Besides “give it up”, of course.
What are the best tips on flute playing you ever got, be it from a class, workshop, fellow musician or critic?
“Don’t let your fingers go blooming crazy” – Jack Coen.
Spending a week learning from Jack in the Catskills about 8 years ago prompted me to use ornamentation much more sparingly and judiciously, and to focus on making my playing more melodic and rhythmic. That one bit of advice did more to improve my flute playing than anything else I can think of.
Learn music by listening rather than reading. Multiple sources. It sank in during Celtic week up at Swannanoa.
Earplugs.
And…
Take your finger and place it in front of your mouth.
With as little if a stream as possible say poo as if in disgust.
Now move your finger away from you and keep the air stream flowing as you draw it out.
Now do the same thing on the instrument.
After all the different explanations I have read on embouchure that on seemed to help me find my focus and it all “clicked”.
Sounds wierd, but to try playing while lying down on the floor. Not as a regular practice, but to show what proper breath support can do for your tone. Laying down forces you to breathe from the diaphragm and bring the flute to your lips. I was aware that it was necessary to support from the diaphragm, but didn’t really get it before this demonstration.
do long tones, octave shifts and use the latter to warm up your embouchure including the third octave as far as you can go
also doing ornament practices separately
to learn to relax your hands and just hold the flute up and see how that frees your fingers to really move about.
SLOW practice.
berti
I was playing a Yamaha silver flute.
“Get a wooden flute!” sez Jimmy Noonan.
I did.
In fact this could be turned into a good piece of advice on its own:
“If Jimmy Noonan tells you to do something, you’d better do it.”
One of the best tips I ever got was from Skip Healy’s “Skip’s Tips” news letter. Skip explains it better than I do.
Here, with Skip’s permission is the entire text of the tip:
"Hi Everybody,
Skip Healy and John Harvey here again shooting straight from the lip this time. This tip is inspired by a question sent to me by Bill Goelz.
Bill came to me a while ago with a question about my embouchure. He observed in different photographs that I play with the flute set on the fleshy part of your lower lip, as opposed to just under the fine line where the lower lip and the chin meet (which is another common position with many flute players). Bill wanted to know how, why, and whether or not he should do this as well.
So let’s have at it.
Bill’s observation is correct. I do rest the flute against the fleshy part of my lip when I play and I recommend this position to my students. My feeling is that if you position the flute beneath your lip, you create the possibility where some portion of your lip might cover (if not go into) the back side of the embouchure hole.
Some people find it easier to play this way, but what you are actually doing is reducing the size of the embouchure hole by blocking off a portion of it. This makes the embouchure hole more narrow from front to back and artificially increases the compression, thus making the flute function with less air flow.
However, less air flow means less power and dynamic range. There’s also a chance of increasing the amount of embouchure “hiss”. Is it easier to get sound out of a flute using this position? Yes. But are you also limiting your potential as a musician with this approach. In my opinion, yes.
Flutes are really just a set of numbers. If the flute is carefully and thoughtfully designed, then these numbers work together to produce a certain sound when “X” amount of fuel (air) is forced into the chamber. The chamber is a hole (the bore) that is a calculated size and length for producing a certain pitch when the resonating chamber (plug face to foot) is filled with air. The size of the embouchure hole is calculated to allow a precise amount of fuel to flow into the chamber with tone holes of exact size and placement releasing the compressed fuel at precise locations. The changes in air pressure are the notes that we hear.
By reducing the size of the embouchure hole, you’re messing with the numbers. It’s just like having a blocked fuel line in your cars engine. The vehicle will run for a while, but not very well.
By properly venting the tone holes (see Skip’s Tip #11 – Release Me, Let Me Go) and using the entire embouchure hole, you get the best airflow. Along with that, you’re now capable of getting the best possible tone and range.
Of course, when you are trying to do anything to it’s maximum (as opposed to minimum standard) it is harder to control. That said, with practice you can achieve greatly varied volume and tone color. The nuts and bolts of it all is that you’re in control of the flute, and not the other way around.
And last but not least, this approach also helps to prevent the player from puffing their lips out, which also creates a less focused tone.
To paraphrase the old expression:
There is many a slip
'Twixt the flute and the lip.
I hope all of that makes sense! You all know where you can find me if it doesn’t…
All the best,
Skip Healy "
Cheers,
Doc
I remember having seen and wondered about this tip in the past, Doc.
In my classical (Boehm) flute days, I placed the flute below the lip…this technique gives the player more control and a richer sound on a Boehm flute.
But on a Boehm flute one also aims the airstream across the flute, increasing the distance of the lips from the far edge of the embouchure.
On the simple system flute, one aims more downward, and the far edge is closer to lip. Does this mean the flute below the lip method is not appropriate for simple system flute? Where do others place their flutes (or where have you seen other top players place theirs)?
I think Terry’s posting Of Nicholson’s thoughts, even though they don’t fit with some of the advice above.
http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Nicholson_on_Tone.htm
John Williams once advised: Sit with your upper body as straight as possible, head straight and neck extended it’s complete length. This gives you a lot more air.
When I play, I try not to cover the embouchure hole. I feel like I am mostly blowing across rather than down… Both of these things are counter to what i usually hear about irish flute embouchure, but it lets me get a lot of power out of the instrument and the tone is in more or less the same vein as most of the big name players I like. When I try covering a lot of the embouchure hole with my lower lip, I end up with a really hollow tone along the lines of Grey Larsen*, which I don’t like.
I guess the point I’m making is that most of my learning has been based on experimentation in an effort to achieve ideals, and it’s lead me down a path that is different than the conventional wisdom, so the best advice I can give is to remember that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
\
- obAppeasement: Although I dislike Larsen’s tone, I do think he’s a fine player that I can learn from. That was not intended to be derogatory towards Mr Larsen, I just don’t want to sound like him.
There’s so much crucial advice I’ve gotten over time, much of it echoing what I read on this thread; but the one that really stuck with me wasn’t so much advice as a comment from Larry Nugent, that the hardest thing about flute playing is producing a consistent tone. That’s always at the back of my mind when I play, and I listen to my efforts on that regard.
Thanks for the link, Treeshark.
From the pen of Nicholson himself:
“Place the mouth-hole of the flute to the centre of the upper part of the under lip, but not so high as to prevent the lip from covering at least one-third or half the mouth-hole.”
(Quoted from Terry McGee’s site.)
Pretty similar to Skip Healy’s advice.
play from your heart.
Establish good tone from the bottom up. Once you get a solid hard low D, all else follows.
My reading of the Skip Healy passage is that he says you shouldn’t cover any of the blow hole, whereas Nicholson is advising covering a half to a third. I don’t quite get whats similar! Though I’ve no doubt that with practice players could achieve good tone either way.
Rob