WET Didgeridoo - PVC Multi-Drone Didgeridoo Part 1

Learning Didgeridoo
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#Education #music # instruments # Traditional Australian instruments #Didgeridoo
So building PVC multi-drone digits is a really convenient and cheap way
to explore all the range of sounds that you can achieve playing this technique.
Okay, so for the multi-drone, you're going to want the top end of the digit to have a
really tight bore. And since the mouthpiece size is going to be larger than that initial
bore shape, you're going to want to get one of these one-inch down to three-fourths-inch
converters for PVC. And initially, I use these drill bits just as a guide, but it's an inch
and three-eighths wide. And you want it to be an inch and three-eighths to be able to fit inside
the widest end of it. See, it's a little too small right now on the opening size. And you
want the height of it to be a little bit over an inch and a quarter. So we've got that now,
but we definitely want the width to be about an inch and three-eighths, or even up to an inch and
a half is going to make it easier to hit the lowest low notes. So in centimeters, the opening
now is about a little under 3.5 centimeters, but three and a quarter centimeters. And we're just
going to open it up. Now, we're going to heat the untouched PVC up, and we're going to shove this
into it. And this is just a log that I've sanded down to be an inch and three-eighths wide, and
about a little over an inch and a quarter tall. And when we heat it up and shove it down there,
it's going to hold that opened up shape. Now, you can use anything you can find that's an inch and
three-eighths, or just like, even if it's just an inch and three-eighths all the way around,
which you can find in a hardware store, and make it a round mouthpiece, it's not going to be quite
as much control with it for playing, but the round shape is still going to be better than this
smaller shape. You probably won't even be able to get the low note on the drop octave on this
kind of mouthpiece. We're going to heat this up so we can open it up with this plug that I made
that'll bring it out to an inch and three-eighths. Make sure you're wearing a mask whenever you're
PVC because it's going to put off some toxic stuff. Okay, so it's going to take about,
it's going to take about maybe a minute or two minutes to heat it up
evenly. And try not to put the heater too close because you'll start to burn the edges.
But once it's moldable, you can shove whatever you've... Okay, so I heated this up a little bit
too much. This is a good example. If you accidentally heat up the bottom, put it over
the pipe that you're going to put it on just to keep it in the right position. Then it won't warp
out of place. But now I've got my plug in there and that's going to open it up to the right diameter
that we want. And once you get it in there, try to keep moving it around a little bit just so it
doesn't get stuck. If you do end up making a plug like this that I've made, like hand making it to
perfect width, then you just want to move it around a little so it doesn't get stuck.
So now I'm just going to wait maybe a minute for this to cool down so that when I pull it out it
doesn't shrink back down to its original shape. I want it to stay big. So now that we've got it
opened up to the right diameter, we need to make the shape concave so that it fits around your face
better. Because since it's such a big mouthpiece, this portion of it, this will be where your nose
is going to be. And that's going to really push into your upper lip if you don't make it this
shape. If you can't figure this out or you don't want to take the effort or whatever, just make
sure you at least sand down this mouthpiece and maybe put some wax on it because that's going to
be pretty rough on your mouth. So again, we want to bring it to this. And you can see how it's got
that nice curve. And I think the fastest way to do that is to first you want to make a line where
the top and the bottom is. So here's the wide direction and here's the more narrow. On the
narrower top, top and bottom, make a line. And then you want to draw in, you're going to cut this piece
out with a razor blade. Heat it up with the heat gun and cut it out. So draw kind of the concave
shape that you want to cut out. You could just sand it down, but this is just going to save you
a little bit of sanding time. And we are going to sand it down after it's cut. So now I'm
going to take a razor blade and cut this off. But first I'm going to heat it back up. So I'm going
to put my plug back in and I'm going to heat back up just that edge. And this is going to make it
really easy to cut with a razor blade. And now that it's soft, I'm going to cut it. Okay, so that's the
start. I'm going to do this to the other side. Okay, so now I've cut both sides down to that
concave shape that you want. And now we just want to smooth it out. Now you might want to just take
a rough piece of sandpaper and with your thumb just go around the whole, like put the
sandpaper flat and go around the whole thing. But I'm going to show you how I do my wooden
mouthpieces on a big round sander that's going to make this have a really perfect edge.
This is the beast. And if you're a dig crafter, I highly recommend getting one of these guys.
This one's made by Grizzly, but it's just a five inch inflatable sanding drum. And I do most of
the outside of my sticks on this thing. But for the mouthpieces, it's got a really good
the shape of this is similar to the front of your mouth. And so I just push this on here,
and it's going to create that perfect shape. So you might ask, why do we cut the PVC? Well,
I just don't want to put, I want to put as little PVC dust into the air as possible.
work that edge out with a with hand sandpaper. That's the edge that we want that that concave
face. And and now we've got the the right width, the right height and the right shape to get a
really good multi drone mouthpiece, which is going to give you a lot of control on a PVC didge.
Alright, so the last step of finishing the mouthpiece is just sanding out the sharp edge
we have from sanding. And if you did it in some other way, if you just did this the whole way,
then this step is useless. And again, there's probably a million different ways you could
figure out how to make this mouthpiece shape. But this is just a general, easy way that I've
figured out. So I'm just gonna rub this around. Get a nice edge. If you don't, if you don't stand
on the edge, then you're gonna have some bleeding lips as you start to play this. And so make sure
the multi drone shape mouthpiece.
