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Comment by afandian | Hacker News Reader

I stumbled across this page myself recently whilst wondering what was possible DIY.

Also the Baumorgel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAV0i8fGFE

Question for anyone knowledgeable. I had an idea to take a large block of wood and a router to cut a number of channels. Then put plywood on the top to make a rank of pipes. The lip and throat could be also done with a router.

I imagine the physics of each pipe would work fine monophonically. I think it would work polyphonically but I wonder if there would be interference?

How much does the resonance of the individual pipe contribute to timbre?

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Cutting away a lot with a router is a slow, noisy and dusty process. Less work to just glue together the channels out of smaller pieces of wood. Also, that way you can take individual pipes out and tweak them (called voicing).

Another thing to be wary of -- pipes too close together sometimes pull together in pitch if both are played at the same time.

As the "pipe" gets longer the size (diameter, length/width...) needs to get bigger too. This link doesn't do that and the pipes are the worse for it though he made a number of other "mistakes" that made is not as good as it could be - but hey it works and doesn't sound too bad so give it credit even if it isn't ideal.

Because you would be coupling the pipes it would change things. However how much isn't clear. The important thing is each pipes sounds the same other than the pitch so if you go from a flute sound to a trumpet sound that would be bad, but if it all sounds like the same instrument except for the pitch you did great. I think any negative could be mitigated by just having a few "pipes" on the end that never have air but are there only to 'finish' the resonance of the nearby pipes. The important thing is that the pipes end up in tune and sound the same other than pitch. You can do that.

Now the next question is if you follow the same plan again can you get a set of pipes that sound like a different instrument from the first. Or more importantly can you get enough different sounds to be worth it? I'm not clear.

By using a router and simple construction my aim was more consistency! Vs building many boxes and individual mouths.

I've never built anything like this and probably never will. I think that's the biggest variable here!

> Also the Baumorgel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAV0i8fGFE

Wow, that thing is really a work of art! Also, using bellows instead of a pump is a nice touch...

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