Pan flute journey -

or Have a look at My Pan flute journey e-book

I just thought today it would be useful to share some of the stuff I know about tuning your pan flute in the scale you like.

I tuned mine the other day to A major, because I like the mood of F#minor, this is a personal choice though, a pan flute in the key of G, it’s usually the standard and it’s what most folks are used to hear, if you want to switch to the minor sound of E minor, that’s great, specially for Celtic tunes.

One thing I stumbled upon a year ago, it’s a little fancy tool , really useful, a program designed to tune a shakuhachi, which it did the trick for me, it’s basically a simple accurate tuner that it works with a mic input and it tells you whether your note is sharp or flat.

http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~tuner/tuner_e.html .

You can use a standard chromatic tuner, a gadget, I have personally found them too expensive for what you get, as the built-in mic they come with is pretty cheap, best source is to rely on your ears.

I am going to give you some instructions about what to do to tune the pipes to other scales, however I must tell at first to be careful, modifying the original tuning of your pan flute is not harmful at all, you can always tune it back to default, but the stoppers are delicate and if you insert sharp or pointed objects in them, you may pierce them , making a leak of air, and getting no sound at all.

I am assuming your pan flute is tunable, some aren’t, Romanian pan flutes are usually tuned with beeswax, and they come with special stick to add or remove wax, but some pipes , come with rubber plugs, this means they are tunable by moving the stoppers up or down.

If you have just taken a pan flute, I recommend you to stick to the normal tuning first, and then experiment in other keys later on.

a wooden dowel is the perfect tool to move the plugs up or down

As you can see in the picture on the left, the stopper found at the base of every pipe, it’s the piece responsible for retaining the column of air and making the pipe resonate, also it’s what it gives the pipe the corresponding note along with the length and diameter of the pipe of course.By moving the stopper up, the pitch goes sharp, moving it down will make it flat.You may want to use a wooden dowel, don’t use a pencil, a pen or something with a point, the stoppers can be easily pierced or damaged.

1. Start blowing and put the wooden dowel inside touching the stopper, as you blower push it up and you will immediately hear the pitch going up, keep going until you hear the desire note,the same goes for the flats.
2. If you using your ears, it’s recommended to use a external source, like someone playing the same note in another instrument, after all, this is what being in tune is, to sing, or play the same exact frequency, concert tune or concert pitch A4 440 hz is just a standard tuning in western music used widely, there is however another tunings, which gives different colours.
3. If you are using an app or program then keep on pushing until the needle gives the exact note, not very sharp or flat.
4. If you are using your computer, it’s recommendable to use a decent microphone so the input is clear and the reading is accurate, make sure there are not noises around.

The good thing about tuning your pan flute to a certain key, is that it gives more possibilities, some songs have just too many flats to constantly making flats in the usual technique, so I encourage you to experiment. You will notice that some times you want to stick back to your old tuning, then some day you fancy something more jazzy or maybe a harmonic scale, or an exotic scale.Experimentation is a really creative juice.

You might also like

• No Related Posts