Making Woodwinds

iaian7 » blog » projects John Einselen, 17.03.07 (updated 27.09.08)

More to be coming later, this is a short list of a few sources I’ve come across. As such, this is just temporary, and will hopefully be fleshed out quite a bit in another week or two!

Quena

Loren Stafford (excellent site with easy instructions)
Daniel Bruner (improvements on the above design)
Roland Shambry (basic text document giving basic layout for very rough hole placement when designing your own end blown flute)

Shakuhachi

Navaching (Shakuhatchi designs, lots of information and analysis)
International Shakuhachi Society – Albums – Pieces (some excellent samples, but they’ll ruin you for anything less than a $10,000 piece of acoustic art!)

Transverse Flutes

Pete Kosel (side blown flute designs)

Ancient Whistle / Flute

Disproving the concept of ancient music having been primitive, one of the oldest instruments ever discovered is tuned closely to the diatonic scale. Most historic music studies claim that the pentatonic scale came first (and before that, single note instruments), but this seems to be inaccurate, based on findings. Read the Original Article (and another one here).

Reed Based

http://www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~dhavlena/yoplait.htm
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/~bdaye/plastrd.html
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/~bdaye/reedgruv.gif
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/~bdaye/makepipe/plasmall.wav
http://www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~dhavlena/

Other References

World Instrument Gallery (an excellent reference! It contains many instruments organized by type, and references to the country of origin. While hardly exhaustive, it does include references to related instruments when appropriate)
Making and Playing Instruments (directory of various music sites)
CHICO Instrument Encyclopedia (library of a few historical instruments and geographical info)
Instrument History (directory of various sites organized by type of instrument)
Music History Timeline (another directory, organized more by time period)

Flutes (nice list of flute oriented websites, organized by historical locale)

Panflute History (historical info on the panflute or panpipes)

Discussion of ancient musical scales (which came first, diatonic or pentatonic?)