User:AmeliaSund/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.

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.

The hand flute is also known for resembling the call of a Mourning Dove. It most often played using the cupped technique and lifting some or all fingers, though it can be done using the interlocking technique.

Hand Flute in The Media
The most notable Hand Flute player in history is a man named Ben Brenner, "The Handwhistler". He began playing the hand flute at age 12 after learning the Clarinet and the Bassoon. He began by playing the music he had learned for the Clarinet and the Bassoon on his hands using the cupped hand technique and by the middle of seventh grade, he made history by performing his hand flute accompanied by strings to 800 people. As he got to his college years, he began to teach lectures on the hand flute while continuing to solo in from of audiences. What set him apart was the fact that his range could reach 2.5 octaves, while most players range from only 5 to 7 notes. He lived in Philadelphia as a music teacher where he held a hand flute class to teach his students and perform at assemblies. Another famous Hand Flute player is Mitsuhori Mori. He is well known for his duet he wrote for the Hand Flute and piano named CHILDHOOD. It was written with pianist Keisuke Usuda. He is different from Ben Brenner because he uses the alternative style that is the interlocking technique.

One famous group of hand flute players who were even featured on the Tonight Show in 2001 were the Three Tendons. The group consists of Ben Brenner, Bruce Gaston, and Jim Rotondo. Not only do they use their hands to create pitches by blowing, but they use the suction of their palms using the Manualist method to create unique percussive sounds.

Released in 2016, Mitsuhiro Mori released an orchestral album named Hand Flute The Memorial Songs Played By The "Hands".

History
The earliest example of Hand Flute comes from an Egyptian background, held at the Metropolitian Museum of Art. It depicts three people playing what seem to be instruments, with one holding two hands in front of their mouth. Another example can be aged at can be found from around 200 BC. The example is a statue held in the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology includes a person holding their hands in front of their mouth in the same way as the state that came before it along with a person seemingly using a drum, leading historians to believe they are using their hands as an instrument.