I kind of stumbled onto a useful exercise for learning to blow the right way. I say stumbled because I wasn’t taught this, but weirdly it seemed to do a lot of good for me.
We all know that there is an aspect of overblowing the flute to get into the second octave. True, to do it correctly, it’s more of a refocus of the embouchure, with perhaps a slight increase in air pressure. But, on the most basic level, you can get a flute to overblow by, well, overblowing.
Here’s what I would suggest, and anyone with flute pedagogy experience is invited to censor me if this sounds absolutely insane. Try first to play your flute in the first octave with even volume low D to middle D. Try to play quietly, but clearly, with a nice tight tone, perhaps not too much “burr” or “gravel” or whatever. Sort of non-IrTrad. Play a few tunes with the whole tune in the bottom octave, and get comfortable playing the tune wholly in the low notes.
Next, play the same tune quietly. Keep that focus and the clear tone. You might notice that you seem to have a lot more air than you used to, since you’re focusing on playing quietly and cleanly in the bottom octave.
Then, I’d suggest picking a few slower tunes, NOT airs, but maybe a jig or a reel or something that goes into the second octave (Garrett Barry’s is a nice one). Try playing with the same amount of volume in both octaves. You might find, at first, that you need a little more air, and that you have to play louder. That’s fine. But work on making the two octaves balanced. It might seem like going above high G is difficult, but work at getting the whole second octave in balance volume-wise with the first.
Last, play the whole tune quietly spanning both octaves. You might find yourself, if you’re anything like me (God help you), suddenly the master of huge lungs. It’s very liberating. Once you can play across the two octaves quietly, in balance, start playing louder.
Once you can accomplish this, it might get even easier to vary the tone, and take on that nice “burr” we look for in Irish flute playing. Or, play cleanly.
I don’t mean to say that this will take one sitting, either. But it worked for me, and I didn’t know it was going to happen until I really tried to play quietly. Once I got quiet, I realize how much harder I was pushing the second octave. So, I worked on making the second octave quiet, and a light went off, and I “found” my embouchure.
I hope it makes sense!
Stuart
Breathing, as is so often pointed out, is a Good Thing. Then move up to A, then B, then C, etc., up to the 2nd octave G, then back down. Doing long tones can be boring but it is about the fastest way I know to get a good tone and good embouchure control. Avoid doing long tones on the lowest notes until you get your embouchure a little further along.
