Plan flute: musical instrument of American Samoa

The plan flute also known as pan pipe is an old musical instrument based on the basic assumption of the closed tube, having about five or more pipes of the simultaneously increasing length. The pan flute has long been known as a folk musical instrument and is considered by many to be the first mouth organ. Pan flute as a name is given to this musical instrument because of its association with the Greek god “Pan”. The pipes of the flute are particularly made from bamboo tree or giant cane, although other materials such as wood, plastic metal and ivory can also be used in the production of this musical instrument.

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According to the Greek mythology, on the story of Pan, another name given to this instrument is “syrinx” and the plural is “syringes”. Other people call it mouth organ, Pandean pipe and the Latin fistula panis.

The pan flute’s tube is closed at one end at which the wave is redirected giving a note an active lower that that produced by a non-closed pipe of equal length. In the traditional South American style, by placing corn kernels on the bottom of the pipe, the pipe can be given an appropriate pitch that will be suitable to the player. In the one end-blown flute, sound is manufactured by the vibration of an air-stream blowing across an open hole at the end of a resounding tube. The length of the tube can go a long way in determining the frequency of the sound coming out of the instrument.

The pan flute is played by blowing horizontally across the open end against the sharp inner edge of the pipes. Each pipe is tuned to a timbre called the basic frequency. When overblowing, pitched musical instrument are often based on an approximate harmonic oscillator such as a string or a column of air, which oscillates at numerous frequencies simultaneously, near a 12^th in the cylindrical tubes may be produced. With a special technique of both sloping the pipes and the jaw movement, this musical instrument can also be played, thus reducing the size of the pipe’s opening and producing a change in the pitch. Although any advanced player can play any scale in any key.

Gheorghe Zamfir, a Romanian musician who toured extensively and recorded many albums of pan flute music in the 1970s popularized the curved-style pan flute, also several other artists who began recording at the same time with him.