Whistles

 Police whistles, toy whistles, pennywhistles, tin whistles, recorders, ocarinas and some other flutes share a common feature: the air duct assembly, commonly referred to as the fipple. This arrangement consists of a square or rectangular window cut into the body of the instrument at the mouthpiece end. The edge at the bottom of the window is beveled or cut at a slant, to resemble a wedge. A wood plug is inserted into the mouthpiece end as well. The plug is beveled in such a way as to allow air to pass over it but forced through a slit and over the edge of the window. The above video shows a whistle without a fipple. The instrument consists of a small piece of hollowed out bamboo, played in the manner of panpipes. The rest of the videos in this sequence show fipple whistles made from bamboo, cardboard, PVC, cedar wood from a cigarbox, twigs and clay.

Here's the cardboard whistle. I got the design for this model from http://www.flyingpig.com/uk, I think. You might want to Google "cardboard whistles" for the actual link or something similar.

Here's a clay whistle made in the shape of either a stegosaurus or porcupine. Or maybe some other critter. Anyway, I was glad to get good sound from this whistle.

Okay, so this whistle is small: about the size of the tip of a pinky. But it makes a fairly shrill tone anyway.

You can get sounds from just about any found object. An empty snail shell or sea shell is a good example.