I guess if this didn’t bother me so much, I wouldn’t have posted about it.
For some redicilous strange unexplained reason, for the last two weeks I’m struggling to play the flute.
Before these last two weeks, I was pretty much playing the flute rather “well” with a fine tone - not the best but still a rich tone, something I’ve been practicing to achieve for many months. I could play sets in weekly sessions without a problem.
Now I can’t even get the right tone out of the flute. As if something has changed in me - very suddenly. I lose air very quickly, the flute is not comfortable on my chin, I can’t get the correct rich tone - the embouchure is all wrong. I can’t play at a session at all - this is the saddest thing that happened to me with the flute! It’s so frustrating and dissapointing that I lose will to play the instrument. I’m about the receive my new ordered flute within a couple of weeks, so I hope it will be more forgiving on the embouchure.
I don’t understand what’s wrong… feels like I’ve jumped back in time when I only started playing the flute. This has been going on for two weeks, and I’m back to my whistles since then. I believe this might’ve happened to some of you, but for a day, or two - certainly not weeks, and I’m worried something is wrong somewhere. No matter which position on the embouchure hole I try, it sounds weak and thin - if I suddenly hit the spot, it’s only by chance and not solid. My muscles under the jaws feel getting tired of keeping a strange facial-lip figure, something that wasn’t there before. All this can’t keep me holding the flute on my chin, as if the whole process gets me tired quickly and I put the flute down for rest.
The first thing you should do is try another flute - have you? If your flute is leaking, you would probably get these results. Then, when you try to “fix” it with your embouchure, everything would go all wacko. If you HAVE tried another flute and it’s the same, all bets are off.
I am NOT an expert at this instrument (been playing about a year), so take all of this with a grain of salt (or maybe a teaspoon of olive oil in Israel!).
Thank you for the idea
I have kind of looked for an air leak, but I’m being positive it’s me and not the flute, or maybe the combination of the speicifc flute and myself.
I will recieve my new flute within a few weeks, then I can check better.
Have you tried slower tunes? Song airs and that sort of thing - where you have more time and the music is more relaxed. Get that back first and then go for the dance tunes.. maybe this helps,
Something I’ve found helpful though the years when this happens and you’ve “lost the blow,” go back to long tones. Start with a low G, don’t try to play loud, just steady at a medium volume. Try to get it as clear as as clean as you can. Try different things and see if they make it better or worse, roll in, roll out, move the flute slightly up or down or left or right, push the flute out a bit, pull it in towards the body a bit. Keep a mental note of what seems to help and what seems to make it worse. After you get low G as clean as you can, move up to middle d, and go through the exercise again. Finally the same on the second octave g. For the purposes of this exercise, don’t worry about breathing, just breath when you need to.
Now I know that playing these long sustained tones is boring, but if you do it just ten minutes a day it has the potential to do really wonderful things for your tone and control.
Finally, a possibility that no one likes to think about: did you have any dental work done right before this started? It can take a long time after dental work to get your tone back, especially if the front teeth were involved. Another possibility: it’s a very rare occurrence, but sometimes during dental work, especially wisdom tooth extraction, the nerve that enervates the lip can be damaged, making it subsequently impossible to play the flute.
I hope you can get your issue sorted out with a minimum of trouble. Please keep us posted as to your progress!
Being relatively new to the fluting game, this happens to me quite a lot… My approach, on the advice from various knowledgeable folks is to:
work on shifting the harmonics while fingering the low D (I like to try to play taps, reveille etc);
take the opportunity to play in the third register to torture my dog; and
play long tones as mentioned above, making sure to support the air column well with the diaphragm
I sometimes try to incorporate the metronome into my long tone practice, to work on ornamentation, duration, volume control (play loud, soft etc.) and clean shifting between registers without tonguing/cutting/tapping etc. - just using embouchure and not breath.
Going back to read Rockstro/Gunn/Nicholson can be helpful as well…
Or… get a piccolo as this will force you to play with a tight focussed embouchure all the time. I am sure Terry McGee would welcome a call!
Take a break. Don’t play at all for maybe two weeks. Longer, if you can. Your body and mind need a hard reboot (to use computer terminology). Can’t say why, but sometimes you just need some time to reallign. The good news is that when you pick up the instrument again, you’ll probably find that you play better than you have any right to.
What happened? I can’t tell you, but I can vouch for the cure.
I agree–and, as Cubitt pointed out, if you take a break for a bit, when you come back your tone may not only be back, it may actually be better than it was before.
However, if you don’t want to wait, and you do want to learn how to recover from this quickly, then try the long tones exercise. I’ve been there; it works.
STRESS mate…thats what it is !! STRESS…and all its associated baggage:- Tight muscles,stiff neck,dry mouth,cluttered mind ,etc.etc…
and it’s no wonder too !!..the troubles in your part of the world and your good self dealing with those troubles in the lengthy thread over in the Proctology column,thats enough to give anyone the Blues…
Take yourself,your Flute and a bottle of cold beer to a quiet and private spot under a shady tree and play a few tunes…
Advice from Dr.Weedie…I’ll send you the bill later
Try just popping the headjoint off and blowing with your hand covering the bottom to prevent the air getting out. If you get a solid tone, you likely have a leak elsewhere in the tooter.
Barring that, the other advice here is very sound. Good and bad days and weeks are part of the odessey of flute playing.
Good point on the leak–even a tiny air leak will just destroy the tone and responsiveness of a flute.
If you know another flute player, see if they’ll let you try to play their flute. If their flute sounds good but yours doesn’t, that’s a good sign the trouble is your flute and not you.
Ditto everyone else; there are just lame periods, and they happen to everyone. Of course, the better you are the less obvious your lame periods are to others, but everyone really does have them.
Meanwhile … must be time to work on the whistle playing!
One other flute thought, though … make sure that as you’re starting to play faster (which I’m betting you might be now that you’re playing sets in sessions and all), you’re not letting your fingers get too stiff or letting air leak out of a fingerhole or two in some other way. Might want to try putting a little lotion on your fingertips next time you pick up the flute, just to see. If it was me, I’d keep checking at the crown, stopper, slide, joints & keys for leaks, too. Little hairline things happen in the strangest places.
Good luck, and hang in there. It’ll get better eventually!
My approach, on the advice from various knowledgeable folks is to:
