so, i’ve had this… idea…
for a long time, i’ve had this fantasy of creating the world’s largest flute. unfortunately, i would need a tunnel-boring machine, or to be able to make use of (for example) the cascade tunnel, which is an approximately 8-mile tunnel from the west to the east side of the cascade mountain range, starting from east of concrete… and it would also mean engaging some pretty enormous air-blowers…
not to mention the fact that, loud enough sound at certain sub-audio levels has a tendency to liquefy human tissue, and it’s my impression that sort of sound is exactly what will be produced by “the world’s largest flute”…
HOWEVER i didn’t come by the reputation for being able to make an “obnoxious” noise on pretty much anything by letting other people’s (crap) opinions stop me from making so-called “obnoxious” noises… on pretty much anything!
other good examples are the harmonic flute, which, if you turn it around and put a bass clarinet mouthpiece with a thin piece of plastic made from a credit card for the reed, turns into an instrument i call the “blathorn”, an orchestral-quality popgun, a siren from an old fire truck, and i was given a portable fog-horn a few years ago… than queue, maque! 😉
i’ve got this pneumatic horn that is already REALLY loud… it’s primarily intended to be used as a signal on sailboats… but, if it just were longer…
the PVC tubing is the right size for the horn to fit into, but it is the wrong size to fit into the part that does the “buzzing”, in this case, which is the metal plate at the closed end of the horn.
the way it works is that the plunger forces compressed air through a tube behind a metal plate, which vibrates against the metal housing around the plate, causing the pitch to occur… but because of the fact that it’s highly compressed air and a rather stiff metal plate, the resulting sound is REALLY loud, and, because of the short length of the horn, fairly high…
but if i figure out a way to make the buzzing go into a longer tube…
all i know, at this point, is that it SHOULD BE lower pitch, but just as loud… however, it may be that the metal plate won’t vibrate correctly, or at all, if it is trying to vibrate a larger sound column…
😈