i agree that Skip recommends not covering any of the blow hole. but, noting the word ‘prevent’, i think Nicholson is advising covering 1/2 to 2/3 of the blow hole, which is a more extreme contrast to Skip’s advise. these two descriptions seem to me to represent two distinct approaches to embouchure.
my hit pick from Nicholson is this quote (thanks Terry!):
the starred bits confirmed the key ‘less is more’ advise i had received from a Japanese Shakuhachi teacher: “the front of the lips are completely relaxed; they just a form a little flap that the breath gently pushes through”. that teacher also recommend starting at the very, very, bottom of the volume range when learning to blow.
i will note that Terry McGee’s summation of Nicholson’s technique, “high-pressure, short-jet, well-covered embouchure approach”, suggests a more forceful strategy than this. i would rather say “low-pressure, high-velocity, …”.
Nearly every bit of techinical advice given here can be disputed by a great player. This includes suggestions regarding posture, size and position of embouchure, and finger placement.
But one thing on which all great players would agree is the need to slow down. Eamonn Cotter points out that it isn’t enough to play jigs and reels – one must slow down and work on specific ornaments to get them right. Harry Bradley suggests leaving them out altogether and to concentrate on blowing for proper phrasing. Busking does not make one a better player-- at least not if the playing is at the tempo of the hammers of hell. Nor does regular attendance at sessions make one better without at-home practise. I would bet that nearly all of the regular contributors to this list play too fast.
So the universal advice is: Slow Down.
If you make a mistake you are playing too fast. If the rhythm is wrong you are playing too fast. If you can’t do the ornaments properly you are playing too fast.
Slow down.
When I was first looking into the flute someone was kind enough to tell me I didn’t have to cover those bottem two holes. It was a great load off my mind.
By the way, I think David Levine is right on. I know I play too fast. Slow practice (and slower playing for that matter) really are critical to making good progress.
First, Listen to what you are playing and try to play, a little, sharp, a little flat, smooth, raspy, clear, loud, soft and all combinations. Try this for each and every note in the first two octaves.
Second is worry less about getting the right note and more about getting the right rythmn. Slow down as much as you need to get the right lift and beat, includinging accents and distinguishing ornaments from the bones of the tone. This comes back to Listening again.
Every body listens to what they play, but I’m talking about focusing on the listening, trying to hear deeper into the tonal qualities of what you’re playing. Listen for the quality of tone and modulations in the timing as well as the note on the scale and basic beat. Also if you focus on listening and playing then when new tunes come up it’s easier to pick them up because you’re ear-hand-breath coordination is working better.
Not that I’m a great player, it just what has proved most usefull in my becoming a better player.
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
Rob, you’re right. I was thinking similar in relation to placing the flute below the lip. Both Nicholson and Healy suggest having the flute on the lower lip.
Some of the most helpful advice I ever received was to relax. (I had, at one point, developed some bad habits and tension in shoulders, hands, embouchure.) Greater comfort and more fluid technique ensued.
My grandfather, who was a piper from Sligo, gave me a bunch of tunes when I was a kid - maybe ten years old. He would patiently play a tune slowly many many times while I tried to learn it on the tin whistle. I always felt bad because I knew he typically picked up a tune after hearing it only two or three times. One time I said to him, “Grandda, sorry this is taking me so long …I wish I had your talent!” He looked at me and drolly said, “Talent is overrated and practice is underrated.”
At the end of that same “lesson” when I finally had the tune he said, “I think the harder something is to learn the deeper it goes and the longer it stays.”
I still can’t learn a tune after only a few turns, but I haven’t felt badly about it since that day in the early 1950’s; I just make up for my lack of talent with lots of practice. Those tunes he taught me over 50 years ago? I’m playing them with my band at a performance on Sunday.
I think the “don’t mess around” thing may be personality dependent. One teacher has told me something to that effect – he related a quote from Jack Nicklaus, who said that since he was about 15, he thought about every swing he made. In the backyard, he’d imagine a lie and play that lie. He said that I should think about every tune I play, every note in every tune.
I’m not like that. When I have limited time, I try to make that time count. But when I have an hour or two, I do mess around. It’s kind of like science. When you come right down to it, science is really aboout creativity – a new idea is NEW; it’s not something you regurge out of a textbook. I think every person in my class in graduate school (every one who got a degree that is) was better academically than I was, but I’ve accomplished more in my career than most of them, and that’s about creativity, not fundamentals. Music is also about creativity. So, yes, you do have to have all the fundamentals down, but if you want to be creative, you have to try new things, and that usually (for me) comes from fooling around.
Of course, one person’s fooling around might be another’s exercises or something.
Chas has a good point. If you’re playing ITM in particular, variations are important, and that means some inevitable playing around to find your own and practice to make them sink in. Most people can’t pull variations spontaneously out of their hat without some habituated melodic runs to rely on.
I was very fortunate to be a performing student at a master class put on by John DeLancie in the summer of 1997. The most important thing I have ever learned came from his opening lecture in that master class. Since I am not a skilled enough writer to put it succinctly, I will have to expound:
Music is structured like language, with its own grammar and syntax. Phrasing is “the art of defining while playing, the grammatical structure of music.”
A musical phrase is a line with arcwise tension. The idea is to recognize the dramatic arc of each phrase, make your breath follow that arc, and then play the notes on top of the breath. Play through each line to its logical conclusion, and make sure that your breath puts a punctuation mark at the end of each phrase. Where you articulate is important, but not as important as how you articulate.
Intellectualizing this during practice and performance is important. After all, professional baseball players analyze every inch of their foot position hundreds of times. Missing a baseball by 1/16" is still missing.
You communicated your point very well, flutipi, but I don’t know that I’d use the word intellectualizing. I think the best just feel it. I don’t know that one can make good music (especially folk music) by consciously thinking about it. It may start that way (during the learning process), but I think (I don’t know) that really good players feel the music and are able to instinctively communicate that feeling to their instruments.
What a good thread this is! The collective knowledge of this group is impressive. I know that I am learning a heck of a lot.
Yeah, DeLancie does come from a much different background. Maybe what Lee Mathis said is a better way of expressing that – listen to the music, and hear yourself. Constantly. Be completely objective. But do it with a goal. Know what you want to accomplish, and listen to see how closely you meet your ideal.
I think to try and keep it simple would be the best single piece of advice I’ve received so far. Not sure if I’ve managed to follow the advice, though…
But even if the style one is aiming for were a more complicated and variated one, I think the simplification would be of some use at some point especially when learning a tune. At least by stripping it down one would be able to learn where it is “appropriate” to play around and where improvising would only muddle the actual melody.
So yes, keep it simple is the best advice I’ve been given.
At a workshop, Chris Norman recommended (more elequently than I’m about to relate) that one should only lift one’s flute to play when one already feels a pulse or rhythm. So, rather than lifting the flute, noodling about, and then finding a groove, one enters a pre-existing pulse. The idea is that every note played, be it a long-tone or a tune, is placed on/in the rhythm one feels before playing a note.
