream of learning to play musical instruments, but few people think that you can not only learn to play an instrument, but also create it with your own hands. This is especially true for traditional folk instruments, which, despite their simplicity of design, sound beautiful and clear. An example of such an instrument is a pipe or pipe, the design of which has not changed since ancient times.
You will need
- To make a flute, take a reed or reed 30 cm long with an internal diameter of 1 cm. To tune the finished flute, prepare a tuner, as well as a hacksaw, a needle file, a wood burner, glue, sandpaper, and a sharp knife. Separately, prepare a block of wood for carving the whistle.
Instructions
Align the edges of the tube and use a knife to remove the internal partitions. Clean the inner tube by wrapping sandpaper on a wooden stick. Measure about two centimeters from one edge of the tube, make a mark and cut a rectangular hole for the whistle, 0.7 cm wide and 0.5 cm long.
The diameter of the insert must correspond to the diameter of the internal channel. Before inserting the piece of wood into the tube, wrap the edge tightly with strong thread or string and tie it off. This is necessary to prevent the material from cracking. Insert it inside, covering it with glue. Align the outer edge and saw off the excess. Finish the bevel of the edge of the pipe with a needle file.
Yours is almost ready. Now all that remains is to set it up and make the remaining holes. Blow into the flute in front of the tuner to determine its key. The pipe has a diatonic scale - adjust all its holes accordingly.
If the key of the pipe (its main sound) corresponds to the note “D”, then the subsequent hole should correspond to the note “E”. Use a wood burner to burn a small hole near the whistle hole. Check the sound of the new hole with a tuner and continue to expand it until it produces a clear “E” sound. Adjust the next hole to the note “F sharp”, the third hole to the note “Sol”, the fourth to the note “A”, the fifth to the note “B”, the sixth to the note “C sharp”, and the last hole, located on the reverse side of the flute, tune again to the note "D". Re-sand the inner channel of the flute using sandpaper wrapped around a stick.
Video on the topic
Simple wind instruments exist in absolutely all nationalities, historians say. The more developed the ethnic group, the more complex their instruments, but the basis of almost any wind instrument is the traditional simple pipe. Everything else is just its modifications.
Instructions
The dudka is a reed wind instrument that has been considered a Russian folk instrument since ancient times. The traditional pipe is a cylindrical hollow tube made of wood or reed. In general, deciduous tree species are used to make this instrument, and only pine is used among coniferous trees. Modern masters of making musical instruments use material such as ebonite.
Several holes are drilled on the surface of the pipe to regulate the flow of blown air; the number of holes can be varied and depends on its length. To obtain a through hole along the entire length of the pipe, it is drilled or burned out.
The flute, in our case the flute, is an ancient wind musical instrument. The appearance of the prototype flute dates back almost 35 thousand years ago, making it one of the oldest instruments. And the flute we are familiar with became known in Egypt five thousand years ago, and is still the main instrument in the Middle East. Folk or folk rock cannot do without it. Those who are familiar with fantasy worlds know that the pipe is one of the favorite instruments of the elves. But in our reality, playing the flute will brighten up winter evenings. And you can make this wonderful tool in less than an hour.
For production we will need:
Wooden tube (reed, bamboo, reed, etc.)
A piece of wood or cork
Drills for 2; 4.2 and 6 mm and something you can drill with (screwdriver, drill, engraver)
Needle file
Hacksaw blade for metal
Flute barrel
The first step is to select the body of the pipe. Any hollow tube will do, be it reed, reed or PVC plumbing pipe. I found a great bamboo tube.
It is not completely round, the internal diameters are 23 and 25 mm. I sawed off 400 mm, this is how long the flute will be. Although I needed to saw off 300 mm, as usual I mixed everything up.
At one end we make two holes close together, the boundaries of which should be located at a distance of 40 mm from the edge. I first marked the holes with a 2mm drill and then drilled them out with a 4.2mm drill. Next, use a file to make a rectangular hole, with a length of 5 mm and a width of 7 mm. And we grind one side of the window at an angle of 30-45 degrees, all with the same file. This is the whistle hole. The sharpness and smoothness of the bevel will determine the sound quality.
Next, we make six game valve holes (the markings were made earlier). The first hole will be 60 mm from the bottom end of the flute, the rest in 20 mm increments. Again we make holes with a 2 mm drill and drill out with a 6 mm drill. In general, these drills were right for me. The setting principle is this: the larger the hole, the higher the sound, so you can start drilling from 4 mm. The main thing is not to overdo it, because it won’t be possible to reduce the hole. Drilling should begin from the bottom hole. Using a tuner, we will tune the pipe in natural major. We drill the bottom one and blow it, tune it using the tuner, then drill the second one. The second hole is rebuilt when the first one is open, and so on. You should get the following series of notes: A sharp, A, G, F, D sharp, D, C.
We sand all the holes with sandpaper, but very fine, so as not to damage the natural color of the bamboo.
Whistle
Now, from the end where the hole for the whistle was made, you need to make a bevel. From the edge downwards we retreat 4-5 mm, and to the left 40 mm. We make the bevel with a hacksaw blade for metal.
Now we make a sleeve from a piece of wood or cork. First I gave the piece of wood a round shape, then I made the same bevel as on the flute itself. I found the wood to be soft, so I did everything with a knife. You need to make a flat edge on top, 1 mm away from the edge, as in a regular whistle. You can’t make a bevel that is too large, there simply won’t be a whistle. We insert the sleeve into the “body”.
I made the sleeve too small. It should fit tightly into the flute and sit there securely. I had to glue all the gaps with hot glue. I coated the sleeve itself with PVA glue before inserting it into the flute.
This completes the making of the flute. You can already get the first sounds. Again, this is ideal for learning. Since a good flute costs a lot, it should not be confused with a recorder. But our homemade flute has an acceptable sound, and the manufacturing process took half an hour. The instrument can be decorated to your taste, but for me bamboo looks good anyway.
There are types of musical instruments that you can make yourself at home. One of these instruments is the flute. This is a great DIY option for those who like to make functional and crafty things.
To make a flute you will need:
- pencil;
- electrical tape;
- machine;
- rubber tape;
- vice;
- hacksaw;
- PVC pipe (length 38 cm, internal diameter 2 cm. Another length you can take a pipe such as the length of a person’s arm together with the forearm);
- cap for PVC (depending on the diameter of the pipe).
Flute making process
Step one. Creating a blank
The main material for creating a flute with your own hands will be a PVC tube. You need to cut a piece of suitable length. After this, you need to make markings where the holes will be located. This is the most important moment in making a flute, since its sound will depend on this parameter. It is also important to consider the diameter of the hole for the thumb; it should be larger than the others.
Step two. Drilling holes
Holes should be drilled using a machine. Thus, maximum operating accuracy is achieved. After this, the flute can be tested to see if it will sound. A plug for PVC pipes of a suitable size is installed on the other side of the pipe.
Step three. Flute coloring
For these purposes, you can use electrical tape of different colors or paint.
If you want to create several more flutes, then it is not necessary to use a template for these purposes. You can stretch a rubber band next to the flute and mark all the holes.
That's all, the flute is ready. It works very simply. When air enters the pipe, it is pushed away from the walls and exits through small holes. Due to the resulting turbulence, sound appears. And by closing certain holes, the player changes the tonality of the sound and this is how music is born.
To test the tube, you can play a test melody. Which specific holes to close and in what sequence are marked in the picture.
How unpredictable and ornate are the paths that lead us to life’s milestones! So my interest in the Shakuhachi flute came quite unexpectedly. What is even more unexpected (for myself) is what I want to offer you on this page. Namely, making a flute with your own hands from PVC. The Shakuhachi type flute is a fairly simple instrument, structurally speaking. If it could be made hundreds of years ago, now, having modern materials and tools, as well as means for calculations, anyone with such a goal can make a flute.
A PVC flute has a pleasant, deep, thoughtful, fairly strong sound (subject to all the recommendations outlined on this page). The nature of the timbre of PVC is of course different from babuk, it is no worse or better, it is just different. But for beginners, as well as for those who want to experiment with scales and keys, this is an excellent opportunity to realize their creative impulses. Besides everything, as has already been written a lot in other materials on PVC flutes, they are unpretentious to environmental conditions and can be a constant companion wherever you go. From my own experience, I can say that making a flute is no less enjoyable than actually playing it. This is already a game, this is already a sound, a melody of inspiration, aspiration realized in such a wonderful instrument as the Shakuhachi type flute.
Start
Having received my first flute (bamboo) in the key of F (Shakuhachi 1.5), I thought that this was not quite what I expected. It turned out that I ordered a flute before I figured out their sizes and tonalities. Oh, these sudden impulses of the soul!!! Well, okay, let's leave the lyrics for later. So, ordering a new flute was financially expensive, but I still wanted something more meditative. Thanks to Evgeniy's materials (), I became interested in the possibility of making a flute from a simple PVC pipe. “What, it’s inexpensive, accessible, you can experiment, it’s enough for the first time, and then, lo and behold, I’ll be able to buy a bamboo flute.” That's what I thought.
Practice?
Having purchased everything necessary, I proceeded to... What? For thoughts.
The fact is that the recommended flute sizes and hole locations varied greatly depending on the source. I am still more of a supporter of the European system of notes, and therefore the accuracy of sound, and therefore the accuracy of the size of the flute, is an important issue for me. This was especially felt after the first attempt (I still tried to use the recommended sizes) in the process of tuning the flute by cutting holes. I clearly noticed correlations between the holes, while I was adjusting one hole, the other immediately floated in tone, a little, but it floated. Bending the flute, of course, evened out the deviations of the notes, but all this seemed inconvenient.
Theory
If you want to do something, do it yourself.
I started by finding out about the resonance properties of air column oscillations. It turned out that the frequency of oscillations of the air column in a pipe open on both sides is equal to: the speed of sound divided by the length and divided by 2, and for a pipe closed on one side, divided by 4.
Having cut out a piece of pipe corresponding to the calculations and turned it out, I discovered that I had not hit the right note. The Shakuhachi flute is not a doubly open pipe and is not closed on one side! She is something “in the middle”. Empirically, it was possible to calculate the division coefficient; it is equal to 2.20031. Now my trumpets sounded exactly on the right note. But what to do with the holes?
Having calculated the holes according to the required frequencies (notes), it turned out that something was clearly wrong. It became clear that the position of the holes needed to be calculated differently, taking into account their diameter and, possibly, the thickness of the pipe wall. After all, the hole also forms a small pipe. I’ll omit the tedious descriptions of my ordeals in this field, although they really captivated me and were about to threaten to give birth to a “eureka”... The materials helped again, to whom I am very grateful!
Now it's practice
Pipe
In a plumbing store I came across a pipe with an internal diameter of 21 and a wall thickness of 5.4. It allows you to immediately grind utaguchi without additional, thickening attachments, which has a very positive effect on the aesthetic appearance of the flute.
Flute "2.9" in the key of F (F) with standard Minie tuning. Pipe 22.5 internal diameter, 6.7 wall thickness. The sound is deep and quite loud. The holes are located in places convenient for spreading. Grooves were made for the holes to reduce the wall thickness. Sound sample
Happy making and happy playing!!!
A self-made flute is a wonderful gift! She will give you many minutes filled with enthusiasm in attempts to blow out the sound! Especially when the subject heard and saw how they had just played it, and how wonderfully it sings, and how easy everything looks!!! ;-) I have already given away almost all the flutes, except those that I play myself, and the number of people who want them is not decreasing. Go for it!!!
Gift copies
From left to right:
1. Flute "1.8" key D(Re) with standard Minie tuning; Sound sample
2. Flute “2.0” in the key of C (C) with standard Minie tuning.
The flute (also called “nozzle” or “tsevnitsa”) is one of the types of longitudinal flute, common in Rus'. According to Slavic legend, Lel, the son of the goddess of love, played the flute. Therefore, it was believed that the pipe could awaken mutual feelings.
Materials and tools for making pipes
To make a wooden pipe with your own hands, we will need a fairly impressive arsenal:
- sandpaper
- small wooden sleeve (diameter 1.5 cm and length 4 cm)
- ruler
- pencil
- tuner
- small vise (not necessary, but much more convenient with them)
- something that can be used to drill (drill, drill, engraver) and drills of different diameters: from approximately 0.8 to 4.2 mm
- needle file
- semicircular incisor
- pair of clamps
- PVA glue
- two wooden blocks 30x2x1 cm.
Making your own pipes
First, we take wooden blocks and mark them. You need to draw the boundaries of the internal channel of the pipe; on one side of the bar this channel is 1.5 cm wide, and on the other, 1 cm, that is, the channel will narrow slightly towards the end of the pipe.
Now we clamp one of the bars in a vise and begin to cut out a semicircular channel. On my workpiece, the area that will need to be removed with a cutter is shaded.
Carefully and slowly remove the shavings, watching the direction of the wood fibers. They may not always go along the workpiece, so be careful, otherwise the cutter may go crooked.
We try to cut the channel to an even semicircle along its entire length. We do the same with the second block.
Once both halves are cut, you need to sand them. Using a piece of sandpaper we pass along the inner surface of the channel, achieving smoothness.
After sanding, we move on to the whistle. Having retreated 4 cm from the top edge of the workpiece (where the wide end of the channel is), draw a rectangle 5 by 7 cm, preferably exactly in the center.
Using a 4.2 mm drill, we make three holes close to each other, so that we get an oval window.
Now we take a file and bring the window to a rectangular shape, according to the markings made.
After this, use the same file to grind one side of the window at an angle of approximately 30-45 degrees. This is the most important part of the work: the sound quality will depend on the sharpness and smoothness of the edge.
It's time to connect the halves. We coat them with PVA glue and fold them, carefully aligning the channel. Press with clamps and leave to dry for a couple of hours.
When the glue dries, unscrew the clamps and take a knife. We cut off the top of the small wooden sleeve, about 1.5 mm, so that we get a flat, even edge. Look at the photo and everything will become clear.
After this, lubricate the bushing with glue and insert it from the upper end of the flute, forming a whistle. With the cut edge up, exactly to the edge of the whistle window.
We wait until the glue dries and take the knife. Carefully planing the workpiece, we give it a rounded shape, then smooth it with sandpaper.
To make it easier to play, we will make a cut at the back of the upper end of the pipe.
Now the fun part is the setup. Try blowing into the pipe, listen to the sound and check with the tuner. If you did everything carefully, you will get A sharp. This is the lowest sound that our pipe can produce.
In total we will have seven notes and six playing holes. Let's mark them: the very first hole will be 6 cm from the lower end of the pipe, the remaining holes will be in increments of 2 cm.
Armed with drills of different diameters, we begin setting up. The pipe is often tuned in natural major. This means that we should have the following series of sounds: A sharp - Do - Re - D sharp - Fa - Sol - A.
The general principle of tuning is this: the larger the hole, the higher the sound. Therefore, first we drill a very small hole and listen. If you need the sound a little higher, drill it out more. The main thing is not to overdo it, because making the hole smaller will not work.
We start drilling from the lowest hole. When it is configured, we move on to the second. The second hole is adjusted when the first one is open, and so on. That is, when you listen to sound from a hole, this very hole and all the holes below it must be open.
Well that's it! The flute is ready, you can start playing. And you can decorate it to your taste. I simply covered my pipe with stain.
