As I must learn on my own the Flute (can’t find a teacher available), I am wondering how small should my embouchure opening be between my lips. It seems that an embouchure that is approximately the size of a pencil is giving me the strongest and purest tone, but I was under the impression that it should be smaller for some reason. Should I try to get a purer louder tone with a smaller embouchure, or stick to what seems to work?
I think the key is experimenting. Don’t stick with what works, try out new ways. A good embouchure should provide a clean, strong tone and at the same time be very air efficient. You shouldn’t have to breathe too often.
Other than that, it’s all a matter of personal preference. If you have listened to a lot of flute music, you probably have an idea of how you would like to sound. Keep that sound in the back of your head and pursue it, at the same time keep the air consumption in mind and maybe the volume of the sound produced.
Standing in front of a mirror and playing helps. Keep experimenting and when you have found something you really like, remember the look of your lips and try to make your muscles remember how it feels.
And also, your embouchure will keep evolving all the time. If you practice a lot, you will constantly get better, and you’ll find better and more efficient ways of playing.
I would like to salute you, sir, for posting a Flute-related topic today.
Well played.
Unfortunately, I am pretty much still a beginner myself and can only
offer speculation. I have what feels like a pretty large embouchure on
the lower octave, but squeeze it much tighter and smaller in the
second octave, especially past the 2nd 8ve F#. I’d say play around a
lot with your embouchure to see what you get. Your body will
eventually settle on what is comfortable and still makes good tone for
extended periods. Be flexible.
Gor Blimey a flute topic…
When I got my flute the maker, a very fine player, said the stream of air should be ‘Like a laser’ If you read what Nicholson has to say it gives a pretty good idea. It’s on Terry’s site here:
http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Nicholson_on_Tone.htm
As a very first beginner I ran into the problem that the finer the air stream the harder to accurately hit the edge with it. After a couple of years I’m hugely better but there is still plenty more to go!
Rob
I use different embouchures for different tone colors, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller.
Typically, the smaller the actual embouchure opening in your lips, the harder you will have to work to thrust the air out, and also you will use more muscle to keep the opening small so that the air doesn’t widen it. This can produce a very focused, cutting, edgy sound, and is extremely efficient as far as the amount of air used per volume of sound. It requires a very well supported airstream, and can produce a sound very similar to an oboe.
As you relax the embouchure and move into larger openings, air efficiency goes down a bit, the tone darkens, some of the edge is lost, and the sound is more woody and “relaxed,” more flute-like than oboe-like.
Yet another thing you can do is deliberately unfocus the airstream a bit to introduce a bit of air into the tone, which can give a whistle-like timbre.
Also the length of the air reed–the distance between the opening in your lips and the far edge of the embouchure hole–can be varied. Shorten the air reed (roll in or lift up) for a more closed, resonant sound. Lengthen the air reed (roll out or drop down) for a more open, projective sound for the same amount of air.
–James
The smaller the embouchure the less air is need to make a strong tone.
One way to gage the focus, is to play the flute when it is cold, and check the spread of condinsation that forms on the flute on the otherside of the emb. hole. If the spread is wide, the emb. is not focused enough.
Cheers,
Regor,
If your embouchure is as large as the diameter of a pencil, it is way too large and you are most likely wasting air and making it harder for yourself. If you are talking about the size of the point of a pencil, you may be where you want to be.
Don’t know if this helps, but some people find it useful to form their embouchure by thinking about spitting a grain of rice from between their lips.
You may have seen this already, but this page from Rob Greenway has some good tips on building up your embouchure.
http://www.geocities.com/feadanach/tone.html
Hope that helps.
B
Yeah, what Jon said. I was taught to focus the airstream so I could see a “V” on the far side of the embouchure hole when looking in the mirror. Once you can do that, you are well on the way to being able to manage the focus of the airstream to achieve different tones.
Robin
Thanks folks, that is exactly the sort of feedback I need. I do find that the smaller my embouchure, the more difficult it is to get a sound out, but all the feedback seems to tell me that what I am doing currently, albeit relatively easy, isn’t where I really need or want to be.
So, if I understand this right, if I were to blow through a small piece of straw (like one use to drink pop) between my lips, this would be way too large a target (compare to lets say to the ‘grain of rice’) for my embouchure (give and take all the comments on the effect of a larger embouchure).
Roger
I really think it’s a personal matter. I can barely fit a piece of paper into the space between my lips when I blow, but that gives me a rich and powerful tone from my flute. On the other hand I had a flute student this summer who was classically trained and uses a very relaxed, pouting embouchure…her tone was beautiful and very powerful, although it didn’t sound “Irish.”
If what you’re doing sounds good to you, I don’t see much reason to try to change it.
Think coffee stirrer instead of straw and you’ll be on the right track.
Eric
I just turn my headjoint the way i like it best, and so i get a clear tone.
it all starts from there.
I’m still working on tightening my embouchure, too.
I was able to get a strong tone fairly easily when I started out, but my embouchure was pretty relaxed (and didn’t sound “Irish”). But I was also blowing pretty flat (a problem on flutes without tuning slides), and using a lot of air.
At first, tightening your embouchure is a real workout for your lips. But it’s worth it - after a bit of coaching (and a lot of practice) my tone is better, I’m more in-tune, and I’m using less air. Still a lot of room for improvement on all three - but I’m making progress, however slowly.
If you can arrange it, even a little one-on-one time with a better player helps a lot - and it doesn’t have to be a formal lesson. At our house session earlier this month Aldon and Jack spent perhaps half an hour working with me, but it made a real difference in my playing.
Another helpful metaphor is squirting water out of a garden
hose–if you put your thumb over the nozzle, closing off most
of it, it produces a narrow stream of water of great velocity.
I think it’s helpful to keep in mind that developing this
takes time, but that, if you keep these pictures in mind,
your body will attain what you need, but it may not be
right away.
Also I do think that playing a higher pitched flute can be
very helpful, like a G or an A or a high Bb, because you really
can’t play these without a well focused embouchure.
Also some of the embouchure exercises that have been listed
in other threads, including the ones involving overtones, will help.
If you do what requires a well controlled narrow embouchure,
you will bring it back to your normal playing.
The Grey Larsen book is, IMO, a blessing to folks without
teachers.
Funny thing is, I bought a Tipple G to see if I actually wanted to play flute, and to give myself an idea of what embouchure would be like. Now that I’ve got an M+E in D, I’m having trouble taming the lower register! It’s coming along nicely, though.
If it’s a dark, reedy “Irish” tone you’re after, there’s a particular way to form the embouchure that is very effective for tonal consistency and is the bee’s knees for a hard, low D that doesn’t easily break, and if you have low C#/Cnat keys the result is very satisfying and strong:
Rather than stretching the corners of the mouth or turning them up as if in a sort of smile, keep the corners of the mouth turned down and tucked inward so that the upper lip forms a “canopy” over the embouchure hole (blowing more downwardly into the aperture, of course, so turning the headjoint in is helpful). Drop the jaw, keep the tongue away from the lower lip, and “blowing” becomes more of a sense of “breathing”, and a lot of volume can be got from a surprisingly gentle breath and good abdominal support. For me there isn’t so much a sense of lip aperture compression, now, as there is one of easy positioning instead. It took me a long while to get this form down, and I’m glad I tried. Some may get it more easily than I did.
“Ve get too soon oldt und too late schmart.” When I first started to play Irish flute I had been fifing for many years. I carried the same power technique over for quite some time before I realized that the amount of force needed behind the breath was not so great. Last week I was playing my Healy keyless Blackwood and I was a little beat from a day at the grind and just “breathed”, so to speak, into it and it SPOKE TO ME. Wow, what a revelation! Easy does it and a well made flute will respond. Point the air in the right direction and let the flute do the rest. IMHO and YMMV.
BillG
Yes, flute bottoms are something special, I think. I can now play
the upper register of just about any flute. Little difficulty.
But the lower register can be difficult–I can play but not
necessarily get out of it what’s in it. I think there the issue
isn’t so much that I need a more developed embouchure, but
that the low notes on some flutes just need to be blown
in a way particular to that instrument. Just have to get
to know the beast.
I’m trying to suss the difference betwen “a particular way” and “more developed”. Wthout development, how can one adapt, much less be consistent? It’s not enough, IMHO, to just purse one’s lips, let fly, and hope for the best.
Hey, great news, I got that oboe sound out of my Hammy Practice Flute…this works,… that is all the great fantastic feedback and recommendations you have given me so far, this is really helping me out … only 10,000 more hours of practice to go… 
Tx everyone…