The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, flutes are edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist or flutist.
A pan flute is a musical instrument based on the principle of the closed tube, consisting of multiple pipes of gradually increasing length. Multiple varieties of pan flutes have been popular as folk instruments. The pipes are typically made from bamboo, giant cane, or local reeds. Other materials include wood, plastic, metal, and clay.
The recorder is a family of woodwind musical instruments in the group known as internal duct flutes: flutes with a whistle mouthpiece, also known as fipple flutes, although this is an archaic term. A recorder can be distinguished from other duct flutes by the presence of a thumb-hole for the upper hand and seven finger-holes: three for the upper hand and four for the lower. It is the most prominent duct flute in the western classical tradition.
A shakuhachi is a Japanese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo. The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the shakuhachi was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the fuke shakuhachi (普化尺八). A bamboo flute known as the kodai shakuhachi or gagaku shakuhachi (雅楽尺八) was derived from the Chinese xiao in the Nara period and died out in the 10th century. After a long blank period, the hitoyogiri shakuhachi (一節切尺八) appeared in the 15th century, and then in the 16th century, the fuke shakuhachi was developed in Japan. The fuke shakuhachi flourished in the 18th century during the Edo period, and eventually the hitoyogiri shakuhachi also died out. The fuke shakuhachi developed in Japan is longer and thicker than the kodai shakuhachi and has one finger hole less. It is longer and thicker than hitoyogiri shakuhachi and is superior in volume, range, scale and tone quality. Today, since the shakuhachi generally refers only to fuke shakuhachi, the theory that the shakuhachi is an instrument unique to Japan is widely accepted.
Andean music is a group of styles of music from the Andes region in South America.
The term fipple specifies a variety of end-blown flute that includes the flageolet, recorder, and tin whistle. The Hornbostel–Sachs system for classifying musical instruments places this group under the heading "Flutes with duct or duct flutes." The label "fipple flute" is frequently applied to members of the subgroup but there is no general agreement about the structural detail of the sound-producing mechanism that constitutes the fipple, itself.
The bamboo flute, especially the bone flute, is one of the oldest musical instruments known. Examples of Paleolithic bone flutes have survived for more than 40,000 years, to be discovered by archaeologists. While the oldest flutes currently known were found in Europe, Asia too has a long history with the instrument that has continued into the present day. In China, a playable bone flute was discovered, about 9000 years old.
The kaval is a chromatic end-blown oblique flute traditionally played throughout the Balkans and Anatolia. The kaval is primarily associated with mountain shepherds.
The end-blown flute is a woodwind instrument played by directing an airstream against the sharp edge of the upper end of a tube. Unlike a recorder or tin whistle, there is not a ducted flue voicing, also known as a fipple. Most rim-blown flutes are "oblique" flutes, being played at an angle to the body's vertical axis. A notched flute is an end-blown flute with a notch on the blowing surface. A lip-valley flute is a type of notched flute.
The stub-ended Swanson tonette is a small, end-blown vessel flute made of plastic, which was once popular in American elementary music education. Though the tonette has been superseded by the recorder in many areas, plastic Tonettes are still in use in elementary schools around the nation due to their price, durability, and simplicity. The range of the tonette is from C4 to D5. A skilled player can produce notes above the principal register by overblowing and half-covering holes. Similar instruments are the song flute, flutophone, and precorder.
The bawu is a Chinese wind instrument. Although shaped like a flute, it is actually a free reed instrument, with a single metal reed. It is played in a transverse (horizontal) manner. It has a pure, clarinet-like timbre and its playing technique incorporates the use of much ornamentation, particularly bending tones.
A single-reed instrument is a woodwind instrument that uses only one reed to produce sound. The very earliest single-reed instruments were documented in ancient Egypt, as well as the Middle East, Greece, and the Roman Empire. The earliest types of single-reed instruments used idioglottal reeds, where the vibrating reed is a tongue cut and shaped on the tube of cane. Much later, single-reed instruments started using heteroglottal reeds, where a reed is cut and separated from the tube of cane and attached to a mouthpiece of some sort. By contrast, in a double reed instrument, there is no mouthpiece; the two parts of the reed vibrate against one another. Reeds are traditionally made of cane and produce sound when air is blown across or through them. The type of instruments that use a single reed are clarinets and saxophone. The timbre of a single and double reed instrument is related to the harmonic series caused by the shape of the corpus. E.g. the clarinet is only including the odd harmonics due to air column modes canceling out the even harmonics. This may be compared to the timbre of a square wave.
The guan is a Chinese double reed wind instrument. The northern Chinese version is called guanzi or bili and the Cantonese version is called houguan. It is classified as a bamboo instrument in the Ba Yin system. Unlike other instruments in the double-reed family of woodwinds which mostly have conical bores, such as the Chinese suona or the Western oboe, the guan has a cylindrical bore, giving its distinctive mellow, yet piercing buzz-like timbre.
The fujara is a large wind instrument of the tabor pipe class. It originated in central Slovakia as a sophisticated folk shepherd's overtone fipple flute of unique design in the contrabass range.
The paixiao is a Chinese wind instrument, a form of pan flute. A major difference between the Chinese Paixiao and the panpipes used in European and South American traditions, is that at the top of the Chinese instrument the pipe holes are each cut angled or with notches. This allows for bending the pitch in similar capacity to the dongxiao down a minor second. This allows Chinese paixiao to be fully chromatic without loss in timbre, even though the included pipes are tuned diatonically. The method of blowing so is to hold the head of the frame with both hands, with the mouthpiece facing the front, place the lower lip on the mouthpiece, and find and blow each tube according to the pitch.
The shvi is an Armenian fipple flute with a labium mouth piece. Commonly made of wood or bamboo and up to 18 inches (460 mm) in length, it typically has a range of an octave and a-half. The tav shvi is made from apricot wood, it is up to 18 inches (460 mm) long, and is tuned 1/4 lower producing a more lyrical and intimate sound.
The tarka is an indigenous flute of the Andes. Usually made of wood, it has 6 finger holes, fipple on mouth end and free hole on distant end.
A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of the effective length of the vibrating column of air. In the case of some wind instruments, sound is produced by blowing through a reed; others require buzzing into a metal mouthpiece, while yet others require the player to blow into a hole at an edge, which splits the air column and creates the sound.
