No reed and no vibrating solid at all: a jet of breath flips in and out across a hole, and a tube of air answers.
No reed and no vibrating solid at all: a jet of breath flips in and out across a hole, and a tube of air answers.
The player blows a thin jet across the embouchure hole, aimed at its far edge. The jet is unstable: it flips into the tube and out again, and the air in the tube, pushing back, tells it when to flip. The jet works like a valve that opens and closes at the note's frequency.
A tube about 67 cm long and 19 mm wide, open at both ends. An open pipe supports every harmonic, so overblowing jumps a whole octave. Opening the keys shortens the vibrating column. In the top octave the tone is close to a pure sine.
There is no separate body. The open end and the open tone holes radiate the sound straight into the room.
Flutes are the oldest instruments known: bone and mammoth-ivory flutes from caves in the Swabian Jura in Germany are about 40,000 years old. The modern flute belongs to Theobald Boehm, a Munich goldsmith and flute player, who redesigned it in 1832 with a ring-key mechanism and again in 1847 as the cylindrical metal tube with large tone holes that orchestras use today.
| Length | ~67 cm |
|---|---|
| Bore | ~19 mm |
| Range | C4 to about C7 |
| Overblows | an octave |
“The Divje Babe bone from Slovenia, about 50,000 years old, is a Neanderthal flute.”
Disputed. Many researchers think its holes were bitten by a carnivore.
