twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
twistedchick ([personal profile] twistedchick) wrote in [personal profile] neotoma 2007-06-24 10:45 pm (UTC)

Transverse flutes can be made of nearly anything -- I know someone who made one from PVC pipe. The requirements there have to do with shape, more than anything else.

I would not be so fast to rule out fiddles, some cello analogue and bass; the major requirements for them are the ability to carve wood (or other substance) to a shape, rather than to extrude it or press it. There are electronic carbon-fiber violins now, and cellos, which take up little space and weigh not much, but are electronic. I see these easily fitting on a spaceship. If you go back a generation or two, there were cigar-box fiddles and washtub basses, and people made music with them. I do not want to think that future generations would be less creative. Yes, dried sheep intestines make good strings, and so do extruded or coiled metal wire -- but there are any number of kinds of nylon that work as well. There are also synthetic substitutes for Siberian horsehair for manes; I expect that more will be found.

Drums and flutes can be made of anything. I'm not as sure of the requirements for making shaums or serpents -- though they existed back a few hundred years before modern technology.

And there's always the possibility that the material available in the new place will result in the creation of new instruments.

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