Slide whistle

A slide whistle (variously known as a swanee whistle, piston flute or less commonly jazz flute) is a wind instrument consisting of a fipple like a recorder's and a tube with a piston in it. It thus has an air reed like some woodwinds, but varies the pitch with a slide. Because the air column is open at one end and closed at the other, it overblows the third harmonic.

The instrument was most often used in the 1920s when it was usually used in popular music and jazz. At that time, slide saxophones, with reeds rather than a fipple, were also built. The slide whistle is today thought of primarily as a kind of "toy" instrument, but has been used by classical composers, with Maurice Ravel possibly being the first, when he called for one in his ballet, L'enfant et les sortilèges[?].

More modern uses in classical music include Luciano Berio's Passaggio, which uses five, and pieces by Cornelius Cardew, Alberto Ginastera[?] and Hans Werner Henze[?]. The instrument also features prominently in the game of "Swanee-Kazoo" in the long-running British radio panel game, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.