Hi Folk's,

I have been thinking about the term's flute and whistle.
These instrument's that we play/make have been refered to as whistle here on the forum.
Some of the distinction's made were the precision in which a silver flute is made as well as the player creating the embrochure...

My thinking is that what distinguishes flute from whistle is one has finger holes though technically they both are flute's in that they are fluted (hollow).

So what do you think? I have more thought's but will reserve them for later...

Hello Hawk, the short answer is the NAF is a whistle. Now the long answer is what makes it a whistle. Wikipedia says a whistle is a whistle if a "smooth flow of air is split by a narrow blade, sometimes called a fipple, creating a turbulent vortex which causes the air to vibrate." "By attaching a resonant chamber to the basic whistle, it may be tuned to a particular note" by the calculated length of the chamber and diamater of the chamber. The best example of this is the many pipes of a pipe organ. In a pipe organ each pipe plays one note (but at two ocatves) and the method of splitting the air is in keeping with the whistle concept. Well, the NAF is exactly the same as a pipe on a pipe organ, but what we do with the NAF is we change the length of the pipe through the use of placing holes at calculated positions on the chamber which effectively changes the length of the chamber, thus we can now play many different tones from the same chamber. But the way the smooth air is split to create turbulent air vortexes which causes the air to vibrate and make sounds is in fact a WHISTLE!

So, I guess what we make/play and love is in fact a Native American Whistle.

Barry

Does this mean that flute and whistle are interchangable term's? In order for flute's/whistle's to work air "has" to be split by an edge/blade of some type. A transverse flute player blows air, at just the right angle, at the far edge of the mouth hole.

One thing I think about in terms of what distinguishes flute from other wind instruments is how the sound is created. I know I am repeating what you have said. Most other wind instruments require some type of mechanism to create sound. For example reed's are used in many,can't think of many besides flute that do not use a reed, except the brass instruments.
These I think are closely related to the reed instruments in that the require a vibration of the lips to create sound as does the didgeridoo.

Barry does wiki discuss the difference between flute and whistle?

Wikipedia also says this:

A flute produces sound when a stream of air directed across a hole in the instrument bounces in and out of the hole.[7][8]

The air stream across this hole creates a Bernoulli, or siphon, effect leading to a von Karman vortex street. This excites the air contained in the usually cylindrical resonant cavity within the flute. The player changes the pitch of the sound produced by opening and closing holes in the body of the instrument, thus changing the effective length of the resonator and its corresponding resonant frequency. By varying the air pressure, a flute player can also change the pitch of a note by causing the air in the flute to resonate at a harmonic other than the fundamental frequency without opening or closing any holes.

It also goes on to include the "Whistle" as a "class of flutes". So with that logic: A Whistle is a flute. But a Flute is not necessarily a whistle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flute

I would agree that a whistle is a flute, but as with an overtone flute, only the base note and octave jumps. The flute simply adds the ability to change the notes.

A whistle is a simple flute, while a flute can be used like a whistle, but it is more than a whistle.

When people say the term whistle to me I think of an instrument that you blow in, that you don't have to use an embusure and it doesn't have a slow air chamber. In other words, the air hits the fipple edge directly in like a half inch span. This is how I see them.

Hawk
The NAF is indeed a flute and should not be referred to as a whistle? A whistle generally only plays a few sounds sometimes only one tone. The naf is a fipple flute or duct flute by design. Once thought to be a unique design of native north americans but has now been found in south american and south east Asia according to an article published in the VOW by Tim Crawford.
Here is a link to wikepedia that is a bit more expansive. Nothing new under the sun really. Duct flutes include the naf, recorder, and flagolet. So why is a penny whistle called a whistle when it is classed as a flute? Shoot I thought I had it figured out!??


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flute

I agree with you Dan to a point. You have forgotten though the Irish whistle that plays 2+ octaves. This kind of blows what you said about whistles only playing a few sound, out of the water. I kind of like my explanation.

Flute please LOL
At a art & craft sale I did a couple of yrs in a row ,,, a fellow , another vendor, came up to me and said " you selling your little whistles again" , he didnt mean it in a good way. I think he didnt like the "noise". Oh well, many others commented they liked it , some people are funny.
Peace

Hawk, In my head it's like this...
A flute is an embouchure instrument.
An Anasazi, quena, hopi etc. would be flutes even if they only had one or no finger holes. A ocarina, NAF would be whistles.
To me it's a flute, otherwise we would have to make it NAW, and naw means no, and I say yes it is a flute and a whistle is what was being blown by the referee after I fouled someone
Kuz

Penny Whistles are flutes too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_whistle

On a personal level, my girlfriend is an avid Irish music fanatic (she plays whistles, fiddles and the hurdy gurdy).

In fact, we are spending this upcoming weekend at an Irish music festival, workshop thingy here in Nelson, NZ.

When I say something to her about her flutes I get corrected...so, a whistle is not a flute, trust me....on a loving relationship level anyway.

Take that, Wikipedia!!!

Tenzin

Use of terms, is a cultural thing. So, misuse of terms is readily found.

I would consider a flute, to be anything that can play a scale.......while a whistle is anything that makes a particular sound, based on the size and / or length of the whistle.

You can make a plausible argument, that an overtone flute, is in fact a whistle, as it does not have a true scale, but simply octave shifts, which is possible on whistles.

An eagle bone whistle can make more than one sound, by manipulation of the end air flow, but it does not truly play a scale.

don't know about all of you, but I drink champagne out of flute, not a whistle....LOL

Click to view attachment

Hi everyone,
Well as far as my knowledge goes you are absolutely correct Rick. I know a grass-dance whistle maker and he told me the same. A whistle becomes a fluted by adding the playing holes. I added some info about the Grass-Dance whistle and how it was used. Ok I know...it is a little off topic...but interesting though.

Here's a thought in terms of how a whistle works...

A whistle is a device that produces an air jet that emerges from a flue and oscillates due to the fluid-dynamical instability of the jet moving through the air outside the flue. That includes the NAF sound mechanism, the penny whistle, the referee's whistle, or just puttin' your lips together and blowing (perhaps after wetting ones whistle after taking a sip from the campaign flute...). In the broadest sense, it would also allow the embouchure used with a transverse or end-blown flute to be classified as a whistle.

The whistle is the mechanism that drives a flute.

So I guess a flute is a tunable whistle.

Accepted definitions, however, are not always based on straightforward classification rules...

Mike

Blockflöte or Penny Whistle: A NAF or AF would sound as sweet!

Lindy
Make Art Not War

an eagle bone whistle SHOULD make more than one sound, one made right anyway.