well, im a beginner, and trying to work out how to consistently blow such that im playing in the upper octave. i can do it sometimes, but its very fluttery. i find myself pouting my lips (sort of like a ‘first kiss’ with the flute) which makes for a hard transition from normal mouth shape to ‘first kiss’ mouth shape.
your probs all going to be saying ‘just tighten the lips’ but when i do that i near blow something out the other end… (ie. i find myself blowing much harder).
i know its a boring question…maybe i just need to find out for myself. did anyone else have any trouble?
You shouldn’t overblow it, but the airstream needs to be faster, not more air, just a faster airstream, which is why tigthening your lips is a pretty good idea. The airstream also needs a bit of re-directing. Try to get your lips closer to the far end of the embouchure and start working from there. There is no right way to do it, it takes lots of experimantation to find out what works for you and what achieves the sound your looking for. Just keep trying.
Yes, I had trouble. I had a great deal of trouble. It took months to get around to that second octave with any reliability. Embarrassingly many months.
There will be some experienced players coming in to give sound advice, but you can also do a search and dredge up what they’ve said in the past.
Their advice really helped me. One thing that helped a great deal was the suggestion to practice playing the second octave at a whisper. The whispery-er the better. That enabled me to find where the second octave was without screeching.
Another suggestion was to play long tones on each note, shifting into the upper register. DDDDDDDdddddddddd EEEEEEEEeeeeeeee FFFFFFfffffff, etc. At a whisper, this becomes do-able. Eventually, with time, if you do this over and over, you’ll begin to get better at it. As you get better, you can go into the third register, as well.
Something else that helped me was to try it on a different flute entirely. That, at least, enabled me to quit blaming the first flute for the difficulty. Also, because the two flutes react differently, I was able to figure out what I was doing wrong from the relative ease/difficulty of blowing the second. The first became easier–it was me, not the flute.
You may be attempting to rely too much on mouth-shape. That’s important, but it’s not all of it.
There has been some advice about where to aim the airstream to get the second octave, and that’s very helpful. It’s not so much blowing with a huge amount of pressure, as it is slightly tightening the airstream, shifting it slightly up (?), rolling the flute slightly in, etc.
It’s kind of a “surprised” feeling. The lower register is serious and sedate. The upper is a more “ooooh!” feeling with your eyebrows raised. Surprised. Casually surprised. DDDD (no surprises there) . . . ddddd (ooooh! surprise!).
Not that I’m any good at this, mind you, but I have had this same difficulty. And, I don’t think you should aim for casual surprise forever. It just seemed to work to get me a bit farther down the path.
Whatever you do, don’t become frustrated or give up. Eventually, you’ll find your way and it will all work out.
I am at a similar stage - perhaps a little further on. It’s taken me months just to get here as well, so you are in the same boat. Lambchop’s advice is good.
Things that help for me:
Trying to get as many harmonics as I can on the low D and E, in as controlled a way as possible. First you blow the fundamental (i.e. the “real” low note). Then you blow the octave. Then you blow the fifth above the octave. Then you blow the third octave … and more if you can get them. Then you come down again one at a time. Some of these are pretty screechy, but they make the second octave seem a lot more comfortable. I use this as a warm-up exercise.
Find a good slow tune with plenty of upper octave work. Danny Boy does it for me. Really try to make those high notes sing. I found that blowing too hard actually kills the second octave, and backing off a little helps me hit the notes a bit more accurately, especially the jump to the high B in the second part of the tune.
I read somewhere (Gray Larsen?) that a good embouchure has air between the upper lip and teeth. When I read that, it made little sense, but I later found that this does happen, and it helps the second octave. Without the flute, pull your cheeks in at the sides, and try to feel the air pressure on your upper lip as you blow through your embouchure. I think this is where the “kissing” effect comes from.
Above all, know that every flutey goes through this (and more!). Stick with the regular practice and it will keep growing.
Now, if I can just master that half-holed F natural …
Jumbuk and Lambchop have some good advice. I think it’s important to have some input from people at an earlier stage of development as well as those more experienced. I’m kind of in the middle.
One thing is that you might even want to stick your lips, especially the lower one, out a little to gain the upper notes.
I would add to what Jumbuk said above. I think this is a good approach, but also find yourself a couple of tunes that are entirely in the lower octave. When I first started lessons, the upper octave was my biggest complaint. The first tune my teacher gave me was a Breton slow tune called The Scholar, which is entirely in the first octave. (He also had me working on harmonics, long notes, and a couple of other things.) It seemed counterintuitive to me, but it allowed me to gain some confidence and work on phrasing (It’s really an incredibly expressive tune) while I gained control over the upper octave.
The flute might make a difference here, although it’s do-able on virtually any flute. I was given Carolan’s “The Princess Royal” (aka Miss MacDermott) to learn. In C. I hadn’t really tried the Fnat much, thinking it was beyond me, but I picked it up quickly in context. The context made all the difference.
I’m trying tunes in A now, to try and pick up the cross-fingered G#. It’s much slower going due to reduced motivation.
My motivation for the G# (two weeks ago) was when a session group I play with were working on a set of waltz’s that included Margaret’s Waltz and My Home, both in A. This is a good set for flute, because there are only a few G#'s, so it’s not hard to get them in. On my Sweetheart keyless, the cross-fingered G#'s are way too sharp, but the effect still seems to work.
PS These tunes in A are another good exercise for second octave control.
Sad but true, the embouchure has to be learned for oneself, and it’s very difficult to ‘teach’ it in words.
The best written description I ever saw (which actually helped) was this:
Imagine you’re cooling a spoonful of boiling hot soup. If you blow too hard, the soup will fly off the spoon all over the tablecloth (or the person opposite you). When you do that, the spoon is generally held lower than your lips and a bit away from you.
For the second octave, do exactly the same, but imagine the spoon is a bit higher and slightly further away.
Can’t remember where I read that, but it was a kinsight more useful than chuddy analogies about hosepipes or saying the word ‘tuba without the ba’.
(ie. i find myself blowing much harder).