Flute

The flute is a musical instrument that makes sound when a player blows air across an opening. It belongs to a group of instruments called woodwinds, even though modern flutes are usually made of metal. The flute is one of the oldest instruments in the world. People have been playing some version of it for tens of thousands of years.

A modern concert flute is a long silver tube about two feet long. The player holds it sideways, presses their lips against a small hole near one end, and blows across the opening. The breath splits against the edge of the hole and makes the air inside the tube vibrate. Those vibrations are what your ears hear as sound.

To change notes, the player covers and uncovers holes along the tube using small metal keys. Covering more holes makes the tube act longer, which produces a lower note. Uncovering holes makes the tube act shorter, which produces a higher note. A skilled flute player can move their fingers fast enough to play dozens of notes in a single second.

The flute family is bigger than most people realize. The piccolo is a tiny flute that plays the highest notes in an orchestra. The alto and bass flutes are larger and play deeper notes. Wooden flutes are common in Irish, Indian, and Native American music. The recorder, which many kids learn in elementary school, is also a kind of flute, though you blow into the end instead of across the side.

The flute has a very long history. Archaeologists found a flute carved from a vulture bone in a cave in Germany. Scientists think it is about 40,000 years old, made by some of the first modern humans in Europe. Even older flutes, made from animal bones, have been found in other parts of the world. This means people were making music long before they were writing, farming, or building cities.

For most of history, flutes were made of wood. The modern silver flute was invented in the 1800s by a German musician named Theobald Boehm. He redesigned the keys so the player could cover holes that were too far apart for human fingers to reach on their own. His design was so good that almost every concert flute today still uses it.

The flute appears in nearly every culture on Earth. It can sound bright and cheerful, soft and sad, or wild and breathy, all from the same simple tube of air.