Howdy,

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I'm looking to get as accurate of a tuning of some metal conduit pipes as possible. I've got an equation that works to find the fundamental from this textbook THE PHYSICS OF MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS by David Lapp. I've attached a picture of the equation and the breakdown of the variables, but specifically "m" seems to be a bit arbitrary after the first fundamental--everything past the decimal place seems to get dropped after the fundamental. (v is the speed of sound in the pipe's material, and Fn is just the frequency (f) and the specific overtone (n, with 1 being the fundamental)

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I'm wondering if there's a more specific number anyone knows of that I should use for calculating harmonics--Right now I'm getting meaningfully different harmonics from the pipes I'm cutting than I should be using the math in the textbook.

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Any advice here is great.

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I recently bought a Lyre harp. After playing around with it for a while, I removed the strings it came with and did some work on it to fix some minor issues I came with. While unstrung, I restrung it with some 20lb fishing line to see how it sounded.

I found the notes E4-C5 were good. Higher than that and the strings started snapping, and lower than that and there were volume issues (so loose, the strings were not giving much sound). That said, I found that for the notes I could get, I rather liked the look and sound of nylon strings. Looking around, I am having trouble finding reputable manufacturers for Nylon lyre harp strings. I would love to make my own.

I was wondering if anyone had insight on what sizes/weights of string work for the ranges of notes G3-A5?

Hello I wanted to ask if anyone knows what kind of wire I must use to vibrate for a diy piezo instrument all the wires I found at my local stores just bend and don't return to it's original form so they are not suitable

Hi peeps... got a question....

I have 6 cardboard tubes that are quite long, maybe 7feet, and maybe a 2inch radius, I haven't measured yet. I want to make a pentatonic scale set of pipes out of them for the kids I work with to bat with table tennis paddles. What's the formula for making musical pipes .. in a pentatonic scale? As in, how do I work out how long to cut my tubes in relation to their diameter and/or thickness to get the required notes, say in A major? Thanks!

Where can I get the appropriate thickness of shielded copper wire? What should I ask for in stores, and what is the average cost?

Not made any DIY instruments yet but I had an idea. I have a few unused cheap acoustic guitars laying around and so I thought about adding a kalimba to a guitar body and then have some sympathetic strings like a sitar. Do you think the kalimba attached to the body would resonate the strings? Has anyone seen this done before?

hello!

i am in the planning stages of building a Ztar-like midi controller for myself
i've worked out the multiplexers, how to make inputs work, the code, the 3d modelling, all of that
but i cannot work out how best to do the fret buttons

the idea is: have a ~485.77 x 58mm "fretboard" cut into 144 equal rectangles and then have a button in there that is big enough to be a target and that sticks out enough to be able to get a good press on it

but i am not sure how to go about this in terms of style of button, if i should have tactile switches or membrane, if it would be a better idea to use custom button caps, if i should do a 2 buttons per position etc. and was wondering if anyone here has ever done anything similar and has any insight or resources about it?

cheers

Hello! I am trying to build a woodwind instrument. Iam not sure if it is a saxophone or a clarinet, because :it has a 3D printed alto saxophone mouthpiece, and it's body is a cylindercal pvc pipe. This is the basic idea of the instrument. The pipe is 32mm in diameter, and 1 meter in length(so far). I would like some ideas on how much should I cut from the pipe? About the holes, which is the most important part of the whole thing: First question: in general how many holes do I need to drill in order to have a full, chromatic, 12 tone equal temperament scale on the instrument? I want to have simple holes like on a recorder, I am not trying to make a complex mechanism. What about an 'octave hole'? I found a couple websites called "clarinet or whistle hole calculator" or something like these. It would be nice if someone could sugest a method or a website on how to do these calculations! I found this one which for me looks very linear, simple and good, would it work with my instrument? https://meganzahniser.com/zahniser.net/physics04/MrZ/WhistleCalculator.html My understanding is that, you don't actually need a separate hole for every note in the scale (#,b) you can get the sharps and flats from covering only half of the hole, and techniques like this?

I'm planning on making a shamisen from a box and some other things so i wondered what do you guys use

What kind of options are there here? The only things i can think of are the pan flut and the harmonica, which both have a relatively specific 'niche' musically speaking and only fit with certain other instruments and in certain musical styles. I wish there were more instruments you could manipulate with only your mouth because it means you can use your hands to play a second instrument at the same time.

Maybe something that amplifies and changes the timbre of a whistle? Like whistling with your mouth?

I've been looking into learning piano, however I don't really have the budget nor want to spend the money into one, so I think I'll just make one myself.
I have a raspberry pi Pico leftover, and a bunch of keycaps, my plan is to have it be shaped like a MIDI piano and read like a keyboard, however I'm not sure how to have the activation and feel of the keys to be "piano like".
Also, sorry if I messed up any of the more technical terms on this, as I know next to nothing and find it pretty confusing.