Flutes

Flute is a high-pitched woodwind instrument; a slender tube closed at one end with finger holes on one end and an opening near the closed end across which the breath is blown.So,the flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reed less wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornbostel-Sachs, flutes are categorized as Edge-blown aerophones.A flute is an aerophone that is played by blowing air across a sharp edge in the mouthpiece of the instrument. The flute family is a large family of instruments that includes widely-recognized instruments such as the orchestral flute and piccolo, panpipes, and recorders, as well as unusual instruments such as nose flutes and ocarinas. Although many particular kinds of flutes are not widely known, flutes in general are probably the most common non-percussion instrument found in music traditions around the world.

Flutes are usually (but not always) long, thin cylinders that are open at both ends. (Even if the flute appears to be closed at the mouthpiece end, air can usually escape at the blow hole, making the flute effectively an open-open cylindrical tube instrument.) If the player blows into one end of the cylinder, the flute is called end-blown; if the blow hole is in the side of the instrument, it is side-blown, or transverse. Flutes that are not cylindrical (such as ocarinas) are usually classified as vessel flutes.

The flute family is also the most widespread aerophone family, with representatives in more Non-Western music traditions around the world than any other non-percussion instrument. Bamboo flutes are common throughout Asia. Panpipes, which have many different-sized tubes bound together rather than finger holes in a single tube, are particularly popular in South America. Many variations of the side-blown and end-blown flutes (including double and triple flutes) have been developed in many cultures. Vessel flutes have been made in many different shapes, including animals and people, out of many different materials, including bone, wood, fruit shells, and pottery. Whistles are usually used for signals rather than music, but bird whistles, which are filled with water to get a bubbling whistle that sounds very much like the trill of a bird, are sometimes found in the percussion section of orchestras and bands. Nose flutes, played with the nose rather than the mouth, are popular in some South Pacific and Indian Ocean countries.

Aside from the voice, flutes are the earliest known musical instruments. A number of flutes dating to about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Alb region of Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a developed musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe.

The standard members of the transverse flute family are as follows, arranged from lowest pitched to highest pitched. Each of the various flutes has a several-octave range. They are all written at more or less the same place on the staff, but their sounding pitches are different. Notice that there are two that extend the flute’s range downwards, and two that extend it upwards. Related instruments are the end blown flutes, a group that includes the recorder or fipple flute, the Native American flute, the flageolet, and the tin whistle or penny whistle. The ocarina is also related; as is the transverse flute called the fife, the primary use of which is in combination with drums in marching or military bands; and various pan flutes, usually made of multiple pipes that are used to change pitch, rather than using holes or keys.

The flute is used in both band and orchestra. In both ensembles, one of the flute players usually doubles on piccolo. The flute is also a member of the wind ensemble, woodwind ensemble, and the woodwind quintet, in which it performs along with clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and French horn. It is also characteristically found in woodwind trios and quartets, though these do not have fixed membership, as the woodwind quintet does.

The flutes are the oldest category of woodwind instrument. There were flutes as early as the ninth century BCE. The basic design is a tube with an embouchure hole into which the player blows and finger holes to control the pitch. The modern flute was developed in 1830 by Theobald Boehm and incorporates his fingering system. Flutes and piccolos were both originally made of wood, but now they are generally metal.The holes in early transverse flutes were spaced to give mean tone tuning. This tuning system was popular in Europe from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, but it made it difficult for one instrument to play well in more than one key. This limited the flute's usefulness to orchestra.The recorder, a wooden, end-blown, whistle-mouthpiece type flute was very popular in early Western music. It was particularly popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. But it is not an ideal orchestral instrument because of its quiet sound.

Meanwhile, the key work on transverse flutes was gradually being improved and equal temperament, which allows an instrument to play equally well in all keys, became the accepted tuning standard. At that point, the transverse flute, with its wider range of timbre, pitch, and dynamics, became more popular than the recorder. Eventually the flute replaced the recorder so completely that the recorder nearly died out, until an interest in early music and early instruments helped spark a revival in the twentieth century.

The fife is a small transverse flute that - like the piccolo - sounds an octave higher than the orchestral flute. Its history since the middle ages is one of military rather than concert use, however. There were at one time fife "calls" used as signals (similar to the bugle calls still in use), and fife and drum corps still play military music.