Kite Musical Instruments
&
Aeolian Musical Instruments
The Sound Examples. Explanations, FAQ's

See a complete list of sounds at the end of the page!

The whole range of the instruments and how to make them
can be found
on the Mainpage of Kite Musical Instruments


 
It was in full summer 1998 when we decided to make some sound tracks of a part of the flutes described in KMI pages waiting for six weeks for an appropriate wind of >=30Kmh which might tempt the whistles to make some noise.
We waited in vain, however...

Then the idea came up, to fix the whistles or the whole kites at a bamboo pole, whirling the ensemble around us in a circle...
We gave up that idea also due to two reasons:
Firstly, the day, we tried out, there was a very slight wind, but it was enough to let the whistle's sound grow louder/ higher, when the whirled bamboo pole went against the wind and became quieter/ lower, when the pole moved with the wind. So we obtained an undesired wave motion of the sound.
Secondly, we were totally out of breath after a half an hour and, due to the constant turning motion, we felt a certain kind of seasickness, which prevented further trials...

For lack of the optimal solution, a wind channel, we chose our car for generating the wind. In order to avoid the engine's noise, the wheel's noise still being there, the car was allowed to roll down a long, slight slope at a speed of approx. 30kmh with the engine off.
The whistles or the whole kite with the whistles were fixed firmly to the bamboo stick and the ensemble was held out of the passengers car window thus allowing different "windspeeds" in an almost laminar wind.

That's the solution I would recommend for trying each type of whistle or musical bow etc., for that method will give you the best results in comparison with the expenditure.


AND, PLEASE, WATCH THE TRAFFIC!!!! For you might still be useful for the sounding world and for allowing me, to hear something about YOUR RESULTS, please place yourself on the passenger's seat and hire a driver!
 
 

The noise of the wind streaming over the microphone (we wrapped it in a T-shirt...) is too strong. It mainly can be heard in the "kite organ" recording.
When testing a little kite (Nantong "Ko-Ling" Whistle Kite; length about 1m) the wind produced a swinging motion of the whole ensemble, so the sound rapidly went up and down as you can hear in that special sound example.

A real problem is also the permanent "civilisation" noise like cars, aeroplanes etc. Even in rural areas there is at least ...a milking machine...which can be heard on the recordings afterwards. Our ancestors really lived in a sort of "sound-paradise" without noise, where aeolian-harp-tones could be listened without disturbance...
 

For the sounds of the kite line, i.e. the sound which is created by the wind itself playing on the long string of the kite line, we first tried an acoustic stereo microphone and a resonator of the type "line-telephone" as it is described in "Music on the Kite Line" (see the German version). This method wasn't convincing due to the the wind-noise and surrounding noise we found difficult to avoid.

A simple piezo-pickup for musical instruments like guitars etc. worked best for that purpose.
(For example "Hot Spot", K&K Sound Systems; 20-15000 Hertz)
 
Three methods:

  1. The pickup was fixed with cellulose tape on the "line telephone's" membrane.
     
  2. Or the pickup was just held between forefinger and thumb, another part of the hand contacting the vibrating line. The line tones need sometimes considerable dampening.... they can be VERY loud...
     
  3. To hear the whole sound of the "ensemble", an acoustic microphone was used.
      

The tower of Weinheim-castle
"Windeck" (= "windy corner")
built in the 11.th century
Woinem's best winds
for aeolian experiments can be found  here
...some excellent beer also...

 

Before "looking" on the different sounds, please let me mention the most appreciated software being used to build these pages:

 

  1. All pages were (and still are) made with "AolPress 2.0", a simple and easy wysiwyg freeware html-editor. Perhaps a bit old-fashioned nowadays but still well working for someone who wants to give good informations rather than nice effects to his/ her pages, so I would recommend it nevertheless.
     

  2. The sounds were recorded by means of piezo-pickups or directly via microphone on a MD-recorder; the sound files were copied to the PC as wave (*.wav) files.
    Trying to transform these files into MPEG Layer 3 (*.mp3) files as unchanged as possible, the wind playes its role as a natural enemy of every recording and forced me, to cut off some parts containing undesired distortions..., filters were used rarely in the beginning. In the last time, I learned to use those tools - but saw also the possible loss in sound information when using it.
    The friendly program, doing a good job in such difficult cases is "GoldWave", a shareware wave-editor with lots of features and lifelong updates. A top product for a reasonable price.
     

  3. Without "Find and Replace" of the ABACRE comany in France these pages would have cost much more time to realize. This small, but useful and powerful tool became a much appreciated companion in my daily work at the computer. Lifelong updates and an informative forum (!) taking care at special problems of the users.

 

Here's a complete list of sounds of Kite Musical Instruments site:

 

  
Ideas, criticism, questions or some more links...?
 
Please give me the opportunity, to improve these pages for you,
so please Mail me up your opinion , thank YOU!
 

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Uli Wahl, All Rights Reserved