Music with Jandals!
Flipflopophones are fun instruments for kids. Named after the things you hit them with to play (jandals/flipflops/thongs depending on your country), they seem to have originated in a number of countries, including our neighbours in Te Moananui a Kiwa, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Phil Dadson and his mates did interesting things with them in their band From Scratch a few decades ago, and there are some interesting videos online where people perform using their own versions. Our tamariki at the kura like playing the set I made earlier so I decided to make a bigger version for this project.
Pipes tuned by cutting to length
I bought 100mm PVC pipes from Plumbing World in Pito-one - thankfully they've been giving me a good discount on products for the kura as it's expensive stuff. Tuning them is fairly straightforward, you just cut each pipe to length and trim it until your electronic tuner thinks you're in the neighbourhood of your note. I say neighbourhood as mine likes to offer a number of ideas of what it thinks the note could be, so it's a little tricky at times to work out which is correct. Overtones, I guess.
Making the frames: cutting tool and frame pieces
The frame top for holding the pipes
Constructing the frames (timelapse)
With the frames holding the tuned pipes I added some extra pieces of timber and riveted the bends to these to keep them in place. The straight lengths can still be removed for ease of transport. The completed flipflopophone covers 2 and a bit octaves of bassy goodness, as you can hear below:
Te tangi o ngā kōrere tanguru - the flipflopophone in action!
I was a bit māuiui for a few weeks while building the flipflopophone and my voice is hoarse in the video. It made teaching interesting that week!
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