Nose whistle
A
rosewood nose whistle. The musician puts ones nose on the upper hole. The air is directed towards the lower edge, where the open mouth makes the sound.
A nose whistle (more commonly, if erroneously, called a 'Noseflute') is a wind instrument not only of the woodwind family, but common examples are available in modern plastics, ceramics, and also nickel-plated sheet metal examples have been manufactured and patented in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The nose blows air into the instrument's open nosepiece, from where it is channeled downwards, through an airduct, towards the lower, sharpened edge of a second hole, positioned over the player's mouth. This edge splits the airstream, directing half of it into the player's mouth cavity, where it builds up pressure before escaping out again through the same mouth hole. This escaping, pressurized air has to compete with the other half of the downward-ducted air from the nose passing outside of the mouth hole, and a very rapid taking-of-turns occurs between the two airstreams, causing an audible resonation, or whistle. This is the exact principle upon which a simple whistle acts, except that a simple whistle has a fixed-sized barrel, or resonation chamber, while the Nose Whistle-player's mouth cavity becomes the resonation chamber and the resulting notes produced can be varied in much the same way as they are when a person whistles a tune. The air volume gives the frequency: the smaller the volume, the higher the note. This ability for it to be able to play any tune gives rise to its more popular name being Noseflute rather than Nose Whistle, which seems to imply a single, blasting note only.
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