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Inventing Homemade Instruments
with Math and Measurement
Welcome to Phil and Sarah's page on making homemade musical instruments — where common household items are transformed into musical marvels using math and measurement! Specifically, we'll cover how musical instruments vibrate in a series of fractions called the harmonic series, and explain how to design your own homemade musical instruments by measuring length, weight/mass, and liquid volume. Lastly, we'll demonstrate how to play rhythmic patterns in a homemade percussion band, as well as two-part musical arrangements for the 2008 Science Olympiad "Sounds of Music" event!
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The garden hose plays the harmonic series. |
Instruments vibrate in fractions: Many instruments produce sound by vibrating a column of air inside a tube, e.g. flute, trumpet, and saxophone. As waves of air move inside a tube, they vibrate in wholes, halves, thirds, fourths, and fifths — fractions in the harmonic series. This series of harmonics can be played on a garden hose trumpet, a Whirly-tube, sports bottle straw, as well as any homemade flute or bugle. Phil's daughter, Sarah, demonstrates exactly how this vibrating column of air looks and sounds with her multimedia activity on the harmonic series. She also shows how these fractions, or harmonics, are produced with string instruments such as a violin or a guitar. In addition, you will see the scientific properties for each wave, and hear the sounds of each harmonic on a violin (string), pan pipes (closed-end tube), and with her trumpet (open-end tube). While you're there, be sure to check out the bugle calls!
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Harmonic Series with Strings and Tubes |
Shorter is Higher — Longer is Lower: Taking it a step further, students can change the length of this vibrating column of air by varying the length of a tube. As a tube gets shorter, it produces a higher pitch or frequency. This happens because sound waves can travel, or vibrate, a shorter distance faster than a longer distance. To see and hear how this works, check out Phil and Sarah's instrument making activities on didgeritubes, panpipes, melodic tube drums, and musical fraction tubes. These four activities allow students to change pitch by changing the length of a vibrating column of air inside a tube.
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Didgeritubes!
 (with Science Olympiad Update!) |
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Pan Pipes or Pan Flute
(with Science Olympiad Update!) |
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Melodic Tube
Drums
(with Science Olympiad Update!) |
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Musical Fraction Tubes |
Lighter/Smaller is Higher — Heavier/Larger is Lower: Higher and lower pitches can also be produced by changing an instrument's weight or mass. Students can easily demonstrate this principle by striking different sized flower pots, ceramic floor tiles, wooden and metal bars, as well as metal tubing. To see and hear how this works, check out Phil and Sarah's instrument making activity on a tubular glockenspiel. This activity allows students to change pitch by changing weight/mass. Since this activity uses metal tubing with a fairly consistent thickness, students can increase mass by increasing tube-length. More mass results in a slower/lower vibrating frequency, and less mass produces a faster/higher vibrating frequency.
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Tubular Glockenspiel
(with Science Olympiad Update!) |
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Less water is higher — |
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Water Bottle Xylophone |
Unifix Cube Drum Machine: Learn how to connect your knowledge of patterns and ratios to popular drum rhythms. With the Unifix Cube Drum Machine, you simply click on the cubes to make a pattern and press play — your Unifix Cubes will transform into a musical composition you can see and hear! You can also select between 16 cubes and 12 cubes, email rhythms to your friends, and play your patterns on six different homemade rhythm instruments, i.e., Tin Can Drum, Soda Can Shaker, Card-Comb Guiro, Fraction Tubes, Water Bottles, and large Melodic Tube Drums.
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Unifix Cube Drum Machine
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Musical Toolkit for the 2008 "Sounds of Music" event: If you would like to take your homemade instrument project to the next level, check out Phil and Sarah's Science Olympiad Songbook. It includes sheet music written in bass and treble clefs, play-along music tracks, and four different harmonizations for the required song that you can mix and match to design your own unique arrangement! Whether you're playing homemade instruments of your own design, or some of ours, this package will help you refine your performance and sound your best!
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Science Olympiad Songbook
("Sounds of Music" Toolkit for 2008!) |
