Hand flute

The hand flute, or handflute, is a musical instrument made out of the player's hands. It is also called a hand ocarina or hand whistle. To produce sound, the player creates a chamber of air with their hands, into which they blow air via an opening at the thumbs. There are two common techniques involving the shape of the hand chamber: the "cupped hand" technique and the "interlock" technique.^[1]

The pitch depends on how the hands are held. If the space between the hands is made smaller or the opening made larger, the pitch becomes higher: the principles are the same with an ocarina or Helmholtz resonator; see vessel flute for details of the acoustics. The best hand flute players have a range of up to 2.5 octaves.^[2]

See also

• Flute
• Wolf-whistling
• Whistle register
• Whistled language
• Whistling

References

External links

• Handflute Marathon by several hand flute players on YouTube
• Performance by the group "Childhood" on YouTube
• Performances by Peter Hassell on YouTube