Acoustics

See the post The Quills: the forgotten American folk woodwind for general information about the American instruments known as the quills. African players make their own instruments, and I imagine that Henry Thomas did as well. Recent players of the cane fife in America do so as well. So, what do you need to know in order to make a historically accurate instrument? First off, you need to understand the difference between the cane fife (quills) and the panpipe form of the instrument, and decide which one you want to pursue. There are modern players and makers of the cane fife form of the instrument, so for the moment I’m going to concentrate on the panpipe version made famous by Henry Thomas. ...

As of this writing, there is no good source of practical information available regarding the construction of pan pipes, so I did a couple of tests to establish some general principles for pan-pipe scaling. The question I was trying to answer was: Given a pitch, what is the ideal internal length and diameter of the pipe? Since cane is a natural material, it will not conform to the precise dimensions defined here, however these numbers should provide a reasonable starting point for experimentation. ...