Although I am a piper, I also have been blowing at the flute for a few years.
My question is this…are there any previous posts about rolling the the flute in order to control the pitch .. especially in the 2nd octave.
I notice that many, many flute players play out of tune when they go for the 2nd octave… this is very irritating to the other mucicians. I have been told that the really good flute players can roll the flute to control the embrasure sharp or flat.
Yup, I admit to this. My high A and especially B are noticeably sharp. The best short term solution so far has indeed been to “lip down.” It works best for tunes in A that spend a lot of time up there. For others that hit the high notes very briefly, it’s harder to do, but not as necessary.
The rule of thumb I grew up with is “Roll in to flatten, roll out to sharpen.” (within reason, of course) It’s carried me through 35 years, so yeah, it works for me!
Rolling can also affect tone quality. In my experience, you get a much better, more free-blowing second octave when the flute’s in a fairly neutral postion or rolled out VERY slightly; you generally get a better low register when it’s rolled in a bit more – but this MUST be done with an ear to tuning, ideally on EVERY NOTE throughout the octaves.
Sitting up straight, raising your chin and holding the flute horizontal with the ground also helps with tuning – it generally has a sharpening effect if someone’s playing a bit flat. Conversely, tucking your chin can help flatten.
THAT said, you rarely see the REALLY good players rolling or doing such dramatic things – instead, they’re adjusting their air streams down into the flute or up and across by changing their embouchures. So rolling is sort of the “sledgehammer” fix, and aiming your airstream is the more nuanced approach. But both tools work, and sometimes you just need a sledgehammer to get the job done!
As Cathy said, really good flute players do not need to roll the flute to play in tune across both registers. Even flute players who are not really good don’t need to be doing this. One of the most important things I got from Jack Coen, who was the basis of my flute playing since I had no teacher at home and had to rely on going to Jack’s class at Augusta for the first five years I played, is this: “Remember to ‘slack off your breath’ and blow easier in the high octave than in the low. The flute is not like a whistle – you don’t get the second octave by blowing harder. Instead, you tighten your embouchure.” (Taken verbatim from Jack’s page on Brad Hurley’s flute site.)
Now, as I’d never been a whistle player before taking up the flute, I think I was naturally doing this already (albeit not perfectly or consistently), so there are some subtleties in what Jack said that I didn’t grasp at the time but which really are very important. (Jack has a wonderfully direct but understated way of saying things, such that there are always layers more of meaning awaiting you whenever you dig into one of his seemingly simple comments.) This is the thing that Jack left unsaid here: “slacking off your breath” does not mean to let up and blow with less pressure. If you do this, you’ll go flat. “Tighten your embouchure” does not mean to do so while blowing just as hard (i.e. moving as much air) as you were before. If you do this, you’ll go sharp. What you really need to do to play in tune in the second octave is to move a smaller volume of air at the same pressure that you are producing with a larger volume of air in the lower octave. It’s been a long time since I took fluid mechanics in college (and if I recall correctly I slept through most of it) but I believe that in order to do this the airspeed will need to increase. Thus it will be the increased airspeed that doubles the frequency of the wave within the flute and pops the note up an octave.
Of course you can also double the frequency by just blowing a lot harder and increasing the pressure. This is what whistle players do, because it’s the only way that works on the whistle. But on the flute, it’s hard to do this with precision, because it’s a rather blunt technique, to say the least. But lots of flute players, even those who may be excellent in other areas of playing, do this and usually they end up playing sharp in the second octave because of it. These are the same flute players who also blow their low Ds up an octave a lot of the time. This is because you need the same fine-movement control of the embouchure to open it up to the max while blowing harder but not increasing the pressure (and it occurs to me that the pressure I’m talking about here is probably the same as the “back pressure” that I’ve heard pipers speak of), which is what you need to do in order to really honk a low D. (Which is also why often the best way to improve your low D is to work on your upper register playing, including playing the higher harmonics.) In reality, what your embouchure is doing when you get this all right is subtly redirecting your airflow - which to come full circle on this discussion is exactly what you’re doing when you roll the flute in or out to compensate for the fact that you’re blowing it out of tune. In this case you’re using one blunt instrument (the rolling of the flute) to compensate for another blunt instrument (overblowing). Really good flute players eschew these blunt instruments and do the same thing with the fine-toothed comb of the embouchure.
Jack Coen is really the zen master of flute playing. Another quote from Brad’s site is this one: “Speaking of octaves, Jack complained that many of today’s players overblow the low octave so it sounds like the whole tune’s up in the high octave. In Jack’s view, this destroys the melody.” It’s all tied together, grasshopper…
Yes, learning to blow down into the embouchure hole more for the the low notes, and then across the embouchure hole more for octaves and harmonics, rather than rolling the flute to accomplish the same thing.
It looks like you guys were handling it just fine. And who wants to read about boring old embouchures, anyway?
Seriously, kudos to johnkerr and Sensei Jack. They said it much better than me. And thanks to all you guys for having such an intelligent discussion on this. Your embouchure is such a little thing … but it’s everything.
Looking at the dates on that thread, it appears I was out in Friday Harbor hanging out with the biggest inspiration on my flute playing (even bigger than Jack Coen), Catherine McEvoy. Sorry for not keeping in touch with C&F during that time. Actually…no, I’m not sorry.
Oh, then you need some of mine. I came home to a new litter, and I’m sure that’s only the beginning. *$#%ed feral cats. I put out traps but of COURSE I only catch the ones I’ve already managed to spay …
That’s EXACTLY what I’m doing! Only I’m using a lead rope. But so far I’ve caught the wrong cats. Know any kind of mass feed-through tranquilizer? That way I could just glove up and pick out the right limp ones.
It doesn’t help that our local Humane Society only does low-cost spay/neuters on Wednesdays …
Ooooh. Interesting idea. I had good luck with the petting-while-eating thing with about 8 of them (those are the ones I’ve ‘caught & cut’ so far), but the grandma cat and her three kids (now about to be mothers themselves – !) are tough customers, so I gave up.
But I’ll revisit that. I hadn’t thought about taking away their other options.
I’ve already handled the kittens this morning, and will continue to do so with every one I find. Meanwhile, must call vet and find out how young you can spay them. I waited 'til they were 6 months last time, and now wish I’d started earlier
And who wants to read about boring old embouchures, anyway? 
!) are tough customers, so I gave up.