Pan flute makers can predict each pipe's length with one simple number
Multiply a pan flute pipe's length in centimetres by the note it plays in hertz and you get roughly 8575, every time. That tidy rule falls out of the physics of a tube closed at one end, and it lets a maker work out a whole set of pipes from a single measured one.
Because each pipe is stopped at the bottom, the sound wave bounces back and the note comes out an octave lower than an open pipe of the same length would give. The theoretical length is the speed of sound, about 343 metres per second, divided by the frequency, divided by four. In practice the pipe must be cut slightly shorter to avoid sounding flat, and the spare length is handy: makers push in a cork, wax or pellets to fine-tune. Andean players traditionally drop pebbles or dried corn kernels into the pipes, while Romanian-style makers use beeswax. A bore about a tenth of the pipe's length gives the classic tone; narrower sounds reedy.
The Greeks named the instrument after Pan, the goat-legged god of shepherds. In the myth, the nymph Syrinx fled him and turned into a reed, so he cut reeds of different lengths, bound them side by side and made music from them. The Etruscans played it at banquets as the fistula, and the Romans took it into festivals, religious rites and funeral processions.
The curved Romanian version, its pipes glued in an arc, was made famous in the 1970s by Gheorghe Zamfir's touring and recordings. Players swivel the head to move between notes and can bend pipes into sharps and flats by tilting the instrument and moving the jaw. Andean versions, tied rather than glued, remain central to Peruvian and Bolivian music, where highland panpipes are called jula-jula.
Other cultures have their own twists. The wot of Laos and Thailand is a cylinder rotated in the hands. In Zimbabwe and Malawi the bamboo ngororombe accompanies dance. Galician knife grinders in Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Mexico announced themselves with rapid scales on a small whistle called the chiflo, and African-American blues players such as Henry Thomas recorded a version known as quills in the 1920s.
Source: Pan flute
