And the know-how of the didgeridoo crafter didg-maker proves to be essential. Here then are the different stages of production of a eucalyptus didgeridoo. These photos were taken during my trip to Australia, where I was making my didgeridoo with Bob Druett in Darwin. Are you ready for a journey into the workshop of one of the best didg-makers in the world? Here goes! To this, add the flies, renowned for staying glued to faces even whilst being shooed away.
You now have a little insight into local life. In this wilderness, the motivated! Their work is to spot the trees that will be sufficiently, but not overly, hollowed out. The didg-maker then cuts the eucalyptus at the base in order to keep a section of trunk around 2m long. Eucalyptus trunks cut in the bush in December during my trip in Australia. Once the wood is perfectly dry, the didgeridoo maker faces their greatest challenge: to extract the best possible instrument from the trunk.
The interior of the trunk is strewn with hollows and recesses, which can prove to be as much qualities as they can defects for our future instrument. They will need to cut the trunk at the right place to reveal the final didgeridoo still hidden within the mass of wood. And when you consider that the average size of an instrument is between 1. The interior now has to be re-dug in order to hone the playability and improve the acoustic properties. These woods are just as suitable for didgeridoos and often even better suited than eucalyptus wood.
Eucalyptus is a very fast growing wood with a very high water content, which only partly becomes very hard after drying out. It is not seldom that the drying process results in the formation of cracks through the intensive shrinking. Some people want the variations that they can produce with a natural wood sound which is why you can still invest in a non traditional didgeridoo that is constructed out of bamboo.
Bamboo is widely available and it is a sustainable material which produces sound quality that is very similar to what you would get with the traditional construction. One is not necessarily better so to speak because it really comes down to what your personal situation is and what you are looking for with your instrument.
That said, you can always get a mouthpiece to put on it if you want. Many players today use what is called a beeswax mouthpiece which is applied to the end of the instrument into which you blow and this creates a very tight seal with the material. This beeswax mouthpiece is usually used for traditional construction so if you opt for a non traditional didgeridoo you can invest in a variety of mouthpieces like the rubber stoppers which, as the name suggests, are made of rubber.
The end opposite where you blow can be flared or unflared and this will have a significant influence on the type of sound that you can produce.
A flared didgeridoo is also louder and gives you deeper bass sounds compared to an unflared didgeridoo. Didgeridoos are considered drone instruments which means they can only play one note but they are not limited in terms of harmonic complexity.
The technique of playing the didgeridoo is what helps give you a range of overtones and harmonics. You can hear things like overtones or harmonics that are within the same key once you learn to play the instrument effectively.
Traditional didgeridoos will never sound the same as a synthetic didgeridoo because they are made with that termite wood and the termites made unique holes and grooves in the wood so rest assured that even if you had five traditional didgeridoos, none of them would sound exactly the same even if they were all traditionally made.
If you have a didgeridoo there are particular techniques you must use to play it just the same as any other wind instrument. Another famous technique for playing the didgeridoo is imitating animal sounds that are popular in Australia or using beatboxing. With the didgeridoo if you are going for traditional construction, the Aboriginal Australian wind instrument has to use the eucalyptus branches. There is no specific type of wood that is bad or prohibited when it comes to crafting a wood instrument but hardwoods are going to be significantly better by in large because they are harder and therefore stronger and more durable and able to withstand the construction process for such a long instrument and of course the regular wear and tear.
Bear in mind that when most people see a didgeridoo for the first time they are a bit shocked at the cumbersome size which is why manufacturers have tried to recreate the didgeridoo sound with different designs. Since the early nineties didgeridoos are also made mainly in Europe from solid wood that is either drilled out or two pieces are routered and glued together. Many of these make good didgeridoos and many are tuned.
In more recent years didjes are made commercially from pressed fibre, clay, agave, pvc, glass etc. Aboriginal people strongly resent this blatant cultural theft especially if it involves open or indirect deceit of the customer. They see this cultural exploitation as a continuation of years of exploitation of their land. Australian Aborigines however consider a didgeridoo to be an authentic Aboriginal didgeridoo only if the didgeridoo is genuine termite hollowed AND made by an Aboriginal.
Genuine termite hollowed didgeridoos harvested by Aborigines. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.
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