Let’s say I’m playing a lengthy medley on flute at a session. I find that after several minutes on flute, my sound “deteriorates.” It’s not lack of breath, but it’s lack of something. If I then switch quickly to whistle for a minute and then switch back, the flute sound is fine again. To me that suggests the flute problem is not one of breath or endurance, because I’m continuing to blow the whistle to “recover.” I’m not sure just what it is I need to work on (and how to work on it) to avoid that flute deterioration. Any wisdom appreciated, thanks.
It’s your embouchure that’s letting you down, and I have a guess as to why.
If your embouchure is falling apart over the course of a set of tunes, chances are you’re too dependent on muscular tension to hold everything together. As the minutes pass, your locked-down facial muscles accumulate lactic acid, reducing their ability to do work. Once they begin to let go, your embouchure falls apart. Sound plausible?
You need to figure out how to put your embouchure together without skinning your lips back with muscle power. I spend lots of time with my students working on this, so it’s not something that’s easy to jot down in a brief forum post. Try going to Youtube and watching the James Galway series of lectures to see how he recommends doing it.
No, I’m absolutely with Rob on this - the embouchure is failing, undoubtedly for the muscular reasons he describes. We can generally talk all night, or sing, without this sort of collapse. Playing a flute isn’t like long distance running - if your breath is truly running out (which would also happen on whistle), the problem would be not finding proper spots for air. But the description of the collapse is very different - we know when we run out of air. This is an embouchure issue.
I find that playing flute taxes my diaphragm a good deal more than whistle does,
so that I find myself getting winded or tired more quickly playing flute.
I think playing flute is a bit like singing, and it helps to be a sort of athlete.
Aerobic stuff, like running and bicycling helps, and especially swimming laps,
which is sometimes recommended for singers. Also lying on one’s back
and placing books on one’s belly and raising them/lowering them
with one’s stomach muscles. Also sit ups. FWIW.
Flute playing, singing, talking…done correctly, all should take the same amount of air, and shouldn’t be particularly fatiguing. Making it into an athletic event, even in an analogy, just reinforces the notion of straining and striving.
This is the exact opposite of the effortless flow we should all aspire to.
Thank you very much, Rob and others. Yes “breathing endurance” in the subject line was a bit imprecise.
This has been very helpful. The James Galway video prompted an “aha!” moment. I’ve always thought that the best embouchure was the tightest, but as Sir James suggests, a “smiley” embouchure is not the best. News to me, so now I’ll explore the more relaxed embouchure. Similar stuff from Jennifer Cluff here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HWWQpueRvY&feature=related
Very cool to be able to vent here on the Board and get such useful feedback.
I took singing lessons from a pro and I do think what I said makes good sense for singing and fluting.
Didn’t say anything about the amount of air involved. In my case fluting doesn’t take much air,
but the column needs to be supported from my diaphragm, I find. Not so much with soprano whistle.
So one can rest one’s diaphragm switching to whistle for a few minutes.
I don’t think fluting/singing needs to be particularly fatiguing–once one is strong enough to do it correctly.
I don’t think developing the athletic ability and belly strength to support and sustain the breath, properly understood,
reinforces the notion of straining and striving. If I swim laps I sing better, but that doesn’t make
my singing ‘straining and striving.’ To the contrary.
I do think this may be helpful to the OP, along with all the good things said about embouchure.
Lots of folks may not need this, but I think it can be of use to people who are running
into trouble sustaining tone. And none of it is bad for us anyway.
Again, that’s an old-fashioned way of looking at things. All that “support from the diaphragm” stuff does is reinforce the fallacy that you’re supposed to force your tone out, singing or playing. I don’t think it’s helpful, and I do think it’s potentially harmful especially to a player who’s already taking a too-muscular approach to the flute.
Google “speech level singing” or Seth Riggs for some great info on a more natural method of training the voice, with plenty of useful analogues to flute-playing.
I had a flute student for awhile who had studied with James Galway, and I was amazed at the powerful tone she was able to get with her relaxed and “pouty” embouchure; she actually broke the bottom D on my flute and made it warble, which I’ve never been able to do myself. And yet there was no visible effort in her playing. Pretty impressive.
That said, there are plenty of Irish players who use the traditional “grimace” technique and can play all night long without losing their tone, so I wouldn’t say the Galway technique is the only way to go if you want endurance.
I agree that this is an embouchure issue, not a breathing issue, but I do have some thoughts on breathing that differ from Rob’s. It’s true that playing the flute shouldn’t take any more air than playing the whistle, or any more than normal talking or singing, and there’s nothing “athletic” about it. But the so-called “diaphragm support,” which really refers to support from the abdominals, does come into play and is necessary for proper breath control. Abdominal support is not related to “pushing the tune out,” but rather to supporting a controlled release of air. With no support, you would only be able to take phrases lasting as long as a normal exhale, which lasts about 1.5 seconds. That won’t get you very far in terms of phrasing. To take longer phrases you have to release your breath in a controlled fashion, which means letting it out gradually with support from your abdominals to maintain constant pressure. As you exhale, your abdominals should contract.
I had voice lessons (for speaking, not singing) from an opera singer; she could take a normal breath and then speak in a normal voice nonstop for about 45 seconds without having to take a breath. This would be analogous to taking one normal inhalation and then playing a reel fully through (AABB) without having to take a single breath. She didn’t do that through any athletic training, it was all developed through practicing her breath control and abdominal support.
As an aside, as I use glottals more the physical strength of abdominal muscles comes increasingly into play.
There’s nothing else that controls the start and stop of breath, which sometimes is very rapid.
I’m in the gym a couple times a week doing situps and lifting weights. I do think this helps me as a musician.
The whistle I play has little resistance and breathing is a lot more ‘normal.’ Because my embouchure
on flute is much tighter there is a lot more resistance which uses belly strength more. More musculature
involved. One thing I’m beginning to try to do, transferred from singing lessons, is to keep some small tension
in my belly/diapraghm all the time, a sort of firmness that underlies the breath. I’m sure there are plenty of
people who don’t need this sort of thing.
Yes and no. I’m with you on the gradual release of air, but so much talk of diaphragm is more about driving the air out from the bottom, where the diaphragm resides. The abdominals are part of the process too, but I’ve rarely even heard them invoked in a discussion of fluting or singing, which mostly goes to show how anatomically limited most discussions of breathing in music are. I like thinking about all the other parts of the body that contribute, in an effortless way.
Your body has loads of natural “spring” in the right places that will do much of the work for you. The elasticity of the ribcage and the natural tautness of the abdominal wall after a full, deep breath will go a long way towards making the gentle stream of air we need to make flutey noises. I’m not saying you should never use your muscles (impossible of course) but focusing on the diaphragm puts too much emphasis on a single part of a natural exhalation.
Think of a piper playing. The left elbow could be compared to the diaphragm, as it’s the primary large muscle involved in putting air through the chanter (ignore the right elbow for the moment). If the bag is really full, arm weight or gentle pressure is all that is required to maintain a steady tone. The elasticity of the leather pre-loads the pressure of the air inside. Let the bag go too slack - kind of like running out of air or taking a shallow breath as a fluther - and the elbow really has to squeeze. At some point, you’re only squishing air around in the bag and no steady stream out the chanter is possible.
Like the full, stretched out pipe bag, a proper double lungful of air will allow the natural spring of the thoracic cavity to do much of the work without too much muscular effort. The diaphragm and abdominals are there to supply gentle pressure, but I don’t advocate assigning too much importance to them in thinking about the whole process.
I think that’s because most people misunderstand the extent to which you can control the diaphragm (strictly speaking you can’t control it at all, since its an involuntary muscle). When you breathe in, your diaphragm descends and creates a vaccum in your lungs, causing air to rush in through your mouth and/or nose. When you breathe out, your diaphragm moves up and expels the air. When you hold your breath, you’re not controlling it with your diaphragm: you’re constricting the opening of your windpipe. When you then let out that air in a controlled fashion, you’re still not exercising that control with your diaphgram; you’re controlling it at the outlet (e.g., by funneling it through the tiny opening of your embouchure) plus you’re providing steady supporting pressure with your abdominals.
If that’s true, then wouldn’t you have to constantly take little breaths to keep your lungs full and not let them start to empty out? In reality neither pipers nor flute players do this. In piping you’re not pumping constantly, trying to maintain a completely full bag; you pump when you need air…generally by the time the bag reaches about 3/4 full you’ll be taking a stroke with the bellows. If you’re driving drones and regulators as well as the chanter this can require you to pump almost continuously, but on a chanter alone you can go surprisingly long without needing to use the bellows.
I view the left arm on the bag as more like the abdominals than the diaphgragm. The abdominals allow you to maintain constant pressure even as your lungs start to empty out, same as with your left arm on the bagpipe bag.
I certainly don’t make a practice of taking phrases that use an entire lungful of air, but sometimes when I want to take a long phrase or finish on a strong note, or if I’m playing an air and using the same phrasing as a singer, I definitely feel my abdominals contract as my lungs start to empty out toward the end of the phrase. If I don’t use my abdominals for support, I run out of air much sooner than if I do.
Haha, and I think the lesson is that, as with everything in Irish flute playing, there are multiple means to the same end, and no one technique is “right.” Look on youtube at all the different ways that great players hold the flute, look at their different embouchure styles, the angles they use, and probably the breathing techniques they use. There are probably as many different ways to play the flute as there are players. There are more efficient ways, and less tiring ways, and more ergonomically correct ways. But we can ignore them if we wish, and plenty of people do and still manage to play brilliantly on the flute for many decades.
I’m an advocate of keeping things topped up in there, so…sort of. When to breathe is as much a musical question as a physiological one, but in any event I don’t think it does any good to get too depleted.
Taking a quick, deep, full breath is the starting point for whatever is going to happen to the air on its way out. And Julia is going to out-Luddite me! For the record, I don’t think you have to consciously will any one muscle or set of muscles to do its job in what should be as natural…well, as breathing.
