Projects

Pan flute

Summary

This is a classic pan flute made of Arundo Donax reed. In this page there is information about making tuning and playing this instrument.

How it sounds

The sound is mellow although not as full as some commercially bought pan flutes.

How to play

Air is blown perpendicular to the reed tubes in order to make sound. The technique is similar to playing the flute or making sound out of a glass bottle.

To succeed in making sound one should try blowing air tangent to one's chin. The head must remain upright. The flute or bottle or pan flute should then be positioned vertically on the chin.

Arundo Donax reed

This species of reed is native to the greater middle East (countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Iran ...). The pieces used in this project were harvested near a river in Greece. There is more information about Arundo Donax on its wikipedia page.

Tuning the flute pieces

The pieces of reed can be tuned by altering their length. The shorter a piece the higher in pitch is the note it produces.

Tying the flute pieces

After all the pieces of reed are tuned, they should be tied together on some short of chassis. There are different shorts of chassis used for pan flutes. The main idea is fixing the pieces together in order from longer to shorter (or from the most bass note to the most treble).

This instrument was tied with twine onto a couple pieces of reed positioned vertically to the pieces of reed that produce the notes.