page_title: Native American flute
section_title: The Warble
hierarchical_section_title: Native American flute / Sound and Tuning / The Warble
caption_attribution_description: English: A sample of Nakai Tablature for Native American flutes, showing the notes of the primary scale - the pentatonic minor scale.
context_page_description: The Native American flute is a flute that is held in front of the player, has open finger holes,
  and has two chambers: one for collecting the breath of the player and a second chamber which creates sound.
  The player breathes into one end of the flute
  without the need for an embouchure.
  A block on the outside of the instrument
  directs the player's breath from the first chamber — called the slow air chamber —
  into the second chamber — called the sound chamber.
  The design of a sound hole at the proximal end of the sound chamber causes
  air from the player's breath to vibrate.
  This vibration causes a steady resonance of air pressure
  in the sound chamber that creates sound.
  Native American flutes comprise a wide range of designs, sizes, and variations — far more varied than most other classes of woodwind instruments.
context_section_description: A distinctive sound of some Native American flutes, particularly traditional flutes, is called the "warble" (or "warbling").
  The warble sounds as if the flute is vacillating back and forth between distinct pitches. However, it is actually the sound of different harmonic components of same sound coming into dominance at different times.
  John W. Coltman, in a detailed analysis of flute acoustics, describes two types of warbles in Native American flutes: One "of the order of 20 Hz" caused by a "nonlinearity in the jet current", and a second type "in which amplitude modulation occurs in all partials but with different phases". The first type is analyzed by Coltman in a controlled setting, but he concluded that analysis of the second type of warble "is yet to be explained".
  The warble can be approximated by use of vibrato techniques. The phase shift that occurs between different harmonics can be observed on a spectrograph of the sound of a warbling flute.
caption: A sample of Nakai tablature for Native American flutes, showing the notes of the primary scale - the pentatonic minor scale.
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