I used to have parties at my place many years ago - many, many years ago. Back then two of my friends were very colorful fellows. One looked like the Marlboro man, but had a decidedly un-Marlboro mannish way of speaking and was a choreographer by profession. The other wore clothes like a pirate, screamed so much that his voice was always shot, and spent most of his time at my parties drinking beer from a pitcher and cutting hair for free. For myself, I don’t have the same ahem lifestyle choice as they did, but their close friendship caused some confusion. As a sad consequence - though I’m straight - I was “gay-bashed.”
In the Melee my lower lip was split completely through about 1/3 of the way from the left corner of my mouth - the split was a little more than 3/4 of an inch (2 cm) long. Well, a fist was bounced off my face several times, and my head was bounced off a wall and the ground, so I crawled home and slept. When I went to the Doctor the next morning they cleaned it up, stitched the muscles inside and then closed up the skin with stitches as well. There was some concern that I would have nerve damage and a speech impediment. For a couple months I leaked a bit when I drank (under my lower lip) and talked a little funny. Eventually I ended up with a crooked smile - and occasionally was teased because I whistle (puckered lip whistling) with a crooked hole 1/3 of the way across my lips (on the opposite side of the damage), and I talk like a ventriloquist hardly moving my lips. The scar and the lump of scar tissue about the size of a pea in my lip are not noticed by people who don’t kiss me, at least when I have a beard as I do most of the time. Over more than 25 years passed and I pretty much forgot about it.
I’ve been enchanted by the Irish flute. I bought one and I’ve been practicing it. I’ve had some success, but no consistency. With great consternation, I stood at the mirror for a while - several times - to figure out what was going on. I noticed that I play decent notes if I do one of two things; 1. support my lower lip with my tongue, or 2. mash my lower lip against my teeth to immobilize it. Neither of these proves satisfactory in the long term because with the former I can’t use tongue articulation, and with the latter the inside of my lower lip becomes inflamed from the pressure. This weekend I remembered “Oh yeah! My lip is crippled from the gay-bashing incident.”
So I’ve been consoling myself with the thought I was meant to play the whistle, not the flute. I’ve been listening to Mary Bergin, and Joanie Madden (the whistle tunes) and watching Brian Finnegan on my Tin Whistle Tutorial. Meanwhile the flute is lonely and un-played for two days.
Well, since I took the time to write this little story, and you actually read it, then I guess it’s worth asking. Does anyone have an idea how to solve this challenge - or am I a whistle player?
The first thing that springs to my mind is to get a GOOD teacher to work with your embouchure.
When I was around 10 yrs old I had a spear thrown in my face splitting my lip right through and knocking out a tooth. I wasn’t taken to hospital but that is another story, it therefore took quite a while to heal. When I first started to learn to play flute I too found the only way I could get a good tone was to support my lower lip with my tongue. I did this for years when I was into playing the flute, the problem I also had was playing for a few months and then not for a year or so and then for a couple of months etc.
I could never and still can’t blow air from the center of my lips, always to one side. Anyway I was on a flute workshop with Sylvain Barou (excellent teacher aswell as player) and he spent quite a while with me working on the embouchure (without tongue), I came home and spent a couple of hours every day for a few months just working on tone. At first it was really hard and I thought I could never do it but I began to slowly get better at training those lips.
It maybe with yourself that it takes longer than most people to get a good consistant tone but for me anyway it has been worth every minute.
I would second Colin’s suggestion. I also have a pea-sized swelling, although it’s in my upper lip. I also find that I sometimes push my tongue against my lower lip. My teacher says he did for a long time, too, and that it’s a bad habit, but that one eventually just grows out of it.
Stick with it. Since you sometimes get the tone you like, it’s obvious that you’ve got it in you. Now it’s just a matter of being able to do that all the time. I certainly don’t have it all the time, but those days when everything clicks make all the days of frustration worth it.
Larry Krantz has a good page on his website, showing a wide range of embouchures.
On the page it says:
"The flutists whose embouchures are illustrated are highly accomplished musicians with better than professionally average tones. Most are professional or semi-professional career people, although one or two are strictly students with fine tones.
The purpose of these illustrations is one of demonstrating the wide variation in embouchures capable of producing a good flute tone."
Which should be greatly encouraging to every fluter I reckon.
It seems my embouchure is most like “K” when it works. I can get a somewhat stable hole on the right side of my lips, but it blows across toward the left.
My Tipple seems less finicky than the wood flute, so perhaps I can put in a little time on it every day and see if something consistent will develop (without tongue and mashed lip).
If something decent develops in a year or so, is there a style of wooden flute with a forgiving embouchure? My Schultz is beautiful and has a great voice (when I can get it to work) - but seems to need a lot more control than the Tipple. Does that make sense?
This is great stuff. I’ve always had trouble convincing kids that it’s Ok to have a different embouchure or playing position, as long as it works. The ‘standard’ way of doing things is only a suggestion.
The best oboe player I ever taught had a repaired cleft, and she played with the reed almost in the corner of her lips. When she developed hand problems from the unusual position, I had her oboe modified by a creative technician. When she noticed the muscles on the strong side of her face getting noticable (that muscular look that some get when all the fat gets pushed out of the embouchure) she switched sides! 3 hours of practice a day for a month (and another trip to the oboe tech) got her back in playing shape, just in time to audition into McGill Music.
It takes some creativity and guts, but I believe that every instrument can be accessible.
BTW, doesn’t Galway mash his flute so hard into his lower lip that he’s bent some softer flutes? Just something I heard.
