I just bought me a panpipe, to try something else whistle-alike.
I bought it from some Idians on a market for not much money, it’s not a high end instrument are something. But the sound is okay, but i don’t know the tuning is. It’s out of 23 pieces, the smallest is 5 cm (2 inch) en the biggest 45 cm (18 inch).
Does anybody know something about the tuning? I can maybe tune it a bit
if needless
…
I think the first (smallest) note is a c#.
I didn’t find any panpipe related website’s yet - i mean more theoretic
It would be funny to play a slow air with on a session
Ps. For the ones who followed my whistle-make experiences:
It’s going in the good way. I’ve got some contacts with nice whistle makers, and i found better materials.
To be honest, there is no such thing as “most panpipes”.
9th century Chinese panpipes are pentatonic, as are many Andean pipes.
Anthropologists, to the best of my knowledge, have not yet explored this area but my own view is that the Asian/American thing is ice-age related.
Perhaps there could be a panpipe forum on this site?!
I think it would be interesting.
Actually, Andean music had a lot of influence from Europe, specially from the Spanish colonizers and so many panpipes have a diatonic scale. You can see the european influence in other instruments as well, like the stringed “Charango” which is a miniaturized version from the spanish guitar.
I think more information is available in Spanish and by trying a search on the web there seem to be a great variaty of tunings and also it varies according to the number of tubes used.
Traditionally it seems to be common a combination of a set of 6 tubes(called IRA) and tuned in MI-SOL-SI-RE-FA#-LA and another set of 7 tubes (called ARKA) and tuned in RE-FA#-LA-DO-MI-SOL-SI. I don’t know much about that, but it’s said to correspond to the tone of sol major and relative of mi minor.
Another tuning it was said to be common is RE-MI-FA#-SOL-LA-SI-DO (MI tone) and SOL-LA-SI-DO-RE-MI-FA# (LA tone).
About the size and register extension, they are roughly divided in:
-TOYOS - low sound (re1 to re2)
-ZANKAS- one octave higher than toyos (re2 to re3)
-MALTAS- one octave higher than zankas (re3 to re4)
-CHULIS- one octave higher than maltas (re4 to re5)
A few years ago anthropologists took a hard look at the bone structure of South American Indians and realized that they were most similar to the people of the Northern Japanese Islands. There is a current line of thought that there have been several migrations to the Americas, with the South Americans arriving by boat, following the coastline in search of fishing grounds.
…now take a good look at the fipple-less construction of the quena and the shakuhatchi, not to mention that both have thumbholes to facilitate octave changes (a lot of European folk flutes don’t have thumbholes)…
The (Japanese) husband of an old friend of mine was a documentary-maker for Nippon TV. He told me that, once, he was shooting footage in the Peruvian Andes and he and his crew walked into a remote village where the locals greeted them in Quechua, assuming them to be local.
Hi Frederik, There is a local maker of panpipes who you should share notes with - he is constructing pipes that are made from single arrays from the same piece of tonewood (West Oz hardwoods) - this allows for a much smoother transition when playing. He has obviously done his research and may be able to help!
But could the man and his crew reply in a similar laguage?
If you found that there were laguage-stuctural similarities, then there would be added proof of relationship - my Turkish wife often remarks that Korean language seems to have a similar structure to Turkish. It would be interesting to, one-day, have a map of such migrations.. Also, if you made a set of pipes from the femurs of Incas, and a set from Japanese - would a musical director have difficulty chosing between them for a movie soundtrack? (the ultimate test) And what would the title of the movie be?
