I know this has been discussed in the past, in fact in the past month there was something like it, but I wanted to ask a similar question relating to embochure style. As my embochure has progressed and I have been thinking about it more it seems that to narrow your windway with your lips seems to sacrifice the reedy tone that is characteristic of the Irish flute. I have come to realize you can compromise this by pointing the narrow stream more deeply and directly into the flute, but the sound is still not as good as a more flattened approach that requires more air. My question is this, do you change your embochure for different styles and when you change octaves?
I definitely change it for different octaves, especially depending on whether I’m playing the user-friendly second-octave flute or the one that’s less so.
In fact, I use a slightly different embouchure on either of the two flutes, because one just sounds better to me played a little looser and across the middle.
I am presently experimenting wildly with embouchure shape and trying to produce different tone qualities, even within the same tune.
There’s one vote from the flatlands … 
hi all!
guess i’ll add my scents here. my current embouchure seems to work well for both octaves, & on different flutes. it also seems to give me a more reedy tone the smaller i am able to make it. i credit this to a higher velocity airstream pushed through a smaller opening.
i’m working on the “less is more” principle. this is based on a year i spent getting the barest minimum tone from the shakuhachi. one teacher said something that has really stuck w/ me (paraphrasing): “the lips are completely loose; just the tiniest little flap where the air escapes.” my current interpretation of this principle leaves the front of my lips as completely relaxed as possible. (i’ve gone through several generations of embouchure where i though “that’s as relaxed as it can be”, only to find months down the road that there are even deeper levels of “relaxed” possible.) the corners of my mouth pull out just the smallest bit to keep the upper lip just barely taught across the teeth. for the high 2nd octave, this tension seems to offer just a bit of resistance to the escaping air, but the upper lip itself stays relaxed. the lower lip remains loose and feels a bit “pouty”. the end result of these things feels a bit like “tiny fish lips kissing”.
control comes from the jaw, almost exclusively. jaw open/close controls the flow of air, volume and speed. jaw in/out controls the angle of the airstream. the high octave has the jaw closed more compared to the low. the angle determines the fine tuning of the tone. different flutes do seem to have different blowing angles for each octave, though most of my flutes want the high octave blown a bit higher, i.e. sharper.
here are some pictures fwiw:
no embouchure:
http://www.pacificsites.com/~dog/tmp/lips0.jpg
corners of mouth pull upper lip slightly taught:
http://www.pacificsites.com/~dog/tmp/lips1.jpg
blowing opens a small airway:
http://www.pacificsites.com/~dog/tmp/lips2.jpg
w/ flute; note that the lower lip is a bit squashed by the flute:
http://www.pacificsites.com/~dog/tmp/lips3a.jpg
http://www.pacificsites.com/~dog/tmp/lips3b.jpg
caveat the first: describing embouchure is a hazardous endeavor. our imagination often exagerates the reality of the incredibly small, subtle changes that have large effects on tone. often we tend to overshoot our intended objective, because our effort is too coarse. less effort is hard to achieve by trying (which is just more effort). embouchure evolves, grows with time spent playing.
caveat the second: i’m no expert. i’d love feedback commenting on or correcting any aspect of this embouchure. there’s far more to this than any one person can conceive.
enjoy! /dan
Interesting…the art of Zen and embochure control…never thought there could be such a connection.
Bang, actually that helps out a lot. I think I am going to try some of your techniques. I have also found blowing at an angle down the flute (towards the holes) tends to make the blowing easier and gives more bang (no not you) for the buck.
oh, zen is connected to everything (but it’s a pity to say so. 
i find that to be true as well, though i wonder if it is blowing down or being closer to the edge of the embouchure hole that makes the sound harder. try moving the flute closer in without blowing down & see what you think.
blowing down lowers the pitch, which can be raised back up w/ a faster airspeed. the faster airspeed can be achieved by increasing breath pressure, or by making the embouchure smaller w/ the same pressure, which tends to make the tone even reedier. the combined effect of blowing down & a smaller (relaxed) embouchure can produce some really gnarly sounds.
Those are great photos, Bang. They are a lot more explanatory than the many descriptions I’ve read. I am still struggling to get the 2nd 8ve without wildy overblowing, and the books and forum notes etc. have not been nearly as clear as yours.
Thx,
djm
djm- some great embouchure videos (& science stuff) i found a link to in another thread:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/flute.html
that page has links to 4 other pages w/ the videos - scroll down to find them. ~2-5 meg each, but worth the wait. (i used mozilla’s “save web page, complete” option to make local copies i can refer to quickly.)
the flute player in those videos has a wonderfully easy, natural technique. the science notes explain a lot about what causes variations in pitch and octave jumps.
the only thing missing in their explaination that i’m aware of is the effect that covering the embouchure hole has on the pitch of the flute: blowing up/down (i.e. rolling the flute in/out) effectively changes the size if the embouchure hole, which changes the effective acoustic length of the flute, which changes the flute’s overall pitch. the size of the embouchure hole on a flute is a very significant factor in the pitch of tones it produces.
also, here’s another link i found on the board w/ lots of (tiny, alas) pics of different embouchures:
http://www.larrykrantz.com/embpic.htm
the commentary notes how different all these “pro” embouchures are. i think it’s interesting to look for the commonalities.
Yes, I’ve seen these links. None of them show the size of the embouchure from the front to give an idea of the actual size of the opening. The changes are so slight I have to go back and forth several times to make out all the subtle little differences in how the lips, cheeks and chin move.
Thx,
djm
Good thread! Bang mentioned it being worthwhile to look for commonalities in the pro embouchures. What I see are 1) the corners of the mouth basically act as anchors (but just enough: no overdoing it), and 2) the lips are relaxed and have an aspect of being a bit “inflated” by the act of blowing.
so true! fyi then: the size shown in lips2.jpg is roughly what i’d currently use for a “normal” volume 2nd octave G. very roughly, for a low D the jaw opens so that the width of the embouchure is 3-4x that, & the height maybe 2x. if i’m playing very quietly, lips2 might be the size for the 1st octave G. there are also changes in jaw angle to get the notes in pitch at different volumes.
here’s a pic of Hariprasad Chaurasia, bansuri master:
http://www.pacificsites.com/~dog/tmp/chaurasia.jpg
notice how far jutted out his lower jaw/lip are. my theory is that this is (one of) his embouchure(s) for the high 2nd octave, where the essentially cylindrical bansuri tends to be flat by western standards. Chaurasia makes those notes (& higher!) effortlessly. he’s just amazing.
finally, remember caveat 2: this is just me, & i’m not an expert. anyone w/ more experience care to comment?
fwiw /dan
bingo! thanks Nanohedron. you have described the elements i was trying to identify very nicely.
Thx, bang. I am a shallow visually-oriented person, and verbal descriptions don’t make much sense to me. I do better with pictures (the ones that reveal all).
I’m not sure I’d want to follow your bansuri-playing friend. Look, he’s injured himself! 
djm
As a new flute player (coming from whistle) I am finding this a very interesting thread. I am working on embouchure and finding that the smallest (and I really mean small) changes makes a huge difference to your sound and ability to play. Something that I noticed though when checking my embouchure in a mirror is that it is not centred and is over a bit to the right. Is this good? Bad? Ugly??? I checked the archives specifically about this but as there were over 1100 threads on embouchure I didn’t have time to check them all.
Should I work on centering my embouchure now, before I get too set into a bad habit? Or does it matter? Will it affect my ability to play well?
Help??
Wpeg, since no-one else here has responded, I will try my best. As far as I know it does not matter whether your embouchure is centred or not, as long as you are comfortable and can get all the notes.
djm
Whistlepeg- check out the Krantz link to the “pro” embouchures above. the commentary specifically notes that several of those embouchure aren’t centered.
imho, if your embouchure is relaxed and working for you, stick w/ it. you may end up going through several revisions as your embouchure evolves. i wouldn’t worry if it’s not perfect right now.
ps- does anyone know what the term “tear drop” in those Krantz comments means?
enjoy! /dan
I’ve been scratching my head over that one. Krantz’s pic “N” is indicated as having a “teardrop” formation (all others reported eliminated or modified, yet otherwise undefined, so how can we tell?). The only thing that appears different to my eye in photo N is the central part of the upper lip: a scalloping (tilt your head sideways to the left and look at the next parenthesis to get a rendering) that isn’t present in the others. “Teardrop”, I suppose…I’m not sure I’d have used such a term for description’s sake, but maybe it’s currency among orchestral players. Dunno, meself.
I just came across this thread, and was moved to search out this “tear drop”.
After extensive googling, I came up with this page (the next to last post):
http://www.saxontheweb.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=12068&highlight=tear+drop
where the “tear drop” is described as a physical characteristic that people are born with:
the shape of the indentation between one’s nose and upper lip. Apparantly, folks
with a promenant tear drop shape will have difficulty with their flute embouchure.
I guess what Krantz is pointing out is the various ways to compensate for this
charactaristic of one’s facial structure.
Michael, I am a little slow sometimes, but I am curious about your avatar. I assume that this is a historical painting of the legendary Michael Coleman. Correct? Or out in left field?
Doug,
You got it! A rendition of the one and the only.
Michael
just use your ears - they’ll tell you what’s best but I’d suggest using a mirror to make sure your posture is good too since that can have quite an effect on what’s going on