Vessel flute

Vessel flutes
Colourful four-hole English pendant ocarinas hanging from a rail by elaborately-knotted 2- and 3-colour lanyards. Three are shaped like squat owls; several have low-relief or painted patterns.
Ocarinas on display at a shop in Taiwan
A squat semi-transparent green blown glass bottle, shaped vaguely like a squarish mandarin citrus, with a strongly concave base and a short flanged neck.
Blowing across the opening of empty bottle produces a basic edge-blown vessel flute.

A vessel flute is a type of flute with a body which acts as a Helmholtz resonator. The body is vessel-shaped, not tube- or cone-shaped; that is, the far end is closed.

Most flutes have cylindrical or conical bore (examples: concert flute, shawm). Vessel flutes have more spherical hollow bodies.

The air in the body of a vessel flute resonates as one, with air moving alternately in and out of the vessel, and the pressure inside the vessel increasing and decreasing. This is unlike the resonance of a tube or cone of air, where air moves back and forth along the tube, with pressure increasing in part of the tube while it decreases in another.

Blowing across the opening of empty bottle produces a basic edge-blown vessel flute. Multi-note vessel flutes include the ocarina.[1]

A Helmholtz resonator is unusually selective in amplifying only one frequency. Most resonators also amplify more overtones.[2] As a result, vessel flutes have a distinctive overtoneless sound.

Sound of a gemshorn
A gemshorn playing the beginning of a French mazurka
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Sound of an ocarina
An E major (in concert pitch) scale, followed by a rendition of Frère Jacques. This is a six-hole English Pendant ocarina (the other two holes are on the back, for easy thumbing). The recording is of a home-made instrument.
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Sound of a xun
A scale played on a xun, an edge-blown vessel flute (note the lack of fipple)
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  1. ^ For a linguistic analysis of the possible origins of the word ocarina:
    Perono Cacciafoco, Francesco (2019). "A Prehistoric 'Little Goose': a New Etymology for the Word ocarina". Analele Universităţii din Craiova. Ştiinţe Filologice. Lingvistică. 41 (1–2): 356–369. ISSN 1224-5712.
  2. ^ Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics. Arthur H. Benade pp.473–476