Flutes & Waves2011–2013

Exploring how sound works by building and experimenting with flutes from scratch

Instrument design is as much art as it is craft and science. This workshop offered a chance to get your hands dirty with how sound works. With help from a professional flute maker from the Haynes Flute Company and a mechanical engineer, participants built flutes and riffed on their form, exploring how flutes’ design control acoustics while working to understand the nature of timbre and harmonics.

A spectrogram showing the result of a flute playing a musical scale
An image of four PVC flutes made by drilling holes into the tubes