Musical Instrument Blog #2

Pan flutes produce their sound via air vibrating down hollow tubes of varying lengths and diameters. The pitch can be changed by blowing into a different sized tube. For this change in pitch to occur, the tube must either change in length, or in diameter. Because constructing a pan flute out of pipes with different diameters would be rather challenging unless one could find exactly the right internal diameters with identical outer diameters, I will be changing the lengths of the pipes. I plan on using PVC pipe for the pan flute because the other real option is wood or metal. Metal is expensive, and I imagine a bit more difficult to work with, and wood would probably not keep as well, so PVC is a good balance between accessibility and reliability. I plan on doing some research into how to properly building a pan flute as I am not a craftsman by any stretch of the word, so I figure it's best to know what I'm doing before I attempt said task. My only real outstanding question would be how can I figure out the proper dimensions of each tube without gratuitous amounts of guess work and wasted PVC pipe?