Building a musical band
I really enjoyed this project. In this project Simon, Evelyn, Ryan, and I built a musical band, by making instruments from materials we found in the class room. We made a diddley bow, a clarinet and a chime piano. The diddley bow was made from wood, nails, and fishing wire. We made the clarinet out of PVC pipe, and a mouthpiece from a clarinet. We made the chime piano out of metal pipes, nails, and wood. My group was hard working, and very focused.
the pvc clarinet
Here is a picture of a PVC clarinet that we made.
We built this by cutting the pipes with a pipe cutter marking the finger holes with a pen, drilling the holes and put it together by fitting the pipes together and pushing the mouthpiece into the pipe.
After is was all put together, we tested the instrument by trying to play it. We encountered some issues and and had to make slight changes in the clarinet and so it would sound better. If we blew too hard it would squeak and too soft, it wouldn't make a sound, so we needed to work on fixing those issues.
We built this by cutting the pipes with a pipe cutter marking the finger holes with a pen, drilling the holes and put it together by fitting the pipes together and pushing the mouthpiece into the pipe.
After is was all put together, we tested the instrument by trying to play it. We encountered some issues and and had to make slight changes in the clarinet and so it would sound better. If we blew too hard it would squeak and too soft, it wouldn't make a sound, so we needed to work on fixing those issues.
the diddley bow
A diddley bow is a single stringed instrument, similar to a guitar. We made this diddley bow by affixing tensioned fishing wire between two screws on a board. By looking on the chart of 'The Physics of Musical Notes", we wrote one octave of 7 notes on the board of the diddley bow. We needed to adjust the tension of the string by tightening the screws, in order to play the right frequency.
the chime piano
Ryan made a chime piano that had 41 different sized pipes its really cool! He made it out of metal piping and wood. He made two levels for the white keys and black keys. It was tedious putting the nails on to put the pipes on because we didn't know how much we should drill them in and one of the drill bits was too large so one of the holes was too big, that was the only thing we had trouble with. Ryan did such a great job on his chime piano, that he played "Moonlight Sonata" on it!
physics concepts
Vibration: A ripple in the parts of a fluid or a solid whose balance has been disturbed.
Wave: A back and forth motion of vibration. it can be a transverse wave or compression wave.
Wavelength: The distance between wave crests.
Wave-speed: The speed at which a wave travels.
Period: The time needed for one complete cycle of vibration.
Amplitude: The maximum height of the wave crest.
Wave: A back and forth motion of vibration. it can be a transverse wave or compression wave.
Wavelength: The distance between wave crests.
Wave-speed: The speed at which a wave travels.
Period: The time needed for one complete cycle of vibration.
Amplitude: The maximum height of the wave crest.
calculations
TABLE
Notes C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E |
Chime Length (Algebraic Form)37.5*2^(32/24)
37.5*2^(31/24) 37.5*2^(30/24) 37.5*2^(29/24) 37.5*2^(28/24) 37.5*2^(27/24) 37.5*2^(26/24) 37.5*2^(25/24) 37.5*2^(24/24) 37.5*2^(23/24) 37.5*2^(22/24) 37.5*2^(21/24) 37.5*2^(20/24) 37.5*2^(19/24) 37.5*2^(18/24) 37.5*2^(17/24) 37.5*2^(16/24) 37.5*2^(15/24) 37.5*2^(14/24) 37.5*2^(13/24) 37.5*2^(12/24) 37.5*2^(11/24) 37.5*2^(10/24) 37.5*2^(9/24) 37.5*2^(8/24) 37.5*2^(7/24) 37.5*2^(6/24) 37.5*2^(5/24) 37.5*2^(4/24) 37.5*2^(3/24) 37.5*2^(2/24) 37.5*2^(1/24) 37.5*2^(0/24) 37.5*2^(-1/24) 37.5*2^(-2/24) 37.5*2^(-3/24) 37.5*2^(-4/24) 37.5*2^(-5/24) 37.5*2^(-6/24) 37.5*2^(-7/24) 37.5*2^(-8/24) |
Chime Length (Decimal Form)94.49
91.80 89.19 86.65 84.18 81.79 79.46 77.20 75.00 72.86 70.79 68.78 66.82 64.92 63.07 61.27 59.53 57.83 56.19 54.59 53.03 51.52 50.06 48.63 47.25 45.90 44.60 43.33 42.09 40.89 39.73 38.60 37.50 36.43 35.40 34.39 33.41 32.46 31.53 30.64 29.76 |
reflection
My group did really well with building our instruments. Ryan's turned out the best, because he is really gifted at playing music and engineering. Simon's clarinet worked pretty well. Building a wind instrument was a lot harder than we thought. The diddley bow was very fun to make. There are many things that went well during our project. We worked very well as a team, and everybody helped spend a lot of time building all of the instruments. I felt like cutting the pipes, drilling the holes, tightening the string and all the details going into building the instruments went smoothly. The things that went poorly were that we had a hard time coming up with what instruments to build, and deciding on what songs to sing.
I still feel that I'm nervous at giving presentations so I will still work on that, and make sure I have a bigger part in the next presentation. I enjoy music very much but I'm not sure that I am very good at building an instrument.
The peaks were that my team worked very well together. Everyone had strengths that contributed to the group. I loved watching it all come together when we all played our instruments. All of our hard work paid off. We didn't have very many pits that I can remember, but one thing is that since we had different opinions about how to run the project we all were wanting our individual ideas to be used in the beginning, and then we ended up compromising and working better as a team in order to come up with a great band!
I still feel that I'm nervous at giving presentations so I will still work on that, and make sure I have a bigger part in the next presentation. I enjoy music very much but I'm not sure that I am very good at building an instrument.
The peaks were that my team worked very well together. Everyone had strengths that contributed to the group. I loved watching it all come together when we all played our instruments. All of our hard work paid off. We didn't have very many pits that I can remember, but one thing is that since we had different opinions about how to run the project we all were wanting our individual ideas to be used in the beginning, and then we ended up compromising and working better as a team in order to come up with a great band!