Musical Band
In this project, our goal was to create 3 different types of instruments made out of household items. The three types we had to make were wind instruments, string instruments, and chime instrument. The other requirement was each instrument had to make all 7 notes which are A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Our instruments were a guitar, trumpet, and chimes.
So as you can see here, we made guitar. Our guitar is made out of a hollow wooden box with one string overhead. We made it by bringing in pieces of wood and started gluing them all together. After it was all glued together, I sanded it all down so that it was all smooth. Then we started experimenting with the tension of the string by inserting little pieces of wood underneath our string. It took us a day to to find the right pieces to use. So on our guitar, we only have one string on it, because it would allow us to change the pitch by sliding a wooden pick up and down the string.
So this is our wind instrument. Our instrument is a pvc pipe with holes cut every 1/4 inch or so. This was a fairly quick instrument to make because it all we have to do is cut holes in it. Our flute was based off of C4. From there we covered up different holes to make different notes.
This is our chime instrument . Our chime instrument is metal pipes cut down into different sizes. These pipes are elevated 4 inches above the baseboard and they rest on rubber-bands. These rubber-bands are supported by nails ,and they allows our pipes to resonate.
Justification
String Instrument
Our string instrument is an 18.25 inches long model guitar that we made completely out of wood and household materials. To be more specific, we used wood for the body, tacks to hold the string down, and beads to tie the strings to. For the string, we used a piece of fishing line instead of actual guitar strings. When making our instrument, we made a box with a plank of wood coming out the end. Also, we cut a circular hole in the top of the wood box to help sound waves enter the box and produce more sound, since the bigger the surface area is, the more sound is created. Our guitar is designed to have one string that can be tuned to any note with enough tension created. When playing, we will be using a slide that will press down on the string acting as a threat, which will produce different notes with certain tensions.In order to create a note, a wave must be created to move the air particles. A note can be changed by a few techniques, such as tension, length, and frequency. The tension of a string affects how high the pitch of the note is, also known as its frequency. The length acts as the same, except in a different way. By shortening the string, it creates a higher note because of the change in wavelength. We chose to use tension to produce different notes.Therefore, we used little wood blocks put under the string to create a C. After, we can use a slide to put even more tension to create higher notes going up/down the scale. The slide can also shorten the wavelength, thereby creating higher notes moving closer to the base of the guitar.
Wind instrument
Our wind instrument is made of a 32.5 cm pvc pipe. For our instrument, we drilled holes at different lengths to achieve the different notes we needed. A wind instrument works because a gust of wind is pushed into a long pipe then vibrates through the chosen material. The pitches the instrument makes are determined by the size and shape of the pipe. We placed different holes according to the distance from the end of the PVC,changing the wavelength. First we tuned the PVC by cutting it to it’s length of 32.5 centimeters , using the guess and check method. We actually compared it to a scale of wavelengths for a C and it was nearly just off from ¼ of it’s length. Then, we found the
fractions at which each note and hole was going to be placed. The scale we used is the chart seen below. This is where we drilled holes into the PVC pipe.
Our string instrument is an 18.25 inches long model guitar that we made completely out of wood and household materials. To be more specific, we used wood for the body, tacks to hold the string down, and beads to tie the strings to. For the string, we used a piece of fishing line instead of actual guitar strings. When making our instrument, we made a box with a plank of wood coming out the end. Also, we cut a circular hole in the top of the wood box to help sound waves enter the box and produce more sound, since the bigger the surface area is, the more sound is created. Our guitar is designed to have one string that can be tuned to any note with enough tension created. When playing, we will be using a slide that will press down on the string acting as a threat, which will produce different notes with certain tensions.In order to create a note, a wave must be created to move the air particles. A note can be changed by a few techniques, such as tension, length, and frequency. The tension of a string affects how high the pitch of the note is, also known as its frequency. The length acts as the same, except in a different way. By shortening the string, it creates a higher note because of the change in wavelength. We chose to use tension to produce different notes.Therefore, we used little wood blocks put under the string to create a C. After, we can use a slide to put even more tension to create higher notes going up/down the scale. The slide can also shorten the wavelength, thereby creating higher notes moving closer to the base of the guitar.
Wind instrument
Our wind instrument is made of a 32.5 cm pvc pipe. For our instrument, we drilled holes at different lengths to achieve the different notes we needed. A wind instrument works because a gust of wind is pushed into a long pipe then vibrates through the chosen material. The pitches the instrument makes are determined by the size and shape of the pipe. We placed different holes according to the distance from the end of the PVC,changing the wavelength. First we tuned the PVC by cutting it to it’s length of 32.5 centimeters , using the guess and check method. We actually compared it to a scale of wavelengths for a C and it was nearly just off from ¼ of it’s length. Then, we found the
fractions at which each note and hole was going to be placed. The scale we used is the chart seen below. This is where we drilled holes into the PVC pipe.
Chimes Instrument
A chimes instrument is very similar to the way a wind instrument works. When using a certain material that produces a nice sound when struck on another, it can be often made into an instrument. Metal is what is commonly used because of how hard it is, and how well
it produces sound waves we can hear better than others, or otherwise known as it’s natural frequency. We used metal chimes for our instrument that we found from an old wind chime that was in one of the group member’s backyard. By modifying the lengths, just as we did with our wind instrument, we made each chime sound a different note on the scale. The chimes from longest to shortest go from deeper to higher notes. To make our chimes we stringed each one to a piece of wood connected to another one which acts as a stand for the chimes. The instrument we created is similar to a xylophone, instead our instrument neither looks like one or sounds like one. A chimes noise given off is usually found in the C4-F5 range.
Concepts
Vibration- the vibration of particles
Wave- Transverse waves have crests and troughs. Wave crests and troughs move along a travelling transverse wave. Longitudinal wave: the vibrations of particles are parallel to the direction of travel of wave. Longitudinal waves have compressions and rarefactions.
(http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_(physics))
Wavelength- distance between peaks in a wave
Crest-High point in wave
Trough Low point in wave
Frequency- the amount of times an object repeats the same movement (Hz)
Amplitude- midpoint to crest
Hertz- measurement unit not a car company
Period- time between waves
Natural Frequency- the vibration frequencies of an object
Wave- Transverse waves have crests and troughs. Wave crests and troughs move along a travelling transverse wave. Longitudinal wave: the vibrations of particles are parallel to the direction of travel of wave. Longitudinal waves have compressions and rarefactions.
(http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_(physics))
Wavelength- distance between peaks in a wave
Crest-High point in wave
Trough Low point in wave
Frequency- the amount of times an object repeats the same movement (Hz)
Amplitude- midpoint to crest
Hertz- measurement unit not a car company
Period- time between waves
Natural Frequency- the vibration frequencies of an object
Reflection
This project was a good test to see how well we were at time management because we had to work on 3 different projects at the same time. This allowed us to slack off or pay attention to one project to much. We probably spent the most amount of time on our guitar and the least amount of time on our trumpet. Our group worked very well together, and if we had to change anything about our project it would half to be time management, like I said before. Two things I think our group did awesome in are communication and not procrastinating much. Two bad things were time management and not planning our steps.