That’s a new and interesting fact to me! My mental model of why the keys on instruments change their pitch is that moving the open holes in the tube changes the length of the tube, which changes the wavelength of sound that’s emitted. In retrospect, this formulation doesn’t actually fit well with my model of “sound comes out end of tube” at all, but does fit well with “topmost open body hole”.
Modeling the sound as coming from the first open hole does suggest another reason that formally trained flautists might dislike vertical flutes, though: changing which hole is open would cause the apparent source of the sound to move along the body of the flute, so changing from “sounds like it’s moving from side to side” to “sounds like it’s moving up and down” might be jarring.
That’s a new and interesting fact to me! My mental model of why the keys on instruments change their pitch is that moving the open holes in the tube changes the length of the tube, which changes the wavelength of sound that’s emitted. In retrospect, this formulation doesn’t actually fit well with my model of “sound comes out end of tube” at all, but does fit well with “topmost open body hole”.
Modeling the sound as coming from the first open hole does suggest another reason that formally trained flautists might dislike vertical flutes, though: changing which hole is open would cause the apparent source of the sound to move along the body of the flute, so changing from “sounds like it’s moving from side to side” to “sounds like it’s moving up and down” might be jarring.