An interesting snippet transplanted from another thread here
Quote from the Grinter thread:
"One thing I haven’t heard yet, which Sam Murray pointed out to me, when I tried one of his in his shop, is its very important where you line up your bottom lip, and what you do with your upper lip.
Some flutes like you to line up your bottom lip with the edge of the embouchure, and some flutes want to to line it up more towards the middle and blow down more. If you don’t pay attention to that, you’ll never play some flutes in tune or well."
…so… are Sam’s flutes edge or middle???
Indeed, what other flutes are “middle” or “edge”
Boyd
(fluting for a decade+, on a Seery Pratten then a Murray and an Olwell)
Darned if I know! I haven’t analysed it too much, but I can say for sure that what works on my Olwell does not work on my Cotter. I recently got the Cotter out for a toot after five months solely spent playing my new Olwell and couldn’t get a bloomin note out of it for a good five or ten minutes. Decided to leave it alone, as I didn’t want to undo the changes I’d obviously subconsciously made to my embouchure to accommodate the Olwell.
May have been more conscious of it when I first had the flute. I think I cover about 1/3 of the embouchure of my Cotter but I can’t be sure! I start blowing and it auto-corrects itself. I also pull the head slightly closer to myself so it’s not inline with the finger holes.
Someone else could probably achieve the same sound with methods different from mine.
My Olwell Pratten has the loudest and strongest tone with the edge of my lip back against the player side of the embouchure however, my lip naturally tends to sit in covering about 1/4 of the embouchure which is fine because the flute plays wonderfully however it is blown in to.
As Eric had also mentioned in that post you can also cover a large portion of the embouchure with the lower lip (maybe 1/2 ?). I do this with my Olwell (and have done it with other flutes) when i don’t want to be loud in a session or when the house is quite. For me this makes the tone softer and buzzier to my ear, still nice but not as nice as the full, open sound. Lately, i have been trying to learn to play softly while keeping the embouchure open which in my opinion sounds much nicer then dampening the tone with your lower lip.
I can see that it is going to take some getting used to. No sense in adding more complications. Besides, this flute from Doug Tipple is really nice. No need to be switching to another one. I like this one just fine!
However if you want to play irish music a D flute would be a good idea, as the keys of the tunes better fit the D flute than
the F flute.
…
“Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” Augustine
Ain’t it the truth? The trouble is finding something you can’t lose that makes you happy.
(Of course Augustine had God…)
