Flute breath requirements

Irish Flute
1

I have a Tipple flute, without lip plate, that I play fairly often, but not as often as I should. I play my low and high D whistles more. Still, I’ve made some progress on the flute, and most of the time I get a pretty nice clear sound out of it, with “Irish flute” character. I’m pleased with that, even if my general playing isn’t very nimble. It’s not all that nimble on the whistles either, to be honest.

Anyway, I notice it takes a lot more air to play the flute. My “standardized” test for this is to play a sustained low octave G at normal playing volume, and time it until I run out of air. It’s not the same as playing an actual tune, of course, but it’s a way of making comparisons.

On my low whistles, I can sustain this note up to about 20 seconds, depending on which whistle I use. Of the low whistles I own, The Guido Gonzato goes the longest, sometimes hitting the 20 second mark; the Dixon polymer is a close second. The Kerry Optima is third, but again not far behind the others. The Chieftain V3, now sold, was farther down the list.

On my Tipple flute, I can make that G last about 11 seconds, nice and clear.

My question is this: Is this to be expected, or is it more likely a result of (a) my embouchure, or (b) the wide cylindrical bore of the Tipple flute? Or both?

Have any of you experienced flute players done a similar comparison?

I like playing the flute and I understand that I’m relatively new at it (not quite a year and a half), but I’d like to know what sort of expectations are realistic, as far as breath requirements are concerned.

2

The short answer is…Embouchure Embouchure Embouchure :slight_smile:

I can blow a lot longer on my flute than I can on my Low Whistle (Olwell vs MK)

Oh and the upper octave on a flute takes LESS breath again, while the upper octave on a whistle requires you to blow harder.

Boyd

3

The other short answer is… FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS.

You probably are noticing a lot of “airiness” in your flute tone - this is, essentially, wasted air. I, too, tend to run out of air faster on the low whistle than I do on the flute, btw.

What you should probably work on are long tones - keep playing until you get a nice “round” tone and then hold it until you think you are out of air - and THEN keep going for as long as you can. Another thing you can try is to play as softly as possible, especially in the upper octave. This forces you to focus.

Good luck!

Pat

4

Yep. Long tones. Probably like you’re doing. I was ever so good at sticking with it when I first started, but I really should do this long tone practice now as well - always. (I’ve only been learning the flute for 5 years, so I’ve a way to go.)

Flute should take a lot less air than a low whistle. Aim for about 30 seconds on that G. It’s not that hard, provided you’ve got that focus that others have mentioned. And long tones is the way to get it (IMO). Well, it’s a way to get it, at any rate. :slight_smile:

Oh, and while I’m at it, the upper octave should take even less air still on flute, which is the opposite to what happens on whistle.

5

Thanks for the replies, which are very helpful. It’s definite surprise that people can get longer notes with a flute than with a low whistle, especially the MK, which everyone says is very breath-sparing.

I do notice that the second octave takes less air than the first, so at least I’m getting that much right.

The first octave doesn’t always sound airy, although it’s maddening how I can be playing nice and clear, then get up and take a leak, then come back and it sounds all wrong, even though I could swear I’m doing everything the same. It’s kinda like my golf swing that way.

But even when it’s clear, I must be wasting air, although I got to 14 seconds just now.

I do whole note drills on every instrument I’ve ever played. On the flute I also do slo-mo versions of tunes I’m learning. I mean really slow.

Maybe I’ll get a few lessons to get a better feel for things. I’m pretty sure I can find a teacher around here.

6

Another help is PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE the angle of your embouchure and experiment with lip positions.

I had different flutes prior to Tipple, but I have to say, it is the Tipple corrected my embouchure and made my training easy and gave me dimples too. I didn’t have it before.

You should get one with the lip-plate. I find it easier to toot if the flute has a deep cut/deep passage than without a lip plate if it is a D.

Tipple has a smaller embouchure hole- Circle ( although he makes oval too) and it is easy to make a sound than one with the bigger oval or squarish oval.

I’ve read about creating a small air packet on your upper lips and angle the air up and divert it down with the upper lip. And a Boehm Flute player friend told the same so I gave it a try.

Upon practicing that air packet, it made the high notes easier for me. Flute does conserve a lot of my air compare to whistle, specially the high notes which gives me a relax diaphragm specially when alternating to singing a harmony.

One friend gave me an advice, “if you hear the white noises, it is not the evil spirits singing with you, it’s your embouchure”.

Regards,
Angel

7

I’m thinking about this, since Doug can fit a new head joint with lip plate to an existing flute, so no need to order a completely new flute. On his website Doug now recommend the flute without plate to beginners, which is why I got it. I wonder, though, whether the lip plate makes all that much difference in the amount of air used during playing. There is some reason to think that it simulates the thicker wall of a wooden flute. But I don’t have any real sense of how relevant that is, when it comes to breath requirements.

8

I have a Tipple D flute with Lip plate and E without lip plate.

He does not recommend the E with the Lip plate but I was curious.

It is a good thing that my D-head fits closely to my E-body by adding some tape.

Observing the sound difference, the E became deeper and reedier. However I somehow noticed that it became flatter.

I do not know about the Physics of it but the E does sound better without a lip plate.

And comparing a different flute without a lip plate that has a thinner embouchure wall, the thicker wall is easier to toot.

Bass guitarist friend of mine preferred thicker or heavier material because of a “rounder/fuller” tone resonance. So this somehow supports my theory.

My Theory is, I think the lower the sound the better it is if the embouchure window cut is deeper/thicker specially as the lower the notes go.

The chin issue is just temporary until you get used to it.

9

Just checked; mezzo forte, about 18 seconds for the low G on the Burn’s folk flute and about 30 seconds quieter, but still with a properly supported clean tone. And at the end of the thirty seconds I still had air in my lungs but had to breath for biological reasons. My Alba D whistle (not low, quite a breathy whistle) took about 25 seconds on the same note to empty my lungs - note that the whistle does not leave me much choice about how much air I use.

When actually playing I am usually more spendthrift with air due to volume, glottal stops and so on. Also I try never to let my lungs get completely empty when playing.

Strangely, economy of air comes also from learning to move it around in large quantities. I would worry first about using the air you need to get a good tone - with time, as your embouchure develops and you learn to move air more efficiently then you will be able to play for longer on a given breath. Too much early focus on playing out a tone can lead to pinching off the air supply and destroying the quality of your tone. Note that pinching off the air and forming a small focussed embouchure with good air pressure behind it are different things! To get a good tone, spend lots of time playing with all the variables involved, lip position, blowing angle, size of embouchure hole, shape of the rest of your face and the resonant frequency of your throat and larynx. etc. Listen to what makes the best sound and try to keep doing that… :slight_smile:

I would spend some time learning how to breath deeply, breath in quickly and control the pressure of your breathing out (“breath support”). And parallel to that spend a lot of time learning when to breath - I found the first chapter of Conal O Grada’s tutorial book full of excellent advice on this. The basic message was - don’t try to “sneak” in your breaths. Choose where to breath and make the space in the tune at that point to allow you to breath properly. Use the breathing to emphasize, not hinder the tune.

(Just checked again - as loud as I can; the low G on the Burns is lucky to get to ten seconds.)

10

Decades ago, when I was just out of high school, I owned a Gemeinhardt student model flute. I tried to teach myself to play it (I already played sax), and got to where I could make what I thought was a passable sound, but I had no lessons, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. It being the 1970s, I was happy enough to get an airy “Tull” sound, and I wondered if my inability to get a clear “classical” sound was because it was low-end flute. Always blame the instrument, right?

Then one day I was having a beer and playing some music at an outdoor place and another flute player came over and joined me. I say “another” flute player, but what I really mean is, a real flute player. He made sounds that I could only dream of. His flute was a better quality instrument, but at some point I asked him to play mine, and of course when he did it sounded gorgeous. Lesson learned.

I don’t have much experience with different kinds of flutes. There’s a guy who comes to a session who typically brings three flutes with him. He plays one and offers the others to anyone who wants to play one. One of them is a Copley keyless wooden flute. I was astonished by this instrument. It seemed that the tiniest breath was enough to produce this clear, though not loud, sound. I never experienced anything like it before. I didn’t do a breath test, but I’m pretty sure I could have played that G for a long time on that flute.

I don’t know if this wonderful sensitivity of the Copley flute was a result of the thicker wall around the embouchure hole, the conical bore, both, or some other magic.

11

I wanted to try that Copley too. I got a recommendation from a Chiffy who has the same type of breath control… But my budget is certainly complaining…


I made a PVC flutes before buying a Tipple. The tipple sounded better, and even woodier than my bamboo flutes.

Sometimes it is not just the player, it is also the instrument.

If they allow credit card installments for flute purchases, I will definitely avail it. :puppyeyes:

I’m venturing to a keyed Ebonite flute (not wood, they are not good to storms and flood, which are always on the go in our country) to experiment the fingering experience on tranposition, instead of change the whistle/flute and breath transposition.

12

FWIW, a really good way to improve embouchure is to practice sometimes on a higher pitched flute, for instance one in G or A.
These are more demanding, embouchure-wise. Doug makes good ones and sells them at a good price, and they’'re fun to play.. Failing that,
overtone exercises on the standard D flute.

13

Or Rockstro (courtesy of Terry) wrote…

… the question of intonation may be set aside for the present, and efforts may be made to improve the tone, regardless altogether of pitch, by:

  • Varying the tension of the lips.
    Turning the mouth-hole inwards or outwards.
    Raising or lowering the flute on the lip.
    Altering the deflection of the air-reed.
    Increasing or diminishing the opening of the lips, by greater or less compression.
    Increasing or diminishing the force of the breath.

None of these alterations should be made at random, but the effect of every change of method should be carefully noted, otherwise a good sound might be produced by mere accident, and the student would probably be unable to ensure its repetition or even its continuance. Some guide as to the necessary force of the breath may be found in the fact that a practiced flute­player, with lungs of fair capacity, should be capable of sounding the note b’ uninterruptedly for thirty seconds.

14

Out of curiosity-- what is the difference between “long tones” and what Jennifer Cluff calls “pure tones”? She seems to say that “long tones” are misnamed because the point of them is to develop tone and not breath capacity, so one shouldn’t actually hold them as long as humanly possible, but other references seem to imply the opposite. Are they two separate things? I can see the value of both and am inclined to do both…

15

Yes! When I’m losing focus on the flute without quite knowing why, playing a few minutes on that cheap Yamaha fife usually brings things in order again. Playing in the 3rd register helps a lot, too.

16

I don’t know the answer to your question, but I’ve always called them long tones to differentiate them from short tones. In long tones, you vary your embouchure during a single note to try to get the sound you’re looking for, whether it’s pure or dirty. I was never taught to hold the long tone as long as possible, just as long as necessary. Short tones, OTOH, are brief puffs to try to get the attack, or initial sound of the tone, that you’re looking for. So the embouchure is changed between notes, not during them.

None of my teachers ever encouraged me to try to hold tones as long as humanly possible. In fact, Chris Norman said there’s no such thing as breathing too often, just not often enough, and what some people interpret as breathing too often is just breathing improperly or at the wrong time (a non-musical breath). Another teacher put on a CD with Micho Russell playing a reel, and he breathed seven times in a single pass through the A part. I’d never noticed it before.