Photo description: Top of an upright grand piano covered in sheet music and oddities with a wall hanging holding a collection of instruments, cat in the middle
It isn’t a very difficult “Where’s Waldo” photo, but she wasn’t trying to be subtle. She was trying to get to me to make me stop singing. I was standing at a music stand facing the piano, working on warm ups, and she gets quite perturbed when I even sound like I’m working on overtone singing. I can actually tell when I am using my full resonant voice because she comes over to yell at me (it is definitely not with me). Actual overtone singing and she will come from anywhere in the house to get me to stop.
Watching YouTube shorts sent me down another overtone rabbit hole. There was a person with a flute with no finger holes playing a lilting beautiful tune. Wha?! Some quick internet research revealed the Koncovka, a Slavic shepard’s instrument made from a long wood tube. The flute has two overtone series possibilities, one with the bottom hole open and the other with it covered, giving this simple whistle an astonishing number of notes for something with no finger holes. My next question was how to make one, and I found this short YouTube tutorial to make a PVC version.
I have some thin walled PVC tubes from an old Ladder ball game. These pipes have become materials for other projects more than they were ever assembled for the game.
Photo description: PVC pipe with a slot cut and sanded smooth, a section of dowel sanded to fit snuggly inside the tube, and a short section of red PVC pipe the same length as the wood and split lengthwisePhoto description: wood plug finished with butcher block wax and fit into the top of the tubePhoto description: red sleeve placed over the white PVC to create a narrow holePhoto description: rubber band around the red sleeve to keep it tight and reduce air leakingPhoto description: finished PVC overtone flute
The tone of the flute is quite pleasing and very fun to experiment with. Below is an audio file of me playing the PVC overtone flute I talk about in this blog post.
I love it when my crafting and music rabbit holes merge and open a new room.
Critters and Craft 