Build a Band

The goal of this project was to build wind, chime, and string instruments in order to gain a better understanding of sound waves and frequency.

How It Works

Below, I have attached a google document that explains how three types of instruments work and the specific workings of our instruments.

In order to create these instruments, we each "chose" an instrument to work on. One person chose a recorder, another chose a chime, and I chose a ukulele. The recorder was finished in about an hour, because we already had a mouth piece and therefore only needed to build a body. Luckily, instead of trying to cohesively build an instrument with another group member, the one who made the recorder chose to work on the description of the instrument which was very beneficial toward the end. I worked on the body of my instrument for maybe two days, it took a little longer than anticipated because I cut most of the instruments oval body out of wood, which proved to be somewhat difficult. But it took what felt like forever to get the strings to play whole, tuned notes. Not only did the length of the string matter, but also the thickness and tensity at which it is pulled. I still don't completely understand the proportions, but it was doable. However the chime took even longer because it was fairly large and took a while to build each tube at the correct length. And even after each tube was built, all eight of them had to be attached to something to keep them together and we even tried to add a stand, but we didn't have enough time. After all the instruments were created, truthfully they didn't sound great together, and often one instrument would drown out the sound of another. So the only way to record our song was to record each instrument playing separately and overlap them to create the song.

Content

• Frequency: the number of waves that "pass" in a given amount of time, usually per second (measured in Hertz, Hz).
• Wavelength: the distance between the crests or troughs of two waves.
• Wave Speed: the time it takes for one wave to pass (measured in seconds).

EQUATION: these three can be related through the equation:

(wave speed = frequency x wavelength)

This equation can be manipulated to find any of the missing values when given the other two.

• Amplitude: how loud the sound is, the distance from crest to baseline
• Electromagnetic Spectrum: the different frequencies of electromagnetic frequencies ranging from radio to gamma rays

Reflection

Throughout this project I believe my time management was wonderful. I worked really hard on the body of my instrument, so I could complete it faster because I knew that working on the strings would take a lot of error to get completely right. I allowed myself to have enough time, about 3 days, to work on the strings constantly, trying many lengths, tensities, and thicknesses in order to create an actual musical sound. I also believe I worked on my risk taking skills because rather than make a rectangular box like most people, I built a rounded sound box out of wood. And to do so I had to learn how to use new tools which I fairly enjoyed. I believe our song choice was also adventurous because it turns out, beats from rap songs are a lot more complex than you'd think. However we did push ourselves to try to make it sound remotely close to the real song. However I didn't really display my collaboration skills until the end of the project when I was mostly done with my own portion of the work. Only then did I really speak to my other group member about her progress and such. I also didn't really use the critical thinking skills I have been taught. Originally the string lengths were supposed to be one half of whatever note I tried to create, however that didn't work. So rather than trying to rework the problem I just tried random lengths and made them tenser and tenser until they made some note that I could use. I ended up with notes an octave lower than originally planned due to my sketchy guess and check work. These notes also weren't in the correct order, making easy things, such as a simple scale, much more complicated.