Didgeridoos and Don'ts
“…they make your insides vibrate and your vision go a little fuzzy.”
The first time I ever heard someone play a Didgeridoo I was in my first year at Mizzou. It was the silliest sounding instrument I'd ever heard. Kind of a mixture between a tuba and a fart, but still, somehow beautiful to listen to. They are such a Low-pitched, rumbling instrument, that they make your insides vibrate and your vision go a little fuzzy. You can almost see the sound waves coming out of them.
The didge I was experiencing was pretty crude, consisting of a long cylinder of some kind of plastic that had a few bends, a flare at the end and some abstract burned designs on it that looked a little like wood grain. I later found out that my friend had made it from simple PVC pipe and then shaped it with the heat from a blowtorch. Then it was finished with some beeswax shaped to fit your mouth on the small end.
Playing these instruments require considerate skill, and I have never gotten really great at it. The noises that can be created depend entirely upon who is playing, as well as the instrument's design, and therefore the sound varies immensely. Everyone has their own playing style and every instrument has its own sound. Didgeridoos are shaped from trees hollowed out by termites, but technically any tube of adequate length will suffice.
I began making these musical instruments soon after hearing my first one, because I couldn't afford an authentic aboriginal didgeridoo and was desperate to learn to play. The science behind the sound is complex, it can be changed by altering the diameter of the bore (the interior of the didge), the material its comprised of, the size of the bell, the number of bends in the body, and even the atmospheric pressure. I've completed over a dozen digeridoos from PVC and a few other materials, but I've attempted many more than that. If you haven't listened to one please don't let my attempts be a good example. I'll include some links below for anyone interested in listening to more.
Form
Here you can see the utilization of state of the art equipment in the form of an oven mitt and overpowered hair dryer for didge making. First the didgeridoo is heated to the point that it begins to melt and becomes malleable. After being bent and stretched it is quickly cooled back down and retains its new shape.
Color
One of the unique properties of PVC is its reluctance to stain, discolor or allow anything to adhere to it. Basically, it's near impossible to get paint or glue or dyes to stick to it. The blue didgeridoo is one example of a successful attempt at dying PVC after much trial and error. The reason it is in pieces is because it is a slide didge. The length determines the note that it will be tuned to, longer means lower. How awesome would it be to have a didgeridoo that isn't limited to one note?!
Material
Didgeridoos can be comprised of numerous other materials besides the traditional wood or pvc alternative. Here is one example of a paper didgeridoo that was unsucessful. This one was going fairly well until it was unintentionally crushed. The paper walls weren't yet thick enough to support much besides the weight of the didgeridoo itself, let alone outside trauma!
Sound
The shape of the didgeridoo is the key component to the most important part of a didgeridoo, the sound. One good starting point is measuring the overall length of the entire instrument. As your didgeridoo gets longer, it becomes deeper sounding. Also, it becomes deeper in note as as it becomes bigger around on the inside (the bore). The blue didgeridoo above is a slide didgeridoo that tries to incorporate these principles in one instrument. It has an adjustable telescoping length that can tune the instrument to different notes.
The sound can also be affected by numerous other things such as the shape, wall thickness, and even atmospheric pressure. This is really neat because it means that the sound can be altered when the didgeridoo is being created, stopping when the ideal sound is produced. To the right you can see a chart of how the length determines the pitch. Click the photo for an in-depth explanation of the math behind the measurements. This chart can be found here: Digeridoo Physics
Below are links for further reading.
https://www.didjshop.com/physicsDidj03.html
