by Howard Fosdick © FolkFluteWorld.com

This website covers "folk flutes." So what are they?

A folk flute is any flute that lacks mechanical keys.

A flute is a type of woodwind instrument that creates sound waves by splitting the player's breath upon a sharp edge. This contrasts with woodwinds that create sound by vibrating a reed (such as clarinets, saxophones, and oboes).

So, flutes are woodwinds that produce sound in the same way you do when you blow across the lip of a pop bottle. Folk flutes are flutes that lack keys.

The Flute Family

At first blush, you might not think the flute family is particularly large. But dig a little deeper, and you'll find that it's huge.

For example, China alone has spawned about two dozen distinctive kinds of flutes. Now imagine how many flutes all the cultures of the world have developed over the 40,000 years or so since the first one.

Most of those varieties are folk flutes. Why? Well, the push towards mechanized woodwind instruments didn't begin until the 19th century. The modern concert flute only reached full fruition by the mid-1800s.

The advantage to mechanical keys is that they give you a wider range of playable notes, and they make it easier to play sharps and flats.

But make no mistake: simple folk flutes can produce sounds every bit as lovely. And most are capable of playing any style of music you prefer.

Keyless folk flutes represent the natural, indigenous developments of human cultures around the globe. Their means of creation are orders of magnitude easier than the manufacture of mechanized instruments.

All ancient man had to do was carve a hole or two into a bone, or close up a clay pot to create a "bottle flute," or hollow out a stick to suit. Today we benefit from an astounding variety of folk flutes to explore and play and enjoy.

Topology

Given such wide variety of flutes, how can we make sense of them all?

We've already mentioned one distinction, that between the keyless folk flutes and modern mechanized flutes.

What other distinctions are there?

Take a look at this chart:

One vital distinction is between vessel flutes and pipe flutes. Vessel flutes -- sometimes called globular flutes -- are enclosed chambers inside of which air vibrates, or resonates. Modern ocarinas work like this.

In contrast, pipe flutes are open-ended tubes with fingering holes. Concert flutes and recorders are examples. While vessel flutes produce sound waves that resonate within their enclosed chamber, pipe flutes produce a column of air that vibrates along their tubing.

Another key distinction is how flutes spilt the musician's breath to create sound waves.

With edge-blown flutes, the player must direct his breath appropriately. You do this when you voice a note by blowing across the edge of a pop bottle. You only produce the sound if you hold your mouth at the proper angle to the bottle opening. (Some call these flutes rim blown because you split your breath across the rim of a hole to create sound waves.)

In contrast, other flutes have fipples -- a mouthpiece that automatically directs your breath against the sharp edge (or labium). As the animation demonstrates, this produces sound waves.

(Some prefer to call these duct flutes, referring to the passageway or duct that directs the player's breath to the labium.)

The diagram below illustrates this distinction. On the left is a side view of a recorder fipple. The air intake automatically directs the player's breath to where it needs to go.

To the right, we see how a musician playing a concert flute must accurately direct his breath himself to create sound. If he positions his mouth at the wrong angle, he doesn't produce a note.

Fipple flutes are much easier to get started with than edge-blown flutes. You can pick up a recorder or ocarina or tin whistle and start sounding notes in no time.

It's different with an rim-blown flute. The beginning concert flutist spends weeks to attain the skill to sound all the notes in the scale accurately. This is why schoolchildren all start with recorders instead of edge-blown transverse flutes.

By transverse flutes, we mean flutes you hold at a right angle to play, like a traditional concert flute. Other flutes are end-blown, meaning you hold them straight out from your body when you play them, like a recorder. These are also referred to as vertical flutes, since you hold them vertically while playing.

Transverse flutes are nearly always edge-blown. Vertical flutes come in either edge- or fipple- blown varieties.

One final distinction among flutes is worth noting. A diatonic instrument only plays whole notes. It doesn't play sharps or flats.

A chromatic instrument plays all whole notes within its range, also all the sharps and flats between them. To relate this idea to a piano, a diatonic instrument plays only the notes of the white keys, while a fully chromatic one plays the white and black keys both.

This distinction is important because some folk flutes are so primitive that they are diatonic. Others are more musically capable and are fully chromatic. (And then there are those that are in-between: they play sharps and flats but only if you are highly skilled.)

Vessel Flutes

Vessel flutes originated in antiquity as untuned whistles. Usually they were made of baked clay, just like pottery. Here are a few examples:

These examples date from 100 BCE to 1,300 AD. They played just a few random sounds, and no two are alike. So we call them whistles. They weren't tuned like modern instruments.

Ocarinas

In the 1850s, a 17-year-old Italian brickmaker named Giuseppe Donati encountered a vessel flute. He was inspired to modernize it, standardize its shape, and synchronize it to the musical scale. This was the birth of the modern ocarina. An ocarina is a fipple-blown vessel flute.

Today's ocarinas can be classified into three shapes. The photo belows illustrates.

Giuseppe Donati's invention is on the left. It's called a transverse ocarina because it extends sideways from your mouth when you play it. Some call it a sweet potato or submarine. The "oc" in the middle is an inline that sticks straight out from your mouth when you play it. The rightmost oc is a seedpod. Seedpods are often called pendants because small ones can be worn on a necklace.

With modern ingenuity, it's not surprising that ocarinas have morphed into all sorts of fun shapes. This photo shows a dolphin, a dragon's egg, a turtle, and a tea cup. These are all fully capable musical instruments. (You can both drink tea from and play the tea cup!)

But beware... not every cute little vessel flute is a modern musical instrument. The ancient tradition of vessel flutes with special shapes that only play a few sounds continues into the present day. You can spot these by the fact that all their holes are the same size. (Read more about how to spot unplayable flutes here.)

Learn more about ocarinas in my articles:

Edge-Blown Vessel Flutes

Edge blown vessel flutes aren't nearly as popular as ocarinas because they're harder to play. You have to perfect your embouchure, or the way in which you shoot your breath across the blow hole.

One of the few surviving examples is the 7,000-year-old Chinese xun. It's still used in traditional Chinese music.

The xun -- pronounced "shoon" -- is a fun, quirky instrument to play. You can feel its ties to the ancients when you play. It softly projects a mellifluous deep voice.

Learn more in my Guide to the Xun.

Pipe Flutes

Like vessel flutes, tubular flutes date back into antiquity. One can readily envision early man tooting a note or two through a hollowed bone or reed. This naturally evolved into more sophisticated flutes with finger holes and fipples, and then finally mechanical keys.

A hollow wood stick without a single finger hole can produce a range of sounds. The musician blows softer or harder into the tube to produce notes in what is called the harmonic series. So even without fingering holes a skilled musician can produce a range of notes by blowing into an unadorned tube. It all depends on his breath pressure.

This earliest flute is still a proud part of many cultural traditions today. In Scandinavia, it's called the willow flute; in Russia and Ukraine, it's the kalyuka; and in Slovakia, it's the koncovka.

Generically, these are all called overtone flutes. You can read all about them in my Guide to the Overtone Flute.

  Playing Edge-Blown and Transverse Overtone Flutes     (Photos courtesy of Shemyaz at Youtube and OvertoneFlute.fi)

From primitive overtone flutes, dozens of different kinds of pipe flutes evolved amongst the world's varied cultures.

Among them are a large family of edge-blown tranverse flutes. Examples include the Chinese dizi, the Japanese ryūteki and shinobue, the Indian bansuri, and the Vietnamese sáo.

Some vertical flutes lack fipples and are edge-blown. This family includes the Chinese xiao, the Japanese shakuhachi, the quena flute from the Andes, and many more.

Other vertical flutes come complete with fipples. These have become predominant in western cultures because the fipple makes these flutes easier to play.

Let's take a quick look at three of the most popular in this category: the recorder, the tin whistle, and the Native American flute.

Recorders

The recorder took form during the middle ages. It features a full two-octave range, and it's fairly simple to finger the notes. Plus it's a fipple flute, so breath control is not much of a challenge compared to edge-blown folk flutes. Recorders have soft, mellifluous voices yet can adapt to any musical style.

Some folks dislike the recorder because they were forced to learn it in grade or middle school. But truly, it's an amazingly versatile little instrument.

This photo shows how modern recorders come in all sizes and pitches:

As an adult, you'll find your recorder experience entirely different than it was back in grade school. You can learn everything you need to know about recorders in my guide All About Recorders.

Tin Whistles

Another modern flute that is even easier to get started with than the recorder is the tin whistle.

Also called the penny whistle or the English flageolet, tin whistles assumed their modern form in the 1840s. A poor farm labourer named Richard Clarke heard about the invention of tin plate and asked a metal smith to form it into a whistle like his wood-carved one.

The result was the modern tin whistle. It's still called that today, even though most are now made from other metals, woods, and even plastics.

With a fipple and only six holes, tin whistles make for simple yet versatile musical instruments. They offer a full two-octave range, nearly as much as recorders.

But whereas the musician partially covers the octave key to attain high recorder notes, he just blows the tin whistle harder to sound the high notes. This is called overblowing. It's the same principle that powers the overtone flute.

Like recorders, whistles come in a full range of sizes and pitches, and nearly every imaginable key:

Modern tin whistles cost a pittance and are incredibly easy to start playing. Read all about them in my guide Beginner's Guide to Tin Whistles.

Native American Flutes

Finally, we mention the Native American flute. Indigenous Americans developed many kinds of flutes, but the most popular style features an external block held in place by a strap:

The Native American flute-making tradition stretches back centuries. By the 1980s, most makers standardized their flutes on a minor pentatonic scale. This included common fingerings for many 5- and 6- hole varieties.

This standardization led to an explosion of interest in Native American flutes. It also makes them easily playable by those with little musical background. You can't literally hit a wrong note in the pentatonic scale, because all the notes sound harmonious together.

Native American flutes hold special appeal because the traditional emphasis is on meditation and personal growth, rather than playing for audiences. For many, this instrument becomes a very personalized form of musical expression.

If you are attracted to the Native American flute, learn more about them in my guide All About Native American Flutes.

Final Words

So there you have it, a whirlwind introduction to the fluting universe. This website concentrates on fipple folk flutes because they're easy to learn and simple to play. That's one reason ocarinas, recorders, tin whistles, and Native American flutes are so popular.

Another is that these versatile little instruments can adapt to any musical style you prefer. And, played to their potential, they can sound ethereal or haunting. They prove flutes don't require keys or complexity to attain exquisite sound.

Many folk flutes are lightweight and portable. I'd rather take my plastic recorder or a tin whistle to the beach or on a camping trip than risk a thousand-dollar concert flute to the vagaries of travel and the elements.

And, folk flutes offer a compelling cost advantage. For most of us, the $30 recorder or ocarina or a $15 tin whistle is all we need to enjoy ourselves. For the cost of a dinner, you can find a hobby for a lifetime.

For the price of a single concert instrument, you can build an entire collection! Even if you're financially constrained you enjoy a range of folk flutes and all that they offer.

This website directs you to everything you need to learn and play folk flutes. It's all free. We point you to the best free tutorials, lessons, and free sheet music for thousands of songs. We'll give you the advice you need to start, and the tips you'll need to become more proficient.

If now you're wondering whether to take up the ocarina, recorder, tin whistle, or Native American flute, you might find my comparison useful.

Enjoy your musical journey!

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