although recently there has been an discussion “thoughts on tone” this did not answer what is puzzling my mind right now.
as I am still fairly new to the flute, I would like to hear your opinions on how you develop a good tone.
what to work on/ look for (tips) and what makes a good tone , is this a personal thing or not.
how do you know you are doing it “right”.
berti
Try working on long notes, start with say an B hold it for 30/sec to a min
and repeat, and go down the scale, then you should be warm enough and
go back up to the higher octave, each note, try to make it as pure and
nice as possible.
That is one exercice that comes to mind
Nicolas
Hi Berti,
From my point of view, a good tone is obtained with a good embouchure. And how you get a good embouchoure? well, I think that exercices like playing long notes and harmonics work very well, (at least for me). I have been playing flute for two years now and thanks to those exercices I’m developing a good embouchure: I need less air and I can control the airstream.
Another thing that helped me a lot, was that I knew what I was looking for. Things are easier when you know the way you want to sound (you hear it in your head). So think about the manner you want to sound and pursue it.
Victor.
I think you have to play long tones to get your muscles to remember the
shape of the good tone. When you do the long tones you try for the best
clearest sound you can make.
Listening to flute players you want to sound like I think helps put in mind
the tone you aim for. If you hear the sound in your mind when you do the
long tones it could help you get closer to producing that sound. Of course
even on the same flute 2 players will not sound alike, but it is something
to aim for to increase the tone quality.
I think it’s hard to know if you are doing it right except by the sound and
feel. I asked this question of teachers and was told a couple things. One
was to make the hole smaller, and the other was to bring the top lip more
forward. (I didn’t know how to accomplish this but used trial and error.)
If you web-search on “Jennifer Cluff” you can find a large amount of write
ups which she did about this. She’s a Canadian flutist and teacher with a
real gift for describing embouchure techniques in words. She wrote for
the Boehm flute but learning to use your lips on any flute gives you some
flexibility and muscles there. Then you keep at it with the sound you want
in mind.
To get an “Irish” sound out of your flute you basically point the angle of
the air stream more down into the hole. This is easier said than done but
if you use the long tones it will help.
Hope this helps at all. Others will likely give you more information. If you
search the Chiff for “tone” and “embouchure” you may find more than you
want to know!
Lesl
thanks for the replies, very helpful, there has not been written much yet about how to obtain tone on this forum so that is why I started this post after wading through quite a few pages.
so if I am right, you describe a good tone that has no “side effects” but is as pure as you can get it and for the “irish” sound you go more down into the flute? and long tones are being worked on…
greetings
berti
hold for 30 seconds? i can’t even do 15. 
ah yes…practice with a metronome…set at 60 beats per minute, and try to hold the breath as long as you can.
each time your practice, try to get a few ticks more…takes time but will get you where you want to be in the end.
also it is partially in the embouchure.
somebody correct me if I am wrong, still new to this.
berti
You’re right Berti.
Everything everyone has written is great advice, but I just want to reinforce what Lesl said about listening. The more good wooden flute players you listed to, the more you realize what tone you like and the easier it becomes to notice when you’re playing that you’ve hit that tone. When you hit it, it really helps to think about what you were doing when you achieved the tone you like. With enough practice, it becomes easier.
That said, I still have those days that my tone is just flat out bad - I have less of them than I did a few years ago, but they still happen.
Eric
Part of tone comes from learning the mechanics of tone production, but part of good tone also comes from the player’s imagination. Try to make the sounds you hear in your head, and bit by bit you’ll come closer to achieving them. Trying to match another player’s tone is also a good excercise–your embouchure will make intuitive adjustments after a while.
Here’s some interesting reading: http://www.larrykrantz.com/wyept1.htm#wyetone
Surely each note will be different I can manage 40 sec on high B but only 15 secs on the bottom D unless I play with a very weedy tone.
In addition to listening to other flute players, record yourself. You will sound very different to a listener than you do to yourself. Honestly, 90% of the time I record myself, it sounds better to me played back than it did when I was playing. (I’m not sure how much of this is psychological – I KNOW I’m straining when I’m playing, this feeling obviously doesn’t come out on the recording.) Also, the differences in tone from day to day or from switching flutes is much more apparent when I’m playing than it is in the recording.
Nearly right. It’s not that you want no side effects, its that you want less
wasted air. As you work on it, I think you will hear the tone get more
overtones, so its not exactly pure that you want, as much as “more of
the note and less of a noise floor”.
I haven’t timed my long tones in ages. When the tone become more
efficient there’s more breath to use for the notes.
Lesl
My preference is to turn the headjoint inwards to do this so I’m not in a face-downward position. The point of directing the airstream more inwardly is that you’re cutting it (the airstream) in half or better. With this approach, response tends to be easier with a well-cut embouchure hole, and the sought-after reediness comes of it, too. On the flute I’m playing, the embouchure hole works at its best when turned WAY in to get the “sweet spot”: the far edge of the cut is well in past center. Other flutes may not respond well with such an angle and lose volume. It all depends on the cut.
some newbie thoughts on tone. feedback eagerly requested.
it’s the breath, silly!: an easy, even & solid flow of air is a essential part of good tone. this does not seem to me to be very volitional. part of what blowing long tones does is to give the muscles which control breath time to learn this steady airflow. it seems to be related to how relaxed we are, and minimizing what we are doing to the barest essential of one long tone helps us unlearn patterns of tension.
less can be more: others have noted that less airflow can improve tone. i have had quite good results from practicing the smallest, whisper quiet tone i can blow consistently. once i had a consistent & quiet tone, working on making the tone harder and deeper without using more air has been quite effective. part of this practice is to bring the blowing edge of the embouchure closer to the lips and blow a bit more down into the flute, as others have suggested. it is amazing how strong and rich and loud a tone can be produced from a very small airflow if i start with the quietest possible tone and make that big without using more air.
loose lips float the tone boat: specifically, the less tension i am able to have in the front of my lips, the better my tone is. i usually find that when my tone gets lost in the middle of a tune, consciously relaxing my lips will bring it back. there is a bit of tension at the corners of my mouth which seems necessary for good tone, but it is mostly in the cheek muscles.
i wonder if it makes sense to try to define broad categories of types of tone production? it seems to me that significantly different techniques may be necessary for Rudall vs. Pratten flutes &/or blowing styles. classical technique is different still (though perhaps closer to Pratten?) i noted somewhere on the web that Robert Dick has said that reed players coming to Boehm flute must learn to find the center of maximum airflow, instead of the center of resistance or impedance which is best for reeds. i wonder if some forms of “traditional Irish” style blowing may be aimed at finding and using a wooden flute’s center of resistance, more like a reed instrument?
enjoy! /dan
It’s all about air; how you supply it, and how you shape/direct it. I would suggest playing in front of a mirror. Look at what your lips and body are doing -
how much of the hole your lips are covering,
that your lips don’t open wider than the embouchure hole,
that your airstream is headed down into the hole,
which lips movements make what kind of shape,
that your throat is not tensed,
that you’re not hunched over limiting your lung capasity.
Also try making an embouchure without the flute on your face, direct the air towards your chin, and make it as small of an opening as you can. For me my upper lip comes out over my lower lip a tiny bit to make the air go down into the flute, they stay close together to keep the opening small, they get super close and come slightly forward together if playing very high.
YMMV,
-George
i wonder if it makes sense to try to define broad categories of types of tone production? it seems to me that significantly different techniques may be necessary for Rudall vs. Pratten flutes &/or blowing styles. classical technique is different still (though perhaps closer to Pratten?)
I have copies of both by Wilkes and there is ABSOLUTELY no difference
in the blowing style, which is, I think determined by the size of the hole
in the mouth piece. A tight embouchure will allow you a “bigger” nicer sound with much less air, unfortunately the muscles needed for that dont grow over night so you need to practice. Volume of air has also nothing to do with tone quality, but with loudness.
Nicolas
Practice and experimentation.
Tone is very subjective and there is no “right” tone.
With practice and experimentation one learns control. Sustaining a note is good….but tone or rather change in tone has to do with intensity of a note, and other more subtle variations that were described as “tone colors” in a book I read. Tone will give feeling and emotion to a song.
I recommend the book by Grey LarsenThe Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle.
Here’s my beginner’s perspective on improving tone: there seems to be a very strong correlation between the efficiency of the embouchure and air usage, and the quality of the tone. As the efficiency improves, so does the response of the flute - ornaments start to pop. So, I’ve been concentrating more on an efficient embouchure and air usage using the responsiveness of the flute an my guide, and my tone has been improving at the same time. From an engineer’s perspective, this is just acoustical impedence matching.
I’m sure there are still ways to change the tone color while still having an efficient embouchure, but I’ll work on that later once I have a basic good tone consistently.
Thanks for these two bits, Bang! I worked on these today, and it seems to help w/my tone production. And I went back to playing in front of a mirror again today and discovered something interesting: the hole which my embouchure produces isn’t centered perfectly on my lips! So I moved my flute a bit to my right, and my 2nd octave started popping out a lot easier and more consistently. Should this be something I just go with, or should I work to re-center my embouchure?
–doc
Here’s a silly question: I can play long tones with decent tone and medium volume for 20- 40 sec depending on the note… but when playing a tune 15 seconds and I’m gasping (I know there’s usually no reason to go that long without breathing!) Trawling through my flute recordings by the masters Desi Wilkinson comes top with 15sec Grey Larsen with an 11 sec marathon and Mr Molloy is very regular at around 8 Conal O’Grada rarely makes 6.
They are obviously breathing to make best sense of the tune but it I wondered why the air usage goes up so much when playing a tune.
Ps All time measurements were taken inaccurately on a statisticaly meaningless sample!