I’m still making vast improvements in my flute playing, and I’m starting to get this “Right Handed” business down a bit better. (I can play both ways, but it gets confusing) – I have a VERY frustrating problem.
Well, two.
The first is that I can’t seem to do anything to get my flute in tune. Its always 30 cents or so sharp, or else flat the same way. I’ve tried playing with the tube, playing with my embouchure, posture, alternate fingers, and all sorts of other things that just aren’t working. My real problem–the one I don’t want to face–is that I need lessons. sigh But if anyone has any advice on how to at the very least play in consistant pitches, I’d love to hear it.
The second problem I’m having involves going from a high note to a low note.
I can drop from the third register into the second without any problem, aside from being out of tune with myself (sigh) – but I can’t drop from the second register, or even the top part of the first register, into a low E, D or C. I can do it, I mean, but there’s a very noticable gap–the pitch goes away completely as whatever-it-is that’s adjusting adjusts. I’m not sure thats very clear, but–imagine trying to play the Morrison, and having there be like, 0.50 seconds sliced out of every transition from B (or is it A?) to E and D.
Well, not sure if I’m qualified to reply since I’m aware of my own problem playing in tune… but, I find it helps to play along with other musicians. If I’m listening to what they’re playing and listening to my flute, I can sorta adjust better, partic. on upper register. However sometimes when I start a tune, I can be a bit sharp … get a few odd looks from neighbour and tone things down a bit.
I guess that if you are consistently a bit sharp or flat, it doesn’t matter much if you play by yourself. It really only matters when you’re playing with others.
As to changing pitch from higher notes to lower, I surmise it’s a matter of practice. Someone here described an exercise some time back: play low D, then E and D, F# and D, G and D and so on up the scale bouncing back down to low D each time. Then come back down. Taking it as slow as needed to hit the notes, then increase speed as required. I hope this of some help.
I’d be a fair bit short of the expert thing as well. Probably it’s your embouchure, if it’s not tight enough the movements of your lips have to be greater which caused me trouble. As far as getting tuning right you have to get the distance, angle of blow etc consistant because all of these things alter pitch. As a general rule angling the air stream down into the flute lowers pitch and blowing across raises it; also playing close to the edge and covering more of the blow hole raises pitch too. This makes a lot of things to juggle with at the same time as flapping your fingers up and down in a specific order!
I suppose it could be the flute, different intruments have different response times.
Going from high to low like that usually requires that you put a stop between the high and the low note…Kevin Crawford demonstrated this at a workshop I attended; he described it as “stopping in mid-flight.” You stop the high note briefly before launching into the low note…it’s pretty near impossible to go from high to low smoothly when you’re playing dance tunes.
As for your tuning, I had a flute student who was consistently sharp in the second octave and flat in the first, and he was always getting the evil eye at sessions. The issue turned out to be that he hadn’t developed his embouchure enough, so his breath was unfocused. I had him spend more time in the second octave and gave him that right-handed scale to work on, and over the course of six months or so his flute magically started playing in tune.
The other thing to be aware of is consistency. Sight down the barrel of your flute and make sure the tone holes are lined up and your embouchure hole is lined up (whatever way you like it, rolled in or in line with the tone holes) the same way every time. If you like, you can even put a mark on your head joint and the barrel joint to be sure they line up every time…that will ensure that the embouchure hole is always in the same place relative to the rest of the flute. And work on bring the flute up to your lips in a consistent manner. That way everything is where you expect it to be, every time.
Good tip, I’ll have to give it a try. I can manage a legato D-B-D on an M&E RR. On other flutes, I open the embouchure hole slightly and sacrifice tone somewhat.
I really meant you should use a brief stop when you’re going from any note above d in the second octave directly down to the low C, C#, D, or E in the first octave; it also is pretty much mandatory, unless you’re really skilled, when doing an octave drop from, for example, second-octave g to first-octave G. It’s really hard to make that transition without stopping the high note and setting up the bottom note, as the notes are blown rather differently.
I have an Etude for the Boehm flute at the moment and it has a section which goes (all slurred and on one breath):
gf#gfggdgcgBgAgGgAgBgcgdgegfgdg - you could easily extend it to gGgF#gEgDgEgF# and adapt it for the keyless flute. If you master that exercise, then you’ll have no further problems in this area… Actually making the jump downward is a combination of an embouchure shift and a change in the level of breath support from your diaphragm. And with practice,you really can slur them.
Moyse’s de la Sonorite has a similar batch of exercises done chromatically - i.e. moving a semitone at a time. and in triplets, i.e. f#ff# ef#eflat f#df# etc. Means that the emphasis is sometimes on the low notes and sometimes on the high note. And there are parallel exercises for the jump upwards from the middle f# as well.
Ja, I’ve seen a few Boehm books with that sort of exercise. Very, very helpful, not just for this type of thing, because it also improves your breath control and embouchre overall.
I neglected to mention that another thing you can do for the EBE triplet is
xxx xxo
xoo xxo
xxx xxo
and for DBD
xxx xxx
xoo xxx
xxx xxx
The slight pitch and tonal change to the B note will be minimal.
One of the consequences of the standard fingering and a heavy hand is the right-hand fingers can disturb the flute position and mess up the embouchure. Again the EBE example:
could you do a sound sample for that? it seems counter-intuitive to me.
also, Blackout_Entertainment, what tunes/songs are you using these intervals in?
EDIT:
so i tried brad’s idea of adding a millisecond stop after the top note. it works, and i think i do it more often than what i am about to explain (sorry brad, apparently its more intuitive than i thought). however, if you are interested in getting the notes without the gap, here goes:
classical players can make all those crazy jumps because they set up the air pressure and embouchure of the note before they are done with the previous one.
work on getting your low d “cold”. the first step is getting a solid, low d. then, stop the note and start it again, without moving your lips (breathe through your nose). master that. now try a low d, stop it, and then try to get a high a with the same embouchure, see if you can get it down to the low d without a pause or a crack.
eventually, try to be able to get that same low d embouchure immediately when you put the flute up to your mouth. the idea is that if you can set up a low d with no context or “dead air”, you should be able to do the same when you are playing; when you reach the high note in a tune right before the low d (or whatever) you have to switch as much into the low d 's embouchure and air pressure as you can right before you switch your fingers.
