Not very good at ‘bending’ or ‘sliding’ notes on my flute. Any advice? All I seem to do is get lots of air escaping. I have the right size flute for my hands so I don’t think it’s that. Does it have to do with breathing/diaphragm? I’ve had lots of teachers try to show me, but oh well..Thanks.
I usually think of a slide as a finger technique and a bend as a embouchure technique.
Have I gotten this wrong?
Slide = slowly removing a finger.
Bend = embouchure air direction and speed (not flute position or rolling in and out)
PS. I am an amateur so wait for an informed answer.
I slide into notes by rolling the finger off away from the embouchure hole. Slowly rising a finger won’t work properly, as it causes turbulence at the finger hole and is difficult to manage at speed.
If “bending” means affecting the tuning by adjusting the embouchure, I sometimes raise or lower the chin without changing the flute’s position. This covers less (or more, respectively) of the embouchure hole, sharpening or flattening the pitch. I mostly use that effect in slow tunes as it’s difficult to perform accurately at speed.
Sorry I didn’t quite get the terminology right!
“Away from the embouchure hole”… not sure I have that right. Moving the finger at a right angle, across the flute? Forward or backward? It’s hard to picture it without someone sitting here!
away from yer face 
FWIW I roll the other way (for the right hand ones)
L3 is somewhere between rollin’ and pulling’
L1&2 are more pulling
the thought occurs to me that Ryan Dunns has some great videos on youtube. they are for whistle, but the techniques for slides should cross over to the flute reasonably well. might be worth viewing.
be well,
jim
I find a chain-wrench comes in handy… some of those notes are tough beggars! The wrench is also useful for knuckle-rapping recalcitrant pupils/banjo/accordion/percussion players…
slippery slope there
too much and all ya get is C#
I usually switch to an old boxwood flute when I want a bent note…since the flute is pre-bent and all…makes it easier but it’s tough when playing up to tempo to switch flutes for just one note.
Here’s a proper flute for this technique (thanks to Terry’s website):
Seriously though, I’ve always slid the finger up instead of down…I’ll have to give it a go to see if it makes a difference.
Eric
Yeah, I should have mentioned that - you have to be a bit warped…
youtube idea sounds like a good fit for my question. Thanks again!
By bending the note , do you mean that you want to affect the tone and volume with your breathing, or flatten or sharpen it by a mechanical means?
If it is the tone and volume on one /passage of notes then you do it by changing your mouth shape, I assume you already know that mouth shape is a major factor in both tone and volume, even the slightest change in tension or embroucher can flatten or sharpen a note or cause the tone or volume to change. A good technique for slow air. I would question if whistle playing would be much use here except for the mechanical aspect.
Hmmm … I’m just a newbie myself … I’ve been ‘bending’ notes, right or left hand, by sliding the finger away from the flute at right angles to the flute body. Is this wrong? Seems to work … ?
OK, serious answer: I do different things with different fingers and maybe vary technique contextually, as well as probably doing things a bit differently on whistle from on flute because of the posture differences… Bearing in mind I use a “Rockstro” type hold on flute, mostly I draw/slide the L hand fingers back laterally to the tube across the hole towards the hand: R1&2 I generally rock off the hole by kinda pushing in/down with the 2nd knuckle towards the tube-side and straightening the previously slightly curved finger (and maybe dipping the whole hand a bit at the wrist), thus levering the top knuckle gradually up off the hole (more so thus on low whistle where I use a semi-pipers’ R hand posture), though I may also simply slide them back as with the L hand; R3 on flute and low whistle I either pull back as with other fingers or maybe slide it off the hole in an up-tube direction, or at an angle between back and up. On high whistle I probably mostly do the simple pull back lateral slide with all fingers. However, any and all of this may depend a bit on the particular instrument: very small or very large tone-holes present particular challenges, as do ones with sharp edges (which make it harder to drag/slide smoothly), such things making it necessary to adopt specially chosen methods.
I/you…no wrong…works is good
what Jem might have been saying (not enough white space, too early to focus,no can read)
I dunno, Denny. I understand your explanation. There were too many words in Jem’s - fell asleep before I got to the en 
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