“Blowing is somewhat like a sustained cough”
Michel Debost
“Sit or stand like you are waiting for the bus, naturally”
“Yawning is the perfect breathing, your whole body relaxes and your breath goes way low”
Comments on Tone From Students
After I explain something to a student, I often ask them to say it back to me in their own words – sort of a “how does it feel to you” thought. Here’s one:
- Focus your lips – keep your face relaxed
Keep track of what your own students or other flutists say when describing playing the flute. You may find their words very useful.
Homogeneous Sound
One challenge is keeping the color consistent from one note to the next. The harmonic content of the flute sound changes between registers and the changing length of the tube within each register colors the sound as well. Use Marcel Moyse’s exercise that moves through long tones by half step to work on making the notes the same color.
Marcel Moyse, De la Sonoritè: art et technique , Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1934, Pp. 3-9. Link to free .pdf to download.
As a teacher, you need to help your students learn to hear this homogeneity of sound in their own tone. An easy demonstration is to say, or better yet sing, a scale using “Ah” and changing to “Ee” as you go higher. This is a usual tone change for beginning students. Then repeat the demonstration using “Ah” all the way up the scale. The difference in the favorable tone color of the notes and the fact that they now all sound the same is obvious. Have them try a scale thinking only of using “Ah” inside their mouth to help create the sound. The shape inside the mouth is very important and much time and experimentation will prove beneficial to the development of tone.
Support
Many, many descriptions of support are available but here is a simple one that works. Go get a book and stand “in the front the room” as if you were going to read out loud to a class or group of people. As you begin reading take note of the steps that happen. First take a breath and notice how you sort of hold it in, somewhere low, like around your waist. Begin reading giving each word the same volume. You pause for commas and stop for periods but you may not need to take another breath. That firming of your lower abdomen which allows you to continue reading more than one word out loud, is what wind players call “support” Now let’s break it down as far as it relates to playing your flute:
- Take a breath. A deep breath. One which seems to expand below your ribs. Remember do not raise your shoulders. Breath as you would yawn with an “aaahh” sound – the most efficient and quietest breath.
- Note the firmness needed to hold that air in and not let it all go out at once. That is what allows you to play more than one note in a breath and hopefully eventually 4 – 8 measures or more in one breath.
- Notice how you need to continue to hold on to that firm feeling through the whole phrase or through a number of measures until you can take a breath in the music.
- Play a phrase without support and then with support. Note that the support adds depth and maturity to your sound as well as controlling the evenness of your tone and accuracy of your pitch.
The Flute Coach website outlines support and breathing.
Embouchure
“Cover about 1/3 of the embouchure hole with your lower lip for the best sound. Beware the tempting vice to cover more than that as this can be used as a false support and result in a myriad of ills. These might include limited dynamic range, flatness, pinched tone, loss of resonance and eventual frustration if you like any variety of tone color. If your tone has a stuffy feel, check this.” Mark Sparks
The following excerpt is taken from the wisdom of Central Washington University flute professor Dr. Hall Ott in Teaching Woodwinds : A Method and Resource Handbook for Music Educators.
- To produce a tone the air is directed through a small opening in the embouchure. To form this opening, the lips need to be held together without tension and the front upper and lower teeth should be more or less aligned.
- Holding the head joint alone with the open end to the right, the lip plate should rest gently in the cradle of the chin.
- The flute should be tilted slightly so the outer edge is slightly higher than the inner edge.
- The lower lip should be gently spread along the plate and turned out slightly in a pout formation. Some of the inner surface of the lip should be visible.
- Approximately one quarter of the hole should be covered with the lower lip.
- The lips then should be slightly parted as when forming the word “pure” or “pooh”. The feeling should be that of trying to blow across a spoonful of hot soup.
- In most cases the lip aperture will naturally form near the center of the mouth and the lip plate hole can be centered by moving the flute to the right or left as needed.
- To complete the process direct a steady stream of air at the strike wall so the air is split by the sharp upper edge of the hole
In general, the lips should push in an outward direction so the air stream is formed by the inner surface of the lips. These membranes are smooth and assist in producing a pure tone, while the rough texture of the outer surface is a hindrance to both purity and flexibility. Tightness, firmness, rigidity and the use of the “smiling” muscles when playing should be avoided. The embouchure remains flexible and supple at all times, permitting each note to have a slightly different formation in order to adjust intonation, facilitate in register changes and aid tonal color changes. Beginners should learn to exaggerate the differences and as they advance, smaller more economical (sometimes imperceptible) movements will suffice.
Typically, the embouchure is pushed forward – the lip tube is extended – and the jaw is raised for softer and higher passagework and the lips are in a more natural position with the jaw dropped for louder and lower notes.
So you have talked to your student about how much air it takes to play the flute. You have talked to them about how to breath – Yawn and No Shoulders. What is the next step in helping develop that flute air stream to create that beautiful flute sound we all want.
Aim your air
Let’s talk to them about aiming the air stream. At first it is great idea to have a student aim their air at the top of their music, trying to rustle the pages, or at the top of the music stand. This gives them a target. This helps beginning students understand that they need to aim somewhere beyond the flute on their face. In fact, have them play a few measures challenging them to fill up the flute by blowing all the way to the end of the flute. Then take their flute and hold it perpendicular to their face so it reaches from their face to the music stand. This is usually the distance we sit from our stands – and it shows them that if they think about filling up the flute they are only making music as far as the music stand. Not out into the audience.
As students begin to build their sound and learn to take a big breath, have them think about the people in the back row.
With more advanced students talk about spinning the air through the flute. It gives the feeling of energy, focus and continuity of the air stream.
As tone develops, encourage students to experiment with the direction of their airstream. For example, if a student is having trouble with a getting a sound in the low register, have them aim the air stream up. Up could be just a general location or it could be aimed at the bottom edge of the top teeth. As they play higher notes have them aim the air down. They may be over aiming, disrupting their sound. Help them identify this with adjectives like shrill or muffled. This exercise and some serious listening, will help sound production.
Components of Tone
Try working on the following to work on a more beautiful sound.
- Finger breath
- Shape inside your mouth
- Opening your throat
- Use sinus cavity – think about your sound resonating throughout your head
Feel like you are singing the music as you play. This adjustment in the throat really helps with moving musically between notes and through passages.
Touch the center of your chest with the tips of the fingers of one hand. Now take a breath and play your flute focusing on having the air come from that part of your body rather than your throat or mouth.
Put all the above together and you have the components of a great tone.
Flute Headjoint position
An important component of tone is the placement and position of the headjoint. The flute should be held straight out (to the right) from the face when placed on the chin. If you pull it back or even push it too far forward you move the headjoint, and the center of the embouchure hole, off the chin, placing it at a different angle. Try playing your flute and moving the flute forward and backward and up and down. I demonstrate this for my students so they understand how this can change the sound. Have them try it. They will like the loudest and clearest sound best and learn to hear how to position their headjoint.
The opening in the lips and the embouchure hole should be centered. Although you will see many, many different embouchures on professional flutists with beautiful tone, start by centering your embouchure and the embouchure hole on your headjoint.
Place the closest edge of the flute’s embouchure hole right on the bottom edge of the pink part of your lower lip.
William Kincaid on tone – from an article by Patricia George, Sept. 2013 Flute Talk
“From far away he had a glorious sound but when standing next to him it was very airy. He explained that he was playing with a “cushion of air” around the tone so that it would project to the balcony. If the tone is too clean on stage there is nothing to propel the sound into the audience, but if the tone had the cushion of air, that cushion sent the sound of the back of the hall. He suggested you visualize a funnel. Produce a sound which looked like the big end of the funnel. Produce the sound by setting the lips as if you were playing the third partial of a D4 (D1) and keep them in this position for the other notes on the flue. This leads to aiming the air quite high on the embouchure hole wall. If you sometimes hear a whistle tone on a note, that is good too.”
FLUTE LAB
So now you are ready for your own flute lab on tone. Using the book 24 Caprices for Flute by William Schade, work on the thought on tone selected for each of the first ten exercises. See the list below. These thoughts are meant to concentrate your thinking on one idea for each etude. In an effort to play each etude as well as you can, you will find that the thought associated with it will help you get there. After a while, these facets of tone production will become a regular part of your sound.
- Angle of the air
- Target for your air
- Amount of air
- Character of articulation
- Shape of embouchure
- Size of embouchure
- Position of jaw
- Pursing of lips
- Tuning of throat (See Robert Dick on YouTube for Throat Tunning)
- Push of air – from chest
“The tone of the flute is supported by the diaphragm. If there is a secret to playing it is simply letting the diaphragm-supported flow of air produce the sounds while the lips merely shape or grip the air without crushing it.” P. 2
Kincaidiana
“Open and create as much space as possible in the mouth, particularly for the middle E and for the low register articulations. Experiment with the effects that various vowel resonances (A, E, I, O, U, and Y) can have in modulating the tone quality. Always play with a relaxed, open throat. Yawn just before starting a sound to get this feeling of openness.” “Play from the smooth, moist inside of the lips and work for an open tone – open that is in the sense of not being constricted or forced, particularly in the low register.” “The ideal lip aperture is a symmetrical, elliptical opening.” Pp. 4-6
“(A) tone uniformly pretty becomes merely a confection for the ear and loses its emotional value through its sheer consistency. There are moments when the sound should be ravishing and seductive, but others when, if it is to remain faithful to the intent of the music, it should be brittle, intense, spitzig, scolding or even unpleasant. It is up to the performer to transcend the trite identifications of his instrument and, instead, communicate the range of meanings which music can have.” P. 8
If you would like to see a beautiful embouchure, check out Amy Porter’s YouTube channel.