The vertical flute is either (1) a rim-blown (notched or unnotched)

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

, (2) a tubular duct flute, with tapered bore or (3) a transversely blown flute, Giorgi flute, designed to be played in an upright position. The vertical flute is contrasted with the "cross flute" (or "

transverse flute A transverse flute or side-blown flute is a flute which is held horizontally when played.Powell, A. (2001). Transverse flute. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 6 Feb. 2024 The player blows across the embouchure hole, in a direction perpendicular to ...

") and " globular flute", and in stricter usage may refer only to the first category above (Marcuse 1975, 187). The most familiar ducted vertical flutes are the recorder,

tin whistle The tin whistle, also known as the penny whistle, is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. It is a type of fipple flute, a class of instrument which also includes the recorder and Native American flute. A tin whistle player is called a whistl ...

, and tabor pipe. One historical variety has a slightly tapered (decreasing diameter) bore with 6 tone holes on the top side. A dorsal thumb hole is absent. It sometimes has a small foot section with a single key. The range is a little more than two octaves and the common keynote is "D" major. The instrument is often mistaken for a recorder with keynote C, but. like the tin whistle and tabor pipe, relies on overblowing to change registers instead of pinching open a thumbhole, recorder style, to "cancel" the fundamental harmonic ( Bessarabov 1941, p62 – p63). An unusual case of a transversely blown but vertically held flute is a special variation of the standard

, or, more specifically, the

Western concert flute The Western concert flute can refer to the common C concert flute or to the family of transverse flute, transverse (side-blown) flutes to which the C flute belongs. Almost all are made of metal or wood, or a combination of the two. A musician w ...

, designed to be played in an upright position. This version uses a standard cross-blown flute head joint bent in a "?" question mark shape.

Sources

* Bessaraboff, Nicholas. 1941. ''Ancient European Musical Instruments: An Organological Study of the Musical Instruments in the Leslie Lindsey Mason Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston'', with a preface by Edwin J. Hipkiss and a foreword by Francis William Galpin. ambridge Published for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by the Harvard University Press. * Marcuse, Sybil. 1975. ''Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary''. Revised edition. The Norton Library. New York: W. W. Norton. . Flutes {{Recorder-stub