This never happened during the many years I’ve played whistle, so it seems unusual to me. I was playing my new Tipple flute solo and during the break one of the string players remarked that one of the strings on his instrument started to hum. He commented that it confirmed that his instrument was in tune (assuming mine was 
). Anyone else ever have this kind of thing happen? How about the sitcom scene of shattering a glass with the flute?
I’ve had that happen quite often, but only with flute and not with whistle. For me, it happens if I play too close to my wife’s guitar.
Eric
My flute causes interference on my computer monitor when I hit certian notes! 
My living-room is tuned to D. I’m pretty sure it’s down to the metal-framed sofa bed and all its steel springs, but every time I hit a D on whistle or flute, the whole living-room resonates and the note sustains.
Never noticed any effect on my computer monitor though! (Maybe flat-screen TFT jobbies are unaffected by Jon C’s curious phenomenon?).
I get this my. monitor is in D. I suspect this only occurs with trinitron monitors which have wires instead of a shadow mask.
Rob
I seem to remember a piano that did this, As for the wine glass If you rub your wet finger over the top of the glass, so that it makes a note, that is the not you need to hit. Unfortunately, I heard that the volume needed is both painful, but almost impossible to get without amplification.
When you experiment with sound, you will find resonance everywhere. It is especially easy to demonstrate with stringed instruments. Holding a guitar close to your lips, humming or singing notes will cause the strings of the guitar to vibrate. Rooms also have one or more resonant frequencies. Trying humming in a note in the bathroom or shower. Usually one note will be quite loud. I also like to resonate the goat skin head of my frame drum by gently humming close to the drum head surface. It will really start vibrating if you get the note just right.
You have probably heard about mechanical, ticking clocks in a clock store. By the principle of resonance on the walls of the room and in the air, all of the mechanical clocks in the room will entrain with each other and will tick at exactly the same instant.
I’ve often had objects break when playing the flute…usually those that miss me !
There are all sorts of things that resonate around me. In particular, there’s a mirror in the dining room (we use an old dresser as if it were a hutch… ) which resonates on E. In other rooms, other items will resonate on different notes. I think some of the windows are in A. When I was at a session the other day, listening to a tune I didn’t play, my flute resonated to certain notes from the fiddles, I’m pretty sure to the D. Not very audibly, but I could feel the vibration in my fingertips as if I were playing. Covering different fingering patterns didn’t seem to catch resonance on any other notes, though.
Breaking something with resonance is very tricky to do. Aside from having really high volume to start with, you then need to bend the note up just a little to create some kind of interference that causes the breaking. Otherwise the glass will just happily hum away on the note. It’s not a skill I particularly aspire to, however. I prefer my wineglasses intact.
Mythbusters</a](http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html">Mythbusters</a)> had a great episode a few weeks backs where they demontrated shattering crystal wine glasses with sound. They started with generating the resonance frequency of the glass and amplifying it, using their amplified voices, and finally had a singer break one using his unamplified voice.
I had always heard about classically trained singers being able to do this, but it was still cool to see it actually happen. Of course in this case it was a heavy metal singer, not opera.
ChrisA
What do you put in your wineglasse’s? Just curious…
Err… wine? 
Often a high-production california white zinfandel, but not always. I recently had a wine from ‘Bundu Star’ that I thought was remarkably good.
Beowulf, that sounds like a great episode. Too bad I missed that one. (The rocket car one was fun though. Has nothing to do with flutes, but it was fun… )
Are you sure it’s not your eyes vibrating?
A few years back, I made a low D tuneable didge out of a piece of
gray pvc drain pipe. This pipe was fairly thin walled,
and was the loudest didge I’ve ever heard - and I’ve still got it!
Anyway…
when I was practicing, I was also reading something on my monitor,
and the words were ‘bouncing’.
When I asked somebody else to look, the words were still!!
Therefore it had to be me.
I did some research on this and found that eyeballs vibrate at 18hz i.e.
infrasound. My didge was producing vibrations at less than 20hz as well as the nominal’D’ frequency.
Sure enough, an engineer friend of mine tested it in the firms lab,
and it did put out vibrations at 18hz, as well as other frequencies.
Soundwise it was a ‘dirty didge’ 
Wierd!
Beats booze or pot for feeling strange!
That is awesome.
I’ve experienced the vibrating eyes with a jaw harp.
Yesterday at pipe band practice I felt my water bottle resonating with the drones.
Cheers,
Aaron
My folks’ basemate resonates to G. It’s weird.
A few years ago I invested in a really nice electric guitar. Within a day of playing it, I noticed that the high strings didn’t sound quite right - they had this weird warbly sound to them that’s kinda hard to describe but definitely unpleasant.
So I went through a checklist of potential problems with the guitar:
- Tuning it
- Checking the intonation
-Dampening all strings behind the bridge - Dampening all strings at the headstock
- Adjusting the pickups (Because magnets can cause weird notes)
- Dissassembling/Reasembling the bridge
- New strings
- Multiple amplifiers
- Tweaking the truss rods
- Different cords
After three days, none of these were working. I was seriously p!ssed. Absolutely great guitar and it was messed up seemingly by magic! So in a bout of frustration I dragged my amp to my bedroom, cranked it, and let rip.
And. . . lo and behold - no warbling!! It turns out the livingroom ceiling fan created weird interference patterns with the amplified guitar. Turn off the fan - no problem.
Frustrating few days though.
It is difficult to make a stringed instrument, such as a violin, that will be equally responsive throughout its entire range of more than four octaves. Usually there are notes that are louder than the others, and in some cases there are notes that hardly play or sound weird (wolf tones). This has to do with all of the vibrating parts of the violin, especially the wooden parts that make up the body of the violin or a bad string. Because of resonance, you can get strong reinforcment of a certain tone or destructive interference patterns that cause the wolf tones. They are not easy to find or to fix, for that matter. I have a cello that has several notes that don’t respond well. I have tried many things with no success. Besides moving the bridge, changing strings, or adjusting the position of the sound post, does anyone know of anything else that I could try without having to remove the top?
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that some of the cross-fingered notes on the flute that sound weak or strange are caused by similar interference patterns within the flute.
I have a harp in my practice room, and that baby is constantly humming along.
Geek legend has it Nikolai Tesla made plans for a dangerous machine (this
was only one of many rather dangerous machines), whereby one could find
the resonant frequency of a stairwell, and then continually stimulate at that
frequency, eventually bringing down the building. Don’t know if he ever
tested it, though. Would’ve saved a fortune on dynamite.
Along the lines of Wormdiet’s experience, a friend used to work for a large
phone and data provider, helping large customers deal with bad connection
issues. One such customer was having a problem only at certain times of the
night. The connection would go bad at 9pm, and start working perfectly again
at 2am. After extensive searching, a field tech found that the neon sign owned
by the resteraunt next door was throwing a serious electromagnetic field,
thus causing the connection to crap out while the sign was turned on!
They don’t teach this sort of thing in school…