I’m very happy with my tone, breath control etc. in the first two octaves, but I find it very hard to get the third octave notes. I play up to e’‘’ regularly and have no problems so far, but convincing f’‘’(#) and especially g’‘’ and a’‘’ to sound good is very hard. I need a hard push and a lot of air to make them sound, and they’re very shrill then. I play a Pratten flute and use the fingerings from the Pratten fingering chart including all keys from Terry McGee’s site which work quite well, intonation-wise.
Is there any trick how to make the high notes easier, both for the player and for the ears?
Is it a new Pratten?
(Modern maker, post 197?)
Made to optimize the bottom two octaves for Irish tradition playing?
(As opposed to optimized for the top two octaves for classical.)
The 3rd one’s a bugger, either way, innit!
Small aperture, focused, point with the upper lip a bit and stay soft
(anyone want to try an’ figure out what that means?)
To get the third octave, you need a very fast airstream and a very centered embouchure.
There’s really no trick to it except to practice over and over again until you can hit them cleanly. That’s the first challenge.
After you can hit them cleanly, you’ll most likely find that they are quite loud compared to the second and first octave. So then the next challenge is to reduce the amount of air delivered to the flute without slowing the airstream, so that you still hit them cleanly but the volume is reduced.
If you’re playing Irish dance music, of course, you’ll really never have a reason to go up that high.
Other forms of music you might play, though, do need the full range of the flute.
Consistent practice and being very patient with yourself are the secret, at least in my experience.
Can’t say exactly if it has been optimized for irish music, but it’s a modern one made by Thomas Aebi around 2000/2001. In the interview on Brad Hurley’s great site, he say’s that he came “pretty close” to the original Hudson-Pratten he measured after designing his own Prattenish flute, the biggest difference being a narrower foot curing a warbling low D and making a “quite good third octave” possible.
When playing, I use mostly the following fingerings (following Terry’s conventions which I find very good):
c’‘’# - OXX XOO ,
d’‘’ - OXX OOO
e’‘’ - XXO XXO or XXO XXO, (for low volume)
f’‘’# - XOX XOX for fast passages, XX,X XOX and XO,O XX,O , speak better
g’‘’ is very hard to sound, XOX OOO almost never speaks, XOX OOX is a bit better, but still hard to get
a’‘’ - XXX XX’O which is a variation of the first a’‘’ fingering in Terry’s table, “my version” speaks easier and quieter
I surely don’t need those notes for traditional irish music, but I love to play jazz or classical music on the simple system flute and also often include variations in tunes. My setting of Tom Ward’s Downfall includes variations containing quite some high d’s, e’s and some G#‘s and Bb’s. There’s also a Paddy Fahey tune I’m currently learning to play transposed to D (from G). It is possible to play it more or less comfortably on the flute without harming the melody structure then, but includes some e’‘‘s and a f’’'#. Furthermore, when playing an instrument, I always try to learn everything the instrument is capable of, even if I won’t need it for most of the music. I believe that it gives the player a more comprehensive understanding of the instrument.
Thanks so far - I tried to squeeze my lips together quite hard and the g’‘’ came a bit easier, though there was also lots of hissing noise. I guess I’ll have to do the triple P: practise, practise, and practise.
Beyond whatever fingering your flute could prefer, it’s possible that you could face two challenges.
Developing the embouchure strength required to deliver a fast and focused air stream.
After that, relaxing the embouchure enough to get a strong bottom D, etc.
For instance, after playing at high altitudes, you may find a good bottom D hard to get. Oh, it can be done, if your embouchure is “flexible”.
On the other hand, every now and then I’ll put an Alto flute together, and have at it for a week or so. Now, Alto flutes call for an even more relaxed embouchure, and after some days with that, when I return to a Concert flute I can blow a really mean bottom D (or C).
That said, and in addition to their musical value, occasional workouts on higher, and lower, flutes really can improve one’s Concert flute performance.
However, Denny made a good point, in that some flutes are optimized, to work better in certain of their registers, at the expense of others.
You could try playing those notes by using harmonics:
For the third-octave a it’s:
xxx xxx
For third-octave b it’s:
xxx xxo
For third-octave c# it’s:
xxx xoo
and for third-octave d it’s:
xxx ooo
When I first tried this, those notes were shrill and breathy, but after a few months of practicing every day I got to where I could play them more quietly than any note in the first octave, and with virtually no hiss.
Listen to recordings of Jean-Michel Veillon; he uses these harmonics for third-octave notes a lot. There are some tunes where you hear him sliding up to the third-octave d from the c, and the only way to do that convincingly is by playing in harmonics.
Aside from embouchure development and familiarisation and practice, or rather, in addition to those, you may find it worthwhile exploring the variant fingerings for the 3rd octave in order to find the optimum ones for your particular flute. Have a look at Rick Wilson’s compilation chart here and, if you can lay hands on them, check out Rockstro’s similar survey in his Treatise and also the 8-key chart in the front of the old Otto Langey Flute Tutor that used to be the staple for intermediate students back in the 1970s. (I really ought to scan those up to have available to send folk!)There’s useful stuff here too, including charanga fingerings. It is worth spending time working through the alternatives and establishing which seem to work best for you on your flute: then settle down and practise them up to fluency, or at least occasional hit-ability (my angle on 'em!).
FWIW, I have long suspected, but haven’t done anything systematic to check it out, that the usual claim that “optimising the flutes for 1st & 2nd 8ves is at the expense of the 3rd” may not be as big a deal as all that. Certainly when I’ve been fortunate enough to have goes on modern flutes by high end ITM makers and tried them out into the 3rd 8ve, they’ve gone there as brilliantly as they’ve done all else; but I don’t have a good, hyper-critical classical ear.
More than any difference in ITM flutes, I had in mind a difference between traditional “military” fifes and modern “folk” fifes, where the military fifes could have a somewhat smaller bore and could favor the upper registers, and where the folk fifes could favor the lower registers.
just a thought… and i know you all think i’m an unknowing noob, but…
James Galway said in an interview i watched that the higher notes are counter intuitive… he said he used less air not more in the upper octaves… i listened to him… i tried it… it works…
but, maybe it works for me like flight works for a bumblebee… it doesn’t know it can’t fly… it just does.
Important to get your jet length down. The transit time for the air to leave your lips and hit the edge has to be approximately the same as the time it takes the sound wave to get to the first open hole and back. So, since you have gone up two octaves from the low register, your transit time has to be about a quarter. We do this by pouting more (moving the lips closer to the edge) and blowing at a higher pressure, to speed up the jet. But to avoid blasting, we tighten the embouchure so that less air flows, but it flows faster. If we are in the habit of blowing down into the flute, we stop doing that and aim for very close to the edge. And we make sure our stopper is set at 19mm or preferably less. We have evidence that players in the Pratten’s period set their stoppers at around 15-16mm. The close stopper makes the third octave easier and better in tune. 15mm might make the low octave a bit wuzzy, but why not start there, get the third octave going and then search for a compromise that works for you.
Inspect the blowing edge of the flute. Some makers round this considerably which makes the third octave hard. Also, if you have no trouble with the third octave on a Boehm flute, but can’t with the conical, you might want to consider a more rectangular embouchure.
You will find, as you conquer the third octave that your lower octave playing will probably improve. I guess by pushing our embouchures beyond our limits it gives us better control in the middle ground.
Interesting discussion - being a newbie to the wooden flute I appreciate everyone’s expertise. Thanks jemtheflute for those links! The fingering chart is comprehensive and should prove very useful.
danke sehr , Gabriel , iv’e been looking to find that high e , for Eddie Kelly’s , for weeks . it’s also very handy for getting back to the c nat in the umpteenth bar of the second part .
having said that , i am playing on a Marice Reviol , footless
when i get my Hammy back ( it’s in the menders , getting a new foot ) what will be the case , as i know it will be a different story ?
with the extra lenght etc , i mean .
anyone with a Hammy , footed (C, C# ,) mind telling me how to finger this high e ?
Jean-Michel does indeed use harmonics quite a bit, but, without wishing to be contentious, Brad, I felt I had to point out it is perfectly possible to do a convincing portamento slide or glissando from C nat or C# at the top of the 2nd octave to the 3rd 8ve D without using unassisted harmonics. (Of course, all notes in this range of the flute are harmonics assisted by venting.) C# to D works fine using the standard fingerings, oxx xoo for C# to oxx ooo for D, sliding off R1. On a keyless flute the commonest 2nd 8ve C nat fingerings are oxo xxx or oxo xxo and you can’t slide to a D from those, nor the keyed flute’s xox xxo with F key and Eb key, or even using the long c key. However, most flutes will fudge a slightly sharp C nat with a flattened version of the C# fingering, oxx xxo, which you can slide to D with R1+2. You can use it for a trill, too, and most of the above will work on many whistles.
Jim, more info needed. Has it got keys, in particular the Eb key? You’ll probably find something by using the links I suggest above. The commonest 3rd 8ve E fingerings are xxo oxx or xxo xxo, with or without Eb key open. You just have to try them out to see which speaks easiest and most in tune. The clearest speaker may not be the best in tune, however, and they all tend to be sharp and wolfy, and don’t work too well without an Eb key to open. On a keyed flute, xxo G# open xxx Eb open is often pretty good, but awkward at speed!
I doubt whether having a dummy, vented long foot will have very much effect on top Es - having an Eb key or not, be your foot short or long, is far more significant.
Surprised no one has mentioned breath support yet. It is the only way to get both the high notes and the low notes right.
However much most of us think we are supporting - there is almost always much more there if we look for it. My exercise of the month is vibrato on e.g. 1st Octave B, using the diaphgram - pulse to make the note more and less intense. Then I take the feeling of the most intense part of the vibrato and try to use the support involved in producing that ALL the time. Hard work but worth it. And what do you know it gets less stressful the more you do it. It’s the only way I can get these large jumps up and down to work. e.g pedal pointing dgBg dgBg | egGB AB E2 in “A Bonny lass to Merry Me”. Easy to let the upper gs just sort of fade into insignificance if one is not careful.
And of course, it is the way into the third octave without going red in the face.
