Making An Air-Powered Wind Instrument Using LEGO Pneumatics 

One funny thing about this is that the keyboard is reversed! Usually when you go from left to right the pitch of the note goes up. But here its the other way around. Really fun build!

You weren't cheating, you were sampling! It's proud tradition in the world of music production.

I like how the first attempt at Greensleeves was almost spot-on except this setup doesn't allow for accidentals, but then the second was just completely off.

I think you're mostly just limited by the keyboard only having 7 notes (less than an octave) whereas most melodies will go over multiple

As a person who loves Lego technical builds this was an absolute joy to watch! As a musical person this was a very special version of joyous torture - like enjoying good clean dad jokes and suddenly watching “the aristocrats” for the first time. Keep it up! I’m here for BOTH emotions!

As an organist, this is INCREDIBLE!!!

I know this is late but as an organ builder i have to say this is excelent. To fix the tuning you likely just need to adjust the wind pressure for each note. Alternatively you could add adjustable sleeves to the end mouth ends of the flute to allow you to tune it by altering the length of the pipes. Also if you want a more consistant wind supply you could add rubber bands to your bottle and connect a hairdryer to it to supply constant air. Pipe organs work on very low pressures but very high volumes of air. All in all though you did a great job.

What you should do is increase the number of pipes so you have more notes, most songs use "accidentalls" which means that a note outside of the scale is used (a C is replaced with C sharp for example). That way, the songs should sound much nicer

It is amazing how good this instrument is in mimicing an 8 year old with a sweet flute 😂

The key mechanisms is genius!

A very nice lego project, this channel definitely deserves much more attention!

it's so cursed playing it while the notes are in the reversed order

Making a musical device with zero understanding of music is amusing. I know how you feel! I made a couple of acoustic guitars, a lute, several flutes and a hurdy gurdy. I have zero idea how to play any of these haha

Having multiple sets of the output tubes connected to the keys via valves could allow you to have a switch to change octaves, much like small digital keyboards let you move up and down octaves with a button press

you can use this keyboard to make some meme parodies (like the ones with the screechy detuned flute 🤣)

holy crap! if this was a lego kit I would 100% buy it. these are the kits i wish they made when i was a kid

This instrument seems to only have the notes of A minor/C major (starting with the lowest note being G), so you'd need to transpose everything you see to one of these keys depending on the original key: A minor (natural minor only) C major (these two are the most common ones) D dorian E phrygian F lydian G mixolydian B locrian Any song or piece that uses more than seven different notes will not be possible, and even songs that use harmonic or melodic minor will not be playable without detuning the physical pipes. This makes the instrument quite limited in its choice of possible tunes but there still is a lot of music that could be played accurately if you put in the work to transpose it to a possible key. Also, from a musician's perspective, the keyboard is the 'wrong' way around; for the sake of musical convention it'd be easier to learn how to play on it if you switched the high and low notes. I know, there is no real 'wrong' when it comes to music but there is this strong convention with almost every key based instrument that the low notes are on the left and high ones on the right.

This is why you need a pressure regulator. You want to limit the pressure going into the tubes to what is required for playing the note accurately, but a high pressure in the tank to extend your playing time.

You can do one thing, build a drum that rotates with legis on it so that when those legos touch keys music plays automatically

As much as playing it may be a challenge, this is still really cool! Do you have one of those Mindstorms computers? Maybe an idea for a future video would be to make a machine that plays the pipes for you.

Well, you could go the music box route with pins on a rotating drum. Songs can’t be long though with a drum. Perhaps like a player piano with a roll of holed paper?

Sounds a lot like a recorder. Brings back memories of elementary music class.

As some others have alluded to, the flute is in a certain key that doesn't include various notes. You would most likely need either another flute or multiple in different keys to cover the notes in between, or custom tone pipes.

I recommend putting in it in the key of c if there aren't any sharp notes, and the keyboard is reversed. But even with those, it's still very fun and quirky. Love it!

Your approach to this reminds me a lot of the "diatonic melodeon", an instrument where the idea is each button corresponds to the key you're playing in. Traditionally they have one chord on the out, and another on the in for a basic tonic-dominant pair that a lot of songs need. The hope is that it's hard to play discordant notes, and easier to learn! But could be a interesting point of reference for future builds, especially with the left hand which handles chords and bass notes with just two buttons.

i gasped out loud when i heard how charming and clean the final sound was!! the two-note tones you played at 6:00 were particularly very harmonic and pleasant to listen to

Absolutely love this project. Having grown up with lego all over my house, I used to dream of building little devices that would make sounds.. I've been taken back to my childhood with this video. Thank you for sharing it! Now I want to go build something!

Bro, you legit don't know how to miss with a project idea. I've always loved unique and wacky instruments so this definitely scratches that itch!!

This is how becoming a musician starts. My mom bought me a guitar 16 years ago because i was proficient with guitar hero 😂 now all you need is a keyboard (piano) and a mic so you can sample A thru G and the sharps and flats.

it really hurts my brain that you made this keyboard high->low instead of low-> high

As someone who works with mechanical music (Organs, player pianos, and player organs!) this was really neat to see!

The fact that the trebble notes are on left hurts!!!! Great build

Well, you can always turn it into a "player piano" type thing by building an additional mechanism to add to it.

I like it ❤ it looks weird to play it because the notes usually go up from left to right but here it’s the opposite😂

This is actually awesome Love this channel. Keep it up!

A version of this laid out with a full octave in keyboard layout with accidentals would be the most amazing thing ever, but this is certainly close I saw the thumbnail and never thought it would have such a fun sound to it!

I can't believe this man built a functioning Lego organ with the pipes on backwards 💀 really impressive build, though! Love the sharp 6 on "Twinkle, Twinkle" 😂 I will say I preferred the first rendition of "Greensleeves," as some of the second's intervals were yikesly painful 😅

I really like the style and colors of your videos, it really attracts me, and certainly the products you make too, very creative and great. I know it takes a lot of time to come up with ideas and make these products, but I wish you could release videos more often, it's really worth looking forward to.

Haha the clipped together notes reminds me of an ancient piece of RU-vid history, Lasse Gjertsen's "Drum and piano" and "hyperactive"

Basically it’s a binary gates computer, so with enough pipes you can calculate things up. However, it’s better to use liquid instead of air, so pressure would be more constant.

as a musician, you did wonderfully.

californication was actually spot on!! as someone who does a lot of music stuffs and listens to a lot of music this is very impressive :) spot on!

What a great song !

Air-powered instrument that uses keys to operate. You made a Lego organ!

For anyone wondering, this instrument is tuned to G Mixolydian.

Videos like this are why I'm still on youtube. Thank you.

You could add a key that or two to toggle between high and low octaves, if you put the blowers on an axle does it make sense to be able to blow the tray to the other side

this kinda reminds me of the suzuki andes, i dig it

This is brilliant, thank you :)

Lego should really make this set

You should make a computer compatible midi keyboard! That’ll be so cool

Your videos are amazing. You deserve more recognition

We need Through the fire and flames on it!

Would love to see a more compact version that can use all the notes of the flute :)

For this and your amazing inventions, you deserver way more subs

Wonderful video very nice editing and lighting

the scale of notes ascends from right to left on the ‘keyboard’ - what are we even doing folks? the musician in me is battling with my ocd over how much I can appreciate this haha

love your videos keep up with the good work man

My only suggestion is “OMG MAKE A BIG ONE!!!!!” This is so cool

Pretty ingenious ideas! Only thing needed for that 'hyperactive piano' montage is combination of multiple keys to get the rest of the notes.

incredible! you should record each tone, and upload it as a VST instrument for cubase :D would be a great plugin

So you built a pipe organ from lego. Mind-blowing!

this is really cool, nice job!

You, Sir, are an excellent musician! 👏🏻

Amazing! Perhaps using the Lego suspension shock to keep the keys closed would work better than the rubber bands? Can be placed under each key.

Why do I keep thinking of Clangers...?😄 Brilliant.

6:56 comes with that extra clarinet squeek I see, haha.

Very interesting build, and sound quality is good.

This is really cool, What you're essentially recreating is a Medieval Portative Organ! What could be an interesting build is making a Lego Accordion frame that inside houses reeds, and you can snap a bellows piece in-between two built sides of a Lego Accordion. Button accordion may be easier to manage than a Piano Accordion. There is a difference.

That triggered my PTSD from grade school where our teachers would make us play the recorder and we were all just monkeying around making noise at every opportunity.

In this video we will create a Lego instrument. You will need: 1. Legos 2. Instrument (This a neat project btw)

Such a great idea! You could load the single notes into a sampler, and you will be able to play in halfsteps. So you can play every melody in every scale : ) Without airpressure latency...

Man built a reed organ. Although I think there's usually a reason that organs work on a continuous pumped air supply instead of a reservoir

Funny that the first pipe organ was invented as a way play more than one pipe on a pan pipe at a time

This was fun to watch

Impressive!

Awesome project!

The problem starts at the start of the video that you hold the instrument upside down. You have to go from lower notes left to higher notes right. Yours is backwards, but very nice!

Awesome Lego Pipe organ

This is what se call an ORGAN

An idea, you could use a LOT of lego tracks to make belts for each key with stuff attached to the belt so they actuate the keys when turning. Kind of like those music boxes. It would probably be absolute overkill and huge with a ton of parts but man would it be cool to see! "I made a pneumatic music box out of lego!"

Genuinely impressive.

would looooove to turn this into a digital synth, you should release the raw recordings somewhere!

This is really cool! I think you may be having trouble with some half notes sounding like regular notes to you, but otherwise it sounded great

Really Awesome! Lego needs new people like you and others here on RU-vid, help designing their sets. Too many of Lego sets lacks a sense of originality or self creativity.

You should do recordings of traditionals on this thing - it sounds eerie in a nice way - thnks for sharing!

splendid!

Awesome

what an awesome project! reminds me of greek hydraulis organ. would be really cool to see it played by a programming wheel like they had in old music boxes or on bell towers, didnt the wintergarten marble machine use legos to program its song?

I recommend tuning first as the 7th note sounds flat

i love that it is my favorite instrument the pan flute!

you are so creative! as a lego technic liker this is MINDBLOWING non lego with lego? you can do it wacky stuff with lego? YOU CAN DO IT.

you could play a sick intro to rollercoaster tycoon with those pipes

For a guy who started out with "monkey level" music skills, in one video you have created an instrument, learnt to play it, sampled it, then sequenced it.. Oh, and published it.. That's pretty impressive mate! You went from beginner to pro level music producer in about 7 mins screen time..

beautiful

Was trying to figure out what was bothering me so much as a musician... then I realised you have 7 notes, not 8, and the notes are going the opposite way. This isn't a criticism, it's just very interesting to see an engineer with no musical background build an instrument from scratch.

Pipe organ builders would have a field day with this, i want one!

okay for starters you have them going in the wrong direction its like your counting down, the highest note should be on the right side so change that, you have in this position of f,e,d,c,b,a,g but it should be g,a,b,c,d,e,f and then after that you have g,a,b,c,d,e,f,g,a - being big to small pipe as - g,a,b,c,d,e,f,g,a,b,c,d,e,f,g,a - the repetition in this is because of a higher octaves, its the same note but higher or deeper, depending on if you move left or right on the flute, left being deeper (in this case higher, so change it) and right is higher and because of what you have made here is essentially a pipe organ, you should have a lever to play octaves so that you can play two octaves at the same time, large organs play around 5 octaves at the same time for a very visual picture, some bigger ones can play more but it then starts to become just vibrations or high frequency noises that do more bad then good for the sound, please make another one with more pipes, you can buy flutes with higher and lower octaves and use a tuner two arrange them, it could be really cool, and then have it take in midi notes and output it into pistons that press or play the notes, it could automatically play any song of your choosing, because midi is basically scripts of notes that can be read and played by computers or instruments, check out "lookmomnocomputer" he made a real pipe organ take in midi and its pretty cool, would be cool to see the lego version of that (ill retype this if jamie requests it im dyslexic and english is my third language)

legitamately my favororite lego youtuber

it would make it easier to play if you added the 5 sharp and flat notes as then you would have a full set