Any suggestions out there on increasing one’s ability to sustain a note or two? I’m a beginner and I just manage to get two about 4 beats out before the vitality of the note goes down hill. Then it disappears altogether. The dizziness seems to be subsiding on the other hand.
Hi
By now you’ve probably noticed that “real” flute players indeed can sustain their playing beyond just a few notes.
On the one hand, it’s true that the flute calls for more air than any other wind powered instrument.
On the other hand, however, with practice the air requirement indeed does diminish.
So, welcome!
I’m wondering if there’s a bit of embouchure issues there on top of breath control. Try softening up your blowing and focusing your embouchure more.
Often times when I’m driving/riding somewhere or just idle for a bit I’ll form an embouchure and see how long I can draw out a breath of air. If I’m listening to a flute CD I’ll do that while glottal stopping/pulsing the rhythm (if it’s a dance tune) and listen for where the player breathes.
Practice a little bit each day, and have faith. I am a beginner too, and I had (and continue to have) the same issues. But I have noticed that it has gotten better over the last few months without my really realizing it. I have just focused on trying to get a good a tone by playing long notes, practicing moving back and forth between notes, and playing arpeggios slowly. And it has gotten better even though I am able to practice very little, maybe five to ten minutes a day.
If you are that much of a beginner that you are still feeling dizziness (even if subsiding) keep beginning until you get over it.
Once you’re over the dizziness, you might, on reflection, discern that you are no longer dizzy mainly because you are able to play out a note longer and truly expend more breath and thus avoid hyperventilating.
And, you might discern that you can play a note longer because you are not pushing it with your throat or mouth but with your diaphragm which means the vitality of the note doesn’t go down hill as quickly and therfore you expend more of your breath playing a longer note and thus avoid hyperventilating with the next breath.
But then again, you may not discern these things. But if you do, let me know, won’t you?
As a beginner, you will have a tendency to waste air until you get used to properly directing in, which will come over time - no need to do anything special, you will find your level.
Practice sustaining a low G, the easiest note to play. Concentrate on getting a full rich sound. This will both improve your embouchure and also develop an economy of air useage. Using G as your base, toodle over to other notes and jump into the upper octave, always coming back to your baseline G. You will have a natural tendency to get the other notes to sound as good as your G, and your G will be the first note to come in strong and rich. Do this and you’ll be surprised at how quickly the tone improves, the breath lasts, and the dizziness becomes but a memory.
Thanks for all the good information. I’ll just keep tooting along.
Hi Sheila - just consider the dizzyness as an added side benefit. Many people have to pay good money to get themselves in a dizzy state on a Saturday night - we flute players get it for free!
I used to get dizzy as heck and I think playing even aggravated my “inner ear” causing dizzy spells even when not playing. But that’s pretty much all in the past, but I do get tired and out of breath after playing for a while (15-20 minutes).
Regarding breath my flute teacher advised me:
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don’t slouch - sit up straight on the edge of your chair, head up, shoulders back.
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don’t let the flute angle down towards the floor - try & keep it parallel with the floor as much as possible - this helps open the windway for fuller breaths and helps align your embochure with the flute embrochure hole.
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Take some deep full breaths before beginning to play to get your lungs used to expanding fully - normally we breath very shallow. & when you breath in fill your lungs like a glass of water, from the bottom to the top. Learn to take quick, deep breath by practicing, but also practice grabbing partial breaths whenever the opportunity arises so you don’t have to “tank up” with every breath you take.
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Practice long notes, but transition between 2-3 notes or even octave jumps. Aim for 3 long notes in one breath 5 seconds ea for 15 seconds total inone breath. If you can’t hit 15 go for 12 or whatever your ability is now & build it. I like to make little snippts of tunes with this exercise to make it less boring, but keep it simple so you can think about what your are doing while you are playing.
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Like the other folks said - be aware of what you are doing and how you are using your wind, and focus & work to eliminate tension in upper body, arms, and embrochure.
Glad you found C&F it’s a great place to be a beginner.
Best,
Deisman
after I sent my post I decided to time myself on breath control using my metronome set to 60 bpm. Best I can do is 3, 3 second tones for a total of 12 seconds in one breath - guess my estimate of how long I was holding each tone was slightly off… ; )
Deisman
um - make that 3, 4 second tones javascript:emoticon(‘:oops:’)
I’ve been thinking about breath control lately because I’ve been working on this issue with a few flute students, so I’ve been paying more attention to how I do it.
I think the key thing to keep in mind is that you’re not doing a simple exhale, it’s a very controlled and supported exhale. You control it at two points: your windpipe and your mouth, and you support it with your abdominal muscles (the so-called “diaphragm support”).
Try this without your flute:
Take a normal breath (not a big deep one) and hold it. Now let it out as slowly as possible by opening your windpipe slightly. As the air leaves your lungs, try to keep the pressure constant by pushing in with your abdominal muscles. If it helps to vocalize while you do this, try that…just say “ahhhhh” or “blah-blah-blah” and try to keep the volume and pressure constant as you exhale.
At the end of your exhale, your abdominals should be tight and your belly button should be practically snug against your backbone 
I just tried this and I can vocalize for about 30 seconds before I take a breath, but I had a voice teacher who could do it for nearly a minute. She was trained as an opera singer. I bet Ella Fitzgerald could have done it for a minute or more as well, she had incredible breath control and I’m always amazed at the length of phrases she was able to take in her singing.
Now try the exercise again and this time add a new point of control of your exhale, at the mouth, by forming your flute embouchure and letting the air pass through that in a forceful but parsimonious stream: you can blow hard without a lot of air actually leaving your lungs; it’s the same principle as squeezing a hose: the pressure increases but the volume of water going out stays the same (or is reduced).
Now try all that with the flute. Once you get the hang of playing that way, with control and support, you can play the flute at full volume without much more air than you need to play the whistle. The mouth is more of a key point of control than the windpipe, but when I play I can definitely feel my throat muscles doing something and they must be playing a role. I’m not tightly constricting my windpipe but it’s not wide open either.
Ah ah, Bradhurley’s description clarifies something that had bothered me since last time the hose pipe analogy came up here. The hose pipe does what it does because it is a tube. If, say, you block off a hole in the bottom of a water barrel there is much less of a speeding up of the jet and it reduces to trickle before cutting off.
If the throat is restricting the flow at the end of the tube near the lungs the pressure behind lips is less than that in the lungs and rises to approach that at the lungs as the lips close to constrict the flow and speed the jet. So the jet can be speeded at constant lung pressure which is why people say ‘you dont have to blow harder’ to speed the jet and, I guess, talk about ‘diaphragm support’. And even an ‘open throat’ is a tube.
Maybe I find the hose pipe analogy a bit obscure because fluid dynamics is not my field. I find Bradhurly’s description much more useful.
Sorry, but it seems unlikely to me to have a pressure difference existing between the lungs and the oral cavity whilst air is allowed to pass through the larynx and the mouth, both constricted or not. The scenario is roughly analogous to two adjacent rooms in a space ship, with a door between them and a hatch to exit the space ship. Open both doors and you can’t have a pressure difference between the two rooms.
An efficient embouchure is one that very effectively manages total air throughput whilst producing a good sounding note. An inefficient embouchure is one that wastes air whether a good sounding note is produced or not. Blow, don’t huff, kisses to the the center of a dartboard.
Sorry, but it seems unlikely to me to have a pressure difference…
what about throat vibrato?
No, its roughly analogous to two rooms joined by a corridor. For air to flow along a corrider (or along a windpipe) there has to be a pressure difference between the two ends. If you crack open the door to space slightly you get a jet of escaping air and the pressure in your room goes down a little (to start with…) compared with the inner room so air starts flowing along the corridor.
But that’s no better than the hose pipe analogy and it is backwards to what is normally the issue - you start with the outer door/hose end/mouth open to describe how, for example, you might go the the second octave (unless you are Nicholson - see extract on Terry Mcgee’s web site).
So I suppose throat vibrato is altering the pressure in the mouth by varying the flow in the wind pipe (dunno though, I only do vibrato by accident and I think that’s my abdominal muscles miss-behaving).
By the way, the process of breathing works roughly like this:
To breathe in, your diaphragm moves down (which is why your stomach tends to bulge a bit when you inhale, it’s being pushed on from above by the diaphragm), and this creates a vaccum in your lungs. Air goes in through your nose and/or mouth to fill the vaccum. When you exhale, the diaphragm moves back up, effectively pushing air back out of your lungs.
nice tips Brad - I’ll give them a try… wonder if my coworkers will think I’m having some kind of spasm…
Deisman
what about throat vibrato?
Whether one uses the diaphragm, the throat, the tongue (basic or flutter tonguing) or the lips to modulate the air stream, this will not cause a pressure difference between the oral cavity and the lungs or the “windpipe”.
Creating a vacuum in the oral cavity does not force air out of the lungs. Try it.
If I close my mouth the way it is after swallowing food, so that there is no space in it, hold my nose and then create a cavity in my mouth (lips sealed) it fills up with air. Where is it coming from ?
If I block off my throat and the back of my nose without holding it (not sure which bit of anatomy does that) then try to create a cavity in my mouth the seal on my nose fails and air is drawn in. Try it.
Nice description, Brad. I tried this and it does feel different from how I feel when I play, so I am anxious to give it a try when I’ve got my flute handy.
Actually, the more I think about it… I have no clue how it feels when I do it. I’ve never thought about it before.