The project:
A bamboo flute tuned to A harmonic minor.
Why it was done:
I was walking on the beach when I came across some bamboo. Being the music geek that I am, I decided to create a flute with it. But why harmonic minor, you may ask? Because I've never seen a bamboo flute tuned to a harmonic minor scale. Simple as that. Oh, and Hava Nagila is in harmonic minor.
How it was done:
The lowest note in Hava Nagila is a D natural. So naturally (horrible pun intended), after drilling the mouth hole and playing a note, I cut the flute to play a D. I then drilled a finger hole about halfway down the flute, assuming that this would give me an octave, which it did.
The rest of the holes were placed simply by instinct. Several years of experience playing woodwinds gave me a pretty good idea of where the holes needed to be to create the correct pitches.
The result:
A picture of the flute:
Download a sound file of me playing the flute here:
