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The term fipple specifies a variety of end-blown flute that includes the flageolet, recorder, and tin whistle. The Hornbostel–Sachs system for classifying musical instruments places this group under the heading "Flutes with duct or duct flutes." The label "fipple flute" is frequently applied to members of the subgroup but there is no general agreement about the structural detail of the sound-producing mechanism that constitutes the fipple itself.
As is clear from the Hornbostel-Sachs heading, there are several ways in which a duct can be formed. These include the player's lips controlling the stream of air as it is directed to the edge, without mechanical assistance. Common examples of this are the end-blown ney and the side-blown concert flute. The first attested use of the term fipple is in a comparison between the recorder and the transverse flute by Francis Bacon, published in 1626.
By this description, the fipple is a plug that nearly closes one end of the pipe, open only for the duct that "straightens” the channel of air blown axially into the instrument. The solid "stop" near the mouth hole or embouchure on a pipe that is blown transversely is analogous to it. This provides historical justification for using the term "fipple flute" to designate a recorder (cf. the German term Blockflöte). Subsequent authors have used the term in that sense but differ in the element of the mechanical aggregate illustrated above that they regard specifically as the fipple. That word is used variously to designate the block, the edge, the full block-duct-edge structure, and the entire instrument. This ambiguity is detailed in the article headed Fipple in Grove Music Online, which concludes, "Since nobody can agree what the term means, to avoid further confusion its use should be abandoned." In the text below, what might otherwise be termed a fipple flute is referred to as a duct flute.
The recorder can be used to illustrate further nuance in the design of duct flutes. By definition, the duct is formed by a channel carved into the body of the instrument, and the block. This passage is alternately termed a windway and ends at an opening referred to as a window, bounded by the edge on the opposite side. This rigid structure affords intrinsically less dynamic and intonational flexibility than does, for example, a transverse flute embouchure. This can be offset by other structural details. In the case of the recorder, their presence or absence often differentiates between mass-produced and artisan-built instruments. In a broader context, the difference between one type of duct flute and another is determined both by gross and finer structural detail.
Possibly the oldest discovered fipple instrument is the Wicklow Pipes. Although the instrument as found was incomplete and incomplete, a replica set was playable when fitted with fipples.
L.E. McCullough notes that the oldest surviving whistles date from the 12th century, but that, "Players of the feadan are also mentioned in the description of the King of Ireland's court found in Early Irish law dating from the 7th and 8th centuries A.D."
The Tusculum whistle is a 14-cm whistle with six finger holes, made of brass or bronze, found with pottery dating to the 14th and 15th centuries; it is currently in the collections of the National Museums Scotland.
One of the earliest surviving recorders was discovered in a castle moat in Dordrecht, the Netherlands in 1940, and has been dated to the 14th century. It is largely intact, though not playable. A second more or less intact 14th century recorder was found in a latrine in northern Germany (in Göttingen): other 14th-century examples survive from Esslingen (Germany) and Tartu (Estonia). There is a fragment of a possible 14th-15th-century bone recorder in Rhodes (Greece); and there is an intact 15th-century example from Elblag (Poland).
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