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.

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 in the world have a range of up to 2.5 octaves.

Hand flute

See also

Flute

Ocarina

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

Aerophones

Hand flute