- I'm Anjali from Design Squad Global.

Today we have my brother Arun, Talya, and Isaiah.

- We're at Fireseed Arts.

- My name's Patiño.

I am the cofounder here at Fireseed Arts.

- Patiño is a musician.

(strumming upbeat chords) And he's awesome.

(drumming upbeat rhythms) - Basically, our slogan is "art with a repurpose."

We collect recycled materials and we try to find a way to make that into something new.

- For example, they had a steel drum made from a propane tank.

(playing high-pitched toned) And shakers made from coffee pods... (shakers rattling) ...and DVD cases.

(loud banging) - Arun and I have an old fence in our backyard, and our parents asked us to take it down.

We had all this leftover wood.

We wanted to reuse the wood so that it doesn't get thrown away.

(hollow knocking) - What could we do to change the pitches?

- We could make it into, like, smaller sizes.

- Pitch is the high or low sound we hear when the material vibrates.

- What are some instruments that utilize percussive techniques but also pitches?

- Xylophone.

A xylophone has bars that produce notes when you strike them with a mallet.

Xylophones in different forms can be found around the world.

- So we want to try to make a xylophone with this?

- Yeah!

- Definitely.

(hollow slapping) - To make the boards smaller, we are finding the midpoint so we can saw them in half.

(saw whirring) - There's a note in there.

(low, hollow tapping) - This note was too low, and the board was too long for our xylophone.

- Big boards make low notes.

(hollow tapping) And as you get smaller, the note gets higher.

- I would start with one board to cut it in half.

(hollow tapping) - A little to the left.

- A little bit... No, a little bit more.

That's perfect!

- That looks good to me.

(saw whirring) - Now we have two boards that make the same note, but we want different notes.

- Who can hear perfect pitch?

- Perfect pitch is when you hear a note and you know the name of the note that you heard.

(phone beeping) - This is an application that generates tones.

(hollow knocking) - I think it's a B.

(phone beeping) - Exactly.

Nice job.

So what if we use this as our basis?

Why don't we label this one B, and that'll be the first note in our scale?

- A scale is a series of notes played from the lowest to the highest pitch, or from the highest to the lowest pitch.

- I would start by just cutting an inch off of this next board to get our next note, and I would listen to that and see where it falls in the scale.

(saw whirring) (hollow tapping) Let's get our human tuner.

- (humming note) That's a C. So C sharp.

- C sharp, exactly, right on the button.

- From there, we started cutting boards one inch shorter to add higher notes.

(hollow tapping) - It's a D. - We know that to make the note a little higher, we cut the board a little shorter.

But how can we make the note a little lower?

- We can't add any more board to it.

- To make it lower, we were scooping.

By scooping out some wood with a sander, we can lower the pitch.

Whoa, that's so cool!

(hollow tapping) When you strike a xylophone bar, it vibrates.

Removing material from the end makes the bar vibrate slightly faster and raises the pitch.

Removing material from the middle makes it vibrate slightly slower and lowers the pitch.

- We filled in the rest of the notes on the xylophone.

(playing scale) This needs to be a bit sharper.

(saw whirring) (playing scale) ALL: ♪ Do, re, mi, fa, so... ♪ - I think we need to have a little bit of a jam session now.

(rhythmically playing different notes)