What is it?

The Pan pipes is a greek instrument designed between 1500-300 AD based on Pan the God of nature. 

A person that plays the Pan pipes it’s called a pan flute player.

Not to be confused with

You may hear about it with other names like syrinks. Pronounced pan·paips, from the Greek meaning “The flute of Pan” and called flauta de pan in Spanish, Flûte de stylo in France, and Canos de caneta in Portuguese.

Category

The instrument is from the Wind family meaning the sound comes by blowing air in a mouthpiece into a tube(resonator). 

Variants

The types of Pan pipes are determined by Country meaning that although similar, most of them were invented with little to no knowledge of the others:

• Kuvytsi: Ukrainian version.
• Larchemi / Soinari: Georgian.
• Nai: Romanian, 20 pipes from smallest to largest in a curved way.
• Paixiao: Chinese, 18 pipes similar to the Nai.
• Siku/ Zampolla: Peruan, 13 pipes in 2 rows (7 & 6) with the longest pipes.
• Wot: Thai, 13 circular pipes from biggest to smallest.

This can be confusing, just know that the most common variant is the Romanian/greek and the more pipes with different longitudes allow for a bigger range.

In terms of materials, the options are usually wood or plastic. This particular one is commonly made of bamboo but you can handmade ones with straws or paper (with less quality). The material has no effect on the sound (our article here) but it does in price and durability.

Before you buy 

Getting Pan pipes for sale? as a gift? If you do, here’s all you need to know.

The price of the instrument is around $10 – $330 USD, the cheapest we found was a 13 pipes handmade siku with terrible reviews and the most expensive was a Left Hand 23 tubes professional bamboo flute.

In the middle we have something like a 20 pipes bamboo flute with a case for $135 USD, you can search on amazon here or eBay here.

Most pipes are handmade, just make sure they are tuned, are not for decoration, and have a guarantee and shipping to your country, good reviews and if they don’t you can get them other ways. 

The sizes of the tubes go around 3in (8 Cm) up to 16 In (42 Cm) and have a total (the whole instrument) weight from 3 lbs (1.4 Kgs) to 4.5 lbs (2 Kgs).                                

Now that you know, you can check on Ebay here.

Accessories

There are a lot of accessories but you don’t need much:

• Strap: So you can carry it on your neck like a collar or in your wrist to not drop it.
• Bag & Case: Bag for transportation and case for safety and transportation. If you don’t get one with your instrument check the sizes section to get a perfect one.                           

How to learn the Pan pipes   

We recommend learning to read sheet music, play notes and learn the tricks of playing songs.
For learning to read sheets we try a lot of resources to help you choose.

To learn to play all notes you need a finger chart (also known as position chart).

The tips & tricks are all the details that combined make a big difference.

The way you hold it, efficient warmups, positions, and techniques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6atLSAaYnFA

You can search for music sheets in places like Freescores & musicaneo. 

Here are some book and courses:

• Teach Yourself: Free Youtube playlist with a ton of songs.
• Mel Bay’s: Paid book for a very professional approach.
• Fun with the Pan Flute: Paid book for beginners.

Remember, the Pan pipes are easy to learn and fast too (no more than a couple of months), it’s also similar to the harmonica in the way you hold it and play it so you can combine those resources to help you learn, we hope this helps, we’ll keep working on this article.