Construction
The Native American flute is the earliest flute recognized to have two air chambers. An internal wall (sometimes called a plug) inside the instrument partitions the two chambers: The slow air chamber (also called the compression chamber or mouth chamber) and the sound chamber (otherwise known as the pipe body, playing chamber, resonating chamber, tone chamber, or variable tube). The sound chamber contains the sound hole (or distal mouth opening or true sound hole) and the tone holes (finger holes).
The slow air chamber can serve as a secondary resonator, which can give some flutes a distinctive sound. The two chambers are acoustically connected by an narrow channel, called a flue, that is formed by the top of the plug and the bottom of a removable block (or "bird", "fetish", "saddle", or "totem").
The "traditional" Native American flute was constructed using measurements based on the body - the length of the flute would be the distance from inside of the elbow to tip of the index finger. The length of the top air chamber, as well as the distance between the whistle and first hole, would be one fist-width. The distance between individual holes would be one thumb-width, and the distance from the last hole to the end would generally be one fist-width.
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